Becoming Your Own Banker | Smart Money Moves

All the stories that our clients share about how they've been able to start businesses, purchase businesses, expand businesses, start real estate investing journeys, expand their real estate investing journeys, really deliver blessings to their family, to their community, to people in organizations, in communities where they live and work. All because they're keeping more of the money that they're making, not transferring more of it away. Hi everybody. The whole idea for this webinar, I want to do a webinar that's titled It's Smart to Make Money But It's Smarter to Keep It. If you think about right now, the fact that you're doing all the work and everyone else is getting all your money, if you understand that you're earning income right, when we ask people all the time, how much money do you make? And somebody will say, oh, you know, I, I make $100,000 a year. You're not actually making it, you're handling it because you're in this cycle of receiving income. It flows through the books of someone else's bank. Money sits there, which it doesn't, waiting for you to take care of your bills and all of your financial obligations you have in your life. And what is actually happening. You're doing all the work and then you're systematically transferring all of that money away from you permanently. You can't save it again, earn interest on it again, can't utilize it again. But it's not only for your generation, it's not only for yours, it's for every future generation that comes after you. And for a lot of people, that is just not a situation that people want to be in. So what portion of your net worth is completely shielded from any risk of loss or taxation? So of all your assets, what percentage can be converted into cash today without reducing the assets value by a single penny and without triggering tax again? That's going to be either you don't have any clue or all of your assets can be converted into cash today without reducing their value or triggering tax. How many high caliber investment opportunities have you missed out on because you didn't have ready access money on demand on your terms? Remember, it has to meet that criteria. Ready access money on demand on your terms. And we're going to talk about the most powerful family wealth retention method that's ever been developed, how you can properly address risk and taxes and keep both of them away from your wealth. And we're going to talk about a couple of real life case studies. We're going to control how we finance your business, how you finance everything that you need throughout your lifetime personally, without worrying about the bank's market risk or tax risk. And we're going to talk about how to stop sharing your profit with Revenue Canada and with the irs. We're going to talk about how you can get started today and how to take advantage of high caliber opportunities. Because when you have ready access, capital opportunities of high caliber are going to track you down. And so what are some common traditional financial products that people utilize? Savings accounts, accounts, GICs, stocks, bonds. So why is it that many traditional financial products fall short? Unpredictable tax rates might have something to do with it, because that can eat into your savings market downturns that can cause devastating financial losses. And you're simply never in a position of total and absolute control. And in addition to that, the banks are not your friend. Wall street and Bay street are definitely not your friend. And the government hovers over your assets with a giant knife and fork, wanting to take a big chunk out of them. How does that make you feel? Every single financial product has its own set of characteristics in terms of liquidity, access, growth, volatility, tax consequences. So every financial product out there just is. It's not a question of is this good or is it bad? Well, for who? And compared to what? Why don't we evaluate the characteristics of that financial product to determine whether or not it's something that's a good fit for you and the progress and the certainty and the financial security that you want to achieve. Everybody's talking about what's best for you, and they've never had a detailed discussion around what specific financial objectives you have, what timeframes you have in mind for achieving them, and then looking at the attributes of the best tool to get the job done. Everybody on Wall street and Bay street, all those financial institutions are competing for control over the use and liquidity of your money. So of course they're going to make compelling offers for you to warehouse your capital there because they want you to give up the motion of it so they can gain the motion of it. The moment that you hand control of your money over to someone else who thinks they can do better with it than you can, you are at an immediate disadvantage. You might have tried some of these things you all heard in there, done that, got the T shirt on on budgeting. It does work. I've seen it work well in business environments, but personal environments, not so much. But don't worry, you're not alone. Busy families often face obstacles to keep more of the money that they make, paying too much in taxes. So having Tax surprises, that's not good. Being in debt, maybe market volatility has been an obstacle for you because you've been participating in all of the great recommendations that people have made to you. And you may be invested in some things that you know and maybe some things that you don't know. And you ended up with some experience, but everyone else ended up with all your money, living paycheck to paycheck. That, that can be a real problem and a real challenge for families who are really, truly, genuinely working hard to try and make ends meet. And you're already presently allocating 100% of your financial resources to everything that's important to you and to your family. This is a big one, being dependent on someone else's bank. And that can lead to all sorts of problems as it relates to interest rates, limited borrowing options and so on without a process. The problem is that, you know, not having that, not having objectives and the right tools, it's really easy to kind of fall into that cycle of earning money, spending money, earning money, spending money. But all the while, throughout all those working years, you're not really building long term wealth because you're doing all the work and everyone else is getting all your money. And that can lead to a lot of stress, a lot of debt, a lack of financial security. And as a result, a lot of families are really struggling to achieve those goals and objectives that they so much desire that they really want to get done. And that can take a toll on a person's mental and emotional well being. That constant worry you don't have enough money to cover unexpected expenses or to retire comfortably. It can really leave you feeling stuck, in many cases hopeless. And I talk to a lot of people all the time who experience regrets of not having ready access capital to take advantage of high caliber opportunities that track them down. And they can't take advantage of them because they just don't have ready access money. But there's a solution to that. My team will provide you with a process, with a tool, with guidance, with support every step of the way so that you can absolutely feel confident and empowered to set about building that bigger financial future and certainty. And that's through implementation of the process of becoming your own banker. The infant banking concept. And Nelson said it best. He said it should have been named a personal monetary system with a death benefit thrown in for good measure. The fact is, is that you need the best tool to get the job