Paying Off $70,000 of DEBT by Christmas Challenge! (Part 4)

Why can't this just be easy? I am.

It'S just a part of the game, it's just how it works.

But it's just like, I think it's, I get like this when I'm dealing with my own clients too. Like I want.

I just, it's just the nature of the beast, just how it works. Okay, Canada, we're pulling back the curtain for you here. We're about to reveal some conversations that we've had back and forth with the life insurance company, the underwriters, while we're in the process of trying to get a new policy on the life of my brother in law, Chris. So you're going to see some back and forth and really get an intimate understanding of what actually happens once an application goes in. So we're pulling back the curtain, we're showing you the details and you're going to see some of the pleasure and pain that comes along with trying to get new policies in place for people. Hey Canada, this is video number four of our family debt series paying off $70,000 worth of debt using our family banking system by Christmas of 2023. Make sure you stick around to. Okay, so I received the information on that. The life insurance company was looking for some additional details saying that they request some additional information on my brother in law, like why I'm owning the policy, why I'm the beneficiary, why is Chris not owning the policy on his own life. But what I've done is I painted a picture. That's my job, is to paint a picture for the life insurance company to help justify the case and why we're doing what we're doing. So the many details that I provided to the life insurance company when they asked these below questions down here. So again she was asking why am I the owner, why am I the beneficiary and why isn't Chris owning his own policy? So what I've done here is I've just responded to the underwriter just to let her know that I did give her a call. I left her a voicemail to have a conversation, but instead I followed up with some additional details via email. I should, yeah, this is where I was letting her know that I should only be listed as the owner and the contingent beneficiary. Meaning if something happens to one of the primary beneficiaries, I would become the primary beneficiary. And my wife and sister in law, Chris's wife are, my wife is 75% beneficiary. Chris's wife is a 25% beneficiary. So that's the first thing that I let her know. And I let her know that because my wife and I have invested at least $100,000 into the business over the last 10 years, as you know, carrying costs and things like that. And my brother in law is a CEO, I need to cover that loss if something happens. And my holding company, McCarty Investments Inc. Owns the 33% share in our specialties, which is our construction company that we're looking to protect if something happens to Chris. And then I just say, obviously if my brother in law were to pass away, you know, I would be left liable. And we need to make sure that the business can pay us back or somehow we get paid back, which is the death benefit proceeds. Right now the business doesn't have the capital available to fund the premium because we just got over this little thing called Covid. Have you ever heard of that? And so it was pretty difficult during COVID times for construction companies and this Chris worked his tail off and the company survived. And that's really what we did was the construction company survived through the COVID times. And so I have the capital available to fund the premium and I'm the one who's covering the liability or I want to cover my own liability. So that's why we have it structured that way. The business has just been, you know, servicing everything that they need to service through cra. I'm just kind of explaining to them what the business has been doing. And now that things are, things are getting better here. Now that we're out of COVID my wife and I obviously would be liable for credit card debt and lines of credit and anything else if God forbid, something happened to my brother in law. And just going through and explaining some of these details and why we have the amount of death benefit that we have. And then also I'm expanding on that even further and letting them know that we're working together as a family to ensure that everybody is looked after financially. Well, we're here and after we're gone, helping them understand that, you know, they, they're well aware of the process of becoming their own bank or the family banking concept. So I'm just painting that picture for them because I think down here I start to explain, yeah, there's no capital in the business. Great. Just letting them know that, you know, the business is making money, but there isn't capital there to pay. So I'm helping her understand too that obviously, you know, we would have probably set up policies a long time ago, but sometimes that happens, right? It wasn't a priority. We weren't in a position to do it. And so now we are in a position to do it. We're, we're taking our life and our family system to the next level. So we're adding the policy now. Now I'm also explaining here in this kind of paragraph that painting a picture and helping them understand that this policy will also form a part of our family banking system to recapture payments that are presently leaving the family. We're going to use policy loans to fund or from, from our existing system and this policy to pay off Chris's Ford F150, his personal vehicle, which he does use quite a bit for business. And then we're going to redirect those payments back to the system so that we can do more things. So I just said, you know, please let me know if you have information that you need. So you just got to be patient with the process. And I'm, I'm nervous, you know, I've got this nervous energy that I'm worried that, you know, things aren't going to go the way that I want them to go or, you know, I don't know what they're going to respond with. So I guess we're just going to have to wait and see what the response is to, to my response and then we'll provide further information, further details if we need to, so that we can expand our family banking system and, you know, keep that wealth inside the family. And here.