done. And that tool to implement the process of becoming your own banker is dividend paying, participating, whole Life insurance, ideally with a mutual life company. Here's a couple of examples that I just want to share with everybody. So this one is Martin and Bonnie Dancer. They've been clients of mine for several years and they established a very profitable business that they've been operating for the past couple of decades. And I didn't realize that the vacuum truck business, I had no clue how much money a vacuum truck costs. And the way that they were purchasing these trucks prior to taking control of this function of banking as it relates to their needs, prior to implementing the process, the infinite banking concept in their lives, what they were doing is they were creating a sinking fund. So their accountant said, look, what you need to do is you need to systematically set aside enough money so that when you're ready to go buy the truck, you can just withdraw the money from the bank, go buy the truck. That's one way to go about the objective of getting the truck. But what nobody explained to Martin and Bonnie until they met my team and I, is that they were doing all the work and everyone else was getting all their money. Because systematically saving money means you have to store it somewhere. Because remember, your money must reside somewhere. So they were systematically storing that money on the books of someone else's bank. And we all know, or we should know that, that the banks don't let that money sit still. They've got to keep that money in constant motion. They were permanently giving up the opportunity to earn interest on that money, not only for the rest of their lives, but for every generation that came after them the moment that they withdrew that money and purchased the truck, because they used their money to do it. So they got caught in this cycle, both personally and corporately, of investing, saving, growing, withdrawing, transfer money away, transfer money away, transfer all the lost opportunity cost permanently because nobody showed them. Both Bonnie and Martin realized that once they discovered this process and they understood that it could be implemented in their lives as it related to their needs, they began to implement this by paying premium. So they were putting premium into participating dividend paying whole life policies at a 1.8 million starting death benefit within four years. They financed their first truck through the program. They're set to do their second. All their maintenance and everything flows through their system of policies. They're using their own family banking system to achieve it. They control the repayment schedule of their loans. So whenever you request a policy loan from the life insurance company, you're the one that controls the repayment schedule, not the insurance company. And the reason is that the insurance company itself is guaranteeing the collateral for the loan, which is your cash value. So they don't need a repayment schedule. They know that the loan is going to be repaid at some point, Whether it's while you're alive or when you pass away, the death benefit will extinguish the loan balance. In going through this process, they created this family banking system, their own ocean of cash. They've got assured passive income in retirement, an ever increasing permanent death benefit of 6.4 million now and rising annually. They've got daily cash value growth, annual dividends that again, once declared, they cannot be repossessed or lose value. They're contractually guaranteed to be paid. They're not triggering any taxable event, and they have a total death benefit, all of which is completely non taxable. They have ready access now to more than 2 million in cash. And that figure goes up daily, every single day. They had a tax problem, a terminal tax problem, which all of you do too as well. All of that capital property is deemed to have been sold at the moment of your death, even though no physical sale of those assets actually occurred. And if there's taxable gains triggered as a result of that deemed disposition, someone is going to have to pay that bill. And so when we looked at their first policy and we determined, okay, your terminal tax obligation is north of a million dollars, the rate of interest at that time was 5%. So what's 5% of a million? 50 grand. The premium for the policy was 50,000. So I had two checks prepared. One check was payable to Revenue Canada and the other check was payable to the life insurance company for 50,000. And I asked, which check do you want to sign? Said, do you like the bigger number or the smaller number? Well, I like the smaller number. Well, you're both alive today. You both have a choice. God forbid if the unthinkable happened. The family doesn't have any choice. They got to sign the big check and where's the money going to come from to pay that bill? So let's create cash at a discount. Let's create a tax free corporate surplus. Let's create a readily accessible pool of financial value called cash value. Let's borrow against it so you never interrupt the daily growth. I'm going to introduce you to Alan and Janet. Antonio. And before they begin to create their own family banking system, they were invested in some of the typical financial products that we talked about earlier. That for many people can fall short. And so they weren't having the best experience with some of Those traditional financial products. And when they began, they purchased their first policy, they got started somewhere, and one year later, they purchased five more policies to expand their family banking system. They've since expanded the program to include all of their grandchildren. Within three years, they eliminated three mortgages on their real estate portfolio. They owned multiple fourplexes and they had a few of these fourplexes that still had a mortgage against them. And they had 13 years of payments that they needed to make to someone else's bank within three years. What they did is they changed the process of where that money is now flowing to. The money is being kept in the family. It's not being transferred away from the family. In fact, since then, they've also financed their daughter's first home from their family banking system. No conventional bank involved in the transaction, not one. They went on to say in testimony that the family banking system that Jason and his teammates have taught us is providing financial security and certainty for all in our family. Every person you see in this picture is insured. And is death going to occur? Everyone in this photograph are going to die. It's not a function of if that's going to happen. It's a function of when. And when that day comes, there's going to be a tax free windfall that comes right back to the family to replenish the family banking system so that they can continue this process and they can transfer their entire estate value to the next generation. Not the portion that's left over after Revenue Canada or the IRS gets their part. That's just part of the power of this incredible system. Greater control over your finances. Feeling secure, knowing that your money is protected, ready access to money on demand, on your terms, for yourself, your loved ones and your business. The peace of mind that comes with knowing that you're in a position of total control as it relates to your finances. By choosing this process of becoming your own banker, the infinite bank concept, you're choosing to take control of how you finance the things that you need in life. You're choosing to protect what you work so hard for and what you're accumulating from being decimated at the highest levels of taxation. You're choosing to build a financial future that's much bigger than your past. And by choosing this.

You'Re achieving that peace of mind and financial certainty for yourself and for your loved ones. And we get asked the question all the time, Jason, is there someone on your team that I can be connected with to talk about how this process can work for me and for my family? The answer is yes. If you know the fundamental truth that your money must reside somewhere. If you understand the problem. The problem is that you're doing all the work and everyone else is getting all of your money. If you understand that the solution to that problem is to take control of how you're financing the things that you need throughout your lifetime and storing more of that money that you're keeping inside of an entity that you own and control and shielding all of that growth from onerous taxation, borrowing against it, so you're not interrupting any of its daily growth. If you understand that by doing that you have ready access capital on demand, on your terms, to take advantage of high caliber opportunities to take care of your loved ones, to take care of your business. How much of your capital do you not want residing there? I don't rely upon a conventional bank for anything other than the convenience of debit. That is a very peaceful, stress free way of life. So we meet as a family every year and we have our annual family banking meeting and we talk about how the family is utilizing the process. We recognize the kids for their participation and repayment of policy loans. We have a process, but we have the right tool to implement it. Here's what I mean. So when we got started, our first policy, my wife Rebecca and I, that we got in 2008. And so a year later, 2009, that was our first policy anniversary. And back in 2009 we had two policies by the end of the first year. 67 more in 2023. Total annual premium was $16,800 in 2009. It's $600,000 this year. Is that a little or a lot more money being kept versus being transferred away from the family? That's a lot more being kept. It's smart to make money, it's smarter to keep it. Total death benefit a half A million in 2009. 32 million and rising daily in 2023. Total cash value 4250 in 2009. 3,064,000 rising daily. 300 policy loan for my son's car seat in 2023. We have 664,000 in outstanding policy loan. B loan amount available was 3825 in 2009. It's 2,093,000 and rising daily. Loan repayments back to our family banking system were $330 in 2009. 40,000amonth just from our immediate family. That is money that would have been permanently transferred away from the family. Unable to earn interest on it. Again, unable to spend it again, unable to utilize it again. And when I told you that death will come, it's happened to us. My father in law passed away in 2020. I got him insured just shortly after his retirement. He was around for many years with us. He was diagnosed with cancer on day one. Five weeks later he was gone. There were two death benefit checks that the insurance company wrote when he passed away. Two because I bought two policies where he was the life that was insured and I was the policy owner. And the premium pair, tax free is always the best, best source of money. You've got a jump point. Protect the people that you love and care about. And the kids that you see in this picture, they pick up on this much faster than the adults do. And this was one of our family banking vacations and having a discussion as a family about how we're keeping all the money in the family and how we are taking control of that banking function as it relates to our needs. I promise you there isn't a single person on our team that's going to try and back you into a corner or try and twist your arm to do anything because we're the buyer, not the seller. There's a big difference. If you think of any financial transaction that happens, the buyer is the one who gets to do the rejecting. The whole purpose of the call is to establish whether or not we can add value to you and whether or not this process is a good fit for you. And then we make a buying decision. Do we want to buy into this relationship because it's not transactional. Any clients that have worked with us will tell you we provide the support, the guidance, the coaching, the mentoring. A 247 client portal with a ton of resources, quarterly group client coaching sessions, and you don't pay anything more for that. The fact is most advisors don't have this level of training. We are the longest standing practitioners of this process in Canada. Gold standard. Because when you work with any person on the ascendant financial team, you get the entire team. And who do you want to be backed up by? A lone ranger or an entire team? All the stories that our clients share about how they've been able to start businesses, purchase businesses, expand businesses, start real estate investing journeys, expand their real estate investing journeys, really deliver blessings to their family, to their community, to people in organizations, in communities where they live and work, all because they're keeping more of the money that they're making, not transferring more of it away.