Go. Why can't this just be easy? I am.

It's just a part of the game. It's just how it works.

But it's just like I think it, it's. I get like this when I'm dealing with my own clients too. Like I want.

I just, it's just the nature of the beast. It's just how it works. You have to be patient in the insurance industry because the life insurance company has a responsibility to protect the risk at the life insurance company, to protect the risk to the owners and who owns the business. We do. Our participating policyholders own the mutual insurance company. So ultimately I can't get too frustrated when they're giving me a hard time about certain things, about whether it's somebody's health situation or trying to justify a premium or whatever it is, because ultimately what they're trying to do is protect the risk pool, which ultimately is protecting me and all the other co owners, the business owners. So I totally respect what they're doing and they're always Going to err on the side of caution. So here we are. Now you can see that I've got a casual look, you can see my awesome operation Feed St. John Hat. So shout out to Patrick Gordon. Make sure that you click the link below. Make sure you learn more about Operation Feed St. John. We want to take this national. We want to feed the hungry bellies of the most vulnerable people in our society and make sure that we put some structures and systems in place to support our veterans, to show our gratitude to them so that they can get the mental health support that they need to get back out and be contributing people in society and have something that they can, you know, feel a part of a brotherhood, part of a network, just like when they were, when they're serving. So that's what Operation Feed St John is all about. So I got a response. This is how it is. We go back and forth, I give them some information and then they assess that and then they come back and say, okay, well what about this? And so this is why I'm just getting, I'm a little anxious about all this because I've got some of the information ready to go that they're asking for and I now need to get my brother in law involved because they're asking for some additional information about the business that I just don't have the information for. So here's what they came back with. I ended up having a conversation with the underwriter which was really good because I left her a voicemail and then we got a chance to connect and have a conversation on the phone. So I shared with her a little bit more about what we're trying to do. And she told me that she was going to go talk to a senior underwriter about what we're doing and she's just for some reason being really careful with this case and that's fine. But she just said that, you know, further to our conversation yesterday, even though you're applying for it personally. So I'm applying for it personally, to own the policy personally, but it's to protect the business liability. So she says we require some additional information about the business arrangement. So she said you indicated that you own 33.3%. I'm 33.3% owner, or between me and my wife. And will this ownership show up on corporate documents? Of course it will. Even though it's not technically me personally, it's my holding company that owns the shares. But yes, it will show up there. It says, how is the insured earning $110,000 if there's no money in the business. When I said there's no money in the business, gosh, she took that really literally, didn't she? What I mean by there's no money in the business is that it's not like there's a huge amount of retained earnings building and growing that we can use to put to work somewhere. He has to pay himself so he can live life and do what he has to do. But he eats last because he's the business owner. Most of the money is flowing out to fund expenses, staff costs and you know, materials and equipment and all of that, that kind of stuff, and paying for liabilities. He didn't actually earn 110,000 last year. He earned about half that amount because it was a very lean year coming out of COVID like just, it was just so challenging trying to get the wheels grinding again and get the business running smoothly and obtaining new contracts because everything was just in construction. It was brutal. It was completely shut down in a lot of cases. And so we're just getting back into that momentum zone. Last year, so we only earned about half that amount. So I'm going to explain to them that, you know, this is his projected income for this year because things are really picking up again and going really well. So that's the other piece that I'll explain. And then how much do you owe to CRA and what are the reasons for the outstanding amount that we owe to cra? And it's like, that's a great question, but in my little head I'm going like, what are the reasons that you owe money to cra? Like, have you seen the tax rates lately? For one, for two, it's a business, it's very challenging to run a business. And for three, there's this little thing called Covid that kind of showed up and CRA didn't stop taxing people during that time and whatnot. So the revenue dramatically came down and there's still residual expenses and costs left over and all that kind of stuff. So that's part of the reason why they owe money to. Well, we owe. The corporation owes money to cra, but we're managing it, we're being responsible and it's fine. And then what's the total debt? So I'm going to respond, let the underwriter know what I know right now. And then I'm going to reach out to my brother in law and get the remaining information to the underwriter as soon as we can. But there's some documentation and stuff that we have to gather. So we'll do our very best to get that done ASAP. A few moments later. Okay, so if you know me, you probably know that I'm not a huge fan of long winded emails. What I love to do is I like to respond like this to my clients with videos. I like to share my screen. I like to just keep it simple because first of all, a lot of time I find that emails get misinterpreted when you're, you know, typing a note and it's like, oh, is he mad at me? Is that guy pissed off right now? And you realize that no, it's just the meaning that you added to whatever they said. True story. So I like to go voice to ear. I like to people to hear my voice and see my tonality, watch my face and know that, you know, I'm not pissed off or I'm not annoyed or I'm happy or I'm excited or whatever it is. I just want people to see that I'm just, you know, speaking to you. But here I am doing it anyway. Here's the email that I actually sent off to the underwriter. Here's the information that they were asking for before. And now I'm just coming in here to explain to them that my brother in law will provide, you know, the information as soon as possible. And my wife and I own McCarty Investments Inc. So in which owns the shares in TAR Specialties, just further expanding on that. And then she asked how is he earning? 110,000. So when I said there's no money and this is what I'm explaining to her right here. When I say there's no money in the business, it means there's no capital to sustain the premium. It doesn't mean that the business isn't generating revenue. Right. So we have, I think there's eight or 10 people on staff, like they're all being paid and all that kind of stuff. Obviously the business is generating revenue. The business has been operation for 10 plus years and Chris draws an income when he's able to like, you know, he's not getting paid necessarily always regularly because he might have to pay somebody else first. And that's just how it is running a business here in Canada. There's so many expenses and there's so many taxes and there's so many things that you need to deal with. The business owners are, are starving. They're actually the ones that get paid last. You, you get into a business with the hopes that you're going to become profitable and Create wealth one day, but there is absolutely no guarantee. And if you look at all the stats, we know kind of how that works, right. Most businesses fail. It's just how it is. And so anybody who's under the illusion that business owners are like cheating the system and getting all these tax deductions and they just rolling in dough like this, just an absolute illusion. If that were the case, then, you know, it was that easy. Then everybody would go out and run, run their own business, right? It doesn't work that way. Yes, the staff gets paid first and he generates income fairly consistently from, from the business. But you know, he, he doesn't always get to enjoy the luxury called income. So the other thing about the business that Chris runs is that it's a construction business and the margins are very, very low. It's very tight. The profit margins, you know, if a business makes a half a million or a million dollars or whatever, that doesn't mean that half that's going to be profit. Like, you're lucky if, if you got 30%, you're like crushing it. But if you get like 10% profit margin, that's pretty good. So a lot of the money just flows out the door again, which is the problem that we're here to solve. Implementing the process of becoming your own banker. The infinite banking concept and the family banking concept is that we want to get that money put to work for the family and recaptured and have those payments that are leaving the family and the business flow back to the system because we're the ones working hard for it. We're the ones taking the risk. Why should all everybody else get paid first? Why should CRA or the banks or whoever get all of that money and have that capital be working for someone else's family? That's the problem that Canadians need to solve, is that the money is leaving. Money is always flowing away. So the construction margins are very low. Chris's income is 110. He disclosed that is the minimum that he needs for his family. Right. Like he has two kids and he lives on a farm and, and that's how it is. But he's living off a lot less than that because again, like I said, last year the revenue was really tough coming out of COVID but this year we're on a really good uptick. So this is probably his projected income for this year. The business should turn a profit this year for the first time since prior to Covid. I'm just letting her know, like, exactly what's going on. And, and that's the case, you know, my brother and I and I have had some conversations about this. Those years were extremely difficult, especially for construction companies. Right. Like, I mean, you can only imagine if you're not in that line of work what that was like for people and then how much is owed to cra. So again, as I alluded to above, the COVID years were, you know, particularly challenging for the business. However, the expenses stayed fairly consistent. That's the other thing is revenues went dramatically down but they're, the expenses stayed basically consistent and it was a tough, it was tough to pay the bills and keep up with expenses at that time. We're making our payments and making progress and so Chris will give me more details on that and same with the debts. So let's see what Chris comes back with when he finally gets the information to me because I'm sure he's busy and hopefully when I send off the additional, this, this information here, the additional information that Chris is going to send me. Keep our fingers crossed and hopefully I come back with some really good news that we've got the policy actually approved.

Here we go. Oh, I'm getting excited because I've got to, you know what, I'm just going to stay positive. I'm going to stay optimistic, Canada, that we're going to get this policy approved and that we're going to be able to add our 12th policy to our family banking system and we can use the value from this policy, this new policy on my brother in law's life. Now as a family, as a, you know, our hubs, we have a lot of debt that needs to be recaptured within our system because there's a lot of payments leaving my family. So our objective is to use the family banking system to recapture all of that debt and we're going to use the family banking system to do good, you know, to maybe start up a specific policy just for charitable giving. You can absolutely do that. But we're using policy loans. Every time we take a policy loan, we're working out the details as a family right now. But every time we take a policy loan, a portion of that policy loan is going to flow to operation Feed St John as a donation so that they can continue to do the great work that they're doing. And so I'm super excited about having that opportunity to contribute to one of my best friends in life, Patrick Gordon. Shout out to Pat. You're doing amazing work for our veterans and first responders and for the hungry bellies that exist unfortunately right here, here in Canada. You know People are always talking about, you know, inclusion and fair treatment and all of that. And I say to myself, you know, I was one of those kids who was blessed and fortunate enough to have programs available where I, you know, I snuck downstairs and I went under the, under the stairwell and tried to hide and keep a low profile from other kids because I didn't want them to know that I was downstairs getting that piece of toast and a bowl of cereal, which in a lot of cases was the only meal that I had that day. And unfortunately, you know, I find that to be something that should be a priority is to making sure that kids have the tools and resources to develop themselves mentally and physically and have strong beliefs and strong mental, mental health, but also having the right nutrients that they need to live life and properly learn and just not have that feeling of less than and hunger in their bellies. It's just a, it's a heartbreaking situation. And Pat is out there feeding many, many families. So I encourage you to learn more about operation Feed St John with the links below and what the great work that they're doing. And you know, we want to expand, we want to go Operation Feed Calgary, Operation Feed Edmonton, Operation Feed Toronto, we want to expand. But Operation Feed St. John is a proof in the pudding that what Pat's doing can work and it can make a huge, huge difference. So. And now I've had a chance to get in touch with my brother in law and he got gathered a bunch of information for me. So here should be hopefully the last bit of information that I need to send to the underwriter for them to assess the rest of the risk and whatnot. And hopefully with all of this shared, they're actually going to approve the policy and we can get that thing issued and settled. But we're not out of the woods yet. We'll see how it goes. I have last year's annual corporate annual returns attached here which includes the organization chart, it includes the share structure. It shows my holding company as owning 33% of the business and Chris owning 67% of the business. And I'm just saying that I think I indicated, which I did, that McCarty Investments is technically the owner of our 33%. And the org chart attached is going to show that. And then my wife and I own our, our holding company. 50, 50 50. So, so our company owns the shares and we own that company. 50, 50. And then I said that how is he earning? 10, 110,000. And Chris did confirm with me actually that I shared previously that some additional information below. So I'm just letting her know that I've shared information below. But further to that, FYI, Chris didn't take home 110,000 last year. That's his projected income for this year. It was actually closer to about 64,000 last year, just as I anticipated. So just letting her know that that was his gross income. And then again, she asked about the CRA debt. And so I'm explaining to her further because I don't always know these specific details. Chris is the one who is dialed in on the construction company, so he.

Further to my comments below, I received a feedback from Chris and it's actually approximately 78,000 that's owed to CRA. But what's interesting about this, this is Pretty fascinating, folks. 78,000 is a lot of money. And I was shocked when I heard from Chris that we've actually paid the principal balance on all the back taxes that we owed, that the company owed. The 78,000 that's accumulated here is $78,000 worth of interest, the CRA interest. Can you imagine? Just imagine, the CRA wants to, you know, tax people so that they can have resources, apparently to fix roads and fund healthcare and