How you could begin the process of paying off an existing mortgage with whole Life insurance.

Oh, wow. I can share with you my own firsthand experience. This was before I was introduced to the process. In July of that year, we signed on for a 40 year amortization on the mortgage for our principal residence at that time. So we were really excited because the interest rates were low, the payment was more than manageable, and that's all I understood. Get the longest amortization, the lowest rate, the lowest payment. And then I had this really clever idea. I said, you know what? I'm going to start sending an extra 200 bucks a month, my mortgage. What I didn't realize is that what I was telling the bank is, don't worry about going to find another borrower. I'm going to send you some extra money sooner than when you called for it. And it's my own money. So rather than do that, I started to put money into, remember my first policy and the second policy that we put in place in year one, we built up $16,800 in premium payments and we accumulated just north of $4,000 in total cash value at that time. And a few years into building our system of policies, we started to request policy loans from the life insurance company. So now we're using the life insurance company's money, not our own, because our money is being kept. It's being kept inside of the entity that we own and control, right? It's not trapped in the four walls of a house called equity that's earning us absolutely nothing. So we use the life insurance company's money, we go down to the bank and we'd say, yeah, we'd like to apply this toward the principal balance of the mortgage. And the bank was like, do you realize that by doing that you might trigger a penalty? And I said, what's the penalty? And she said, well, that's going to be three months of interest. And said, would you mind just doing me a favor and just calculating for me how many years of payments this lump sum is going to remove from the amortization schedule. So she comes back and she goes, that's going to be about three years of payments. I said, oh, which number is bigger, the three years of payments or the three months of interest? She goes, the three years of payments, would you mind just applying that money toward the balance of the mortgage? And I'll be more than happy to pay the penalty like. And so it took us seven years to get rid of the conventional bank. So that's what we began to do and still do to this day. The equivalent of that mortgage payment that we would have otherwise been sending to someone else's bank. Is going into our family banking system as premium. Who's keeping the money now?

Can this strategy be used for retirement planning?

If you want to develop an assured pool of capital that you can utilize as a source of retirement income, and you don't want any tax surprises along the way, and you want no market volatility, and you want nobody repossessing your capital, the answer is a resounding yes.

Where do they actually keep the funds?

The insurance company? They're quite wise in terms of how they manage capital. The insurance company maintains very small amounts of cash reserve, actual cash on hand, which is an incredibly smart move because what the insurance company is doing is putting capital to work primarily in financial instruments that provide a guaranteed payback schedule with interest. The insurance company cannot speculate, you know, the way that other institutions may be able to speculate. The insurance company is not dealing with. If you're with a mutual carrier, they're not dealing in 90 day spans and looking ahead to quarterly results, they're dealing in theoretical 100 year lifespans. Because the total cash value of the insurance contract is contractually guaranteed to match the total death benefit by age 100 of the life insured. The insurance company needs to put capital to work in order to fulfill their contractual guarantees, which they are legally bound to fulfill. And guess how often they failed to do that. Any guesses? It's never happened. And so again, respecting the truth that your money must reside somewhere, I ask myself, what better place is there for my money to reside than here? Because from this place I get to control how I finance all those great opportunities. So it's not an either or. I'm not saying you got to put all your money into the life insurance company and then don't do anything else. I'm saying warehouse your capital in the entity that you own and control and then from that place go about taking advantage of opportunity or achieving your financial objectives. Controlling the banking function as it relates to your needs. Go and do all those things, but do it knowing that you're building a skyscraper on a strong foundation, not a weak one, would be a good idea.

Take policies out on parents at any point.

Well, I would say generally speaking, you know, yes, but in his particular instance, too premature to answer that, but generally speaking, yes. I'll give you an example. A gentleman who planned on leaving behind some assets to his adult son and his adult son said, well, being bequeathed these assets is an honor and deeply grateful. The fact of the matter is, is that it's going to trigger a pretty significant taxable event. And what most parents do when they get to retirement age, and I'm talking about parents who have families that are still around. And parents say, you know, we really shouldn't spend too much out of our retirement accounts because we want to leave something behind for the grandkids and for the kids. And so they deprive themselves these policies and their death benefits associated with them. That's your ticket to spend your retirement money. It's a golden ticket to spend because when you die, there's going to be a tax free windfall of money that shows up. And in this case for the son, he was not only able to keep all of the assets that his parents left behind and their true value, but he also had a residual surplus of tax free money. And he told his parents, he said, look, you go ahead and utilize the policies while you're still alive. I'll pay the premium, I'll control who the beneficiary is. But when you need ready access money, just let me know. And if you don't and you still got that large retirement account balance, mom, dad, spend it, you worked so hard for it. Don't worry about me. The death benefit proceeds. The life insurance company's going to take great care of me. They're going to write me a check for a lot of money and I don't have to share one dime of it with the government. They're the only loser in this scenario. Mom and dad said, sounds great. The dividend paying, participating whole life insurance contracts have far more financing characteristics than death benefit characteristics.

Yeah, Nelson would say that you will find yourself having much more death benefit if you don't really focus on getting death benefit.

Yeah, you'll end up with more death benefit than the underwriters would ever approve on you. Because of the way that we engineer the policies, the death benefit is ever increasing. It only continues to go up. Which means if the cash value has to grow to match that ever increasing death benefit by age 100, it's a constant game of follow the leader. The death benefit is the leader and the cash value is constantly following that leader. And it's all happening on a foundation of contractual guarantees. The life insurance policy is a unilateral, binding contract. What more could we ask for in the way of protection? All of the attributes of that contract are designed to protect the owner, not the life insurance company. And the life insurance company doesn't own the contract, you do. The insurance company itself only administers the contract and they're legally bound to do.

So when one is at the end of one's life cycle, is it really practical?

Nelson Nash passed away in his 88th year, and he was still purchasing policies for his great grandchildren. And so there's never a point where it wouldn't be worthwhile to implement this process to some degree. And remember, you don't have to be the life that is insured if you have a beneficial interest in your parents, your children, your great grandchildren. If you have a beneficial interest in these people, there are plenty of options. And remember, smart to make money, but it's a lot smarter to keep it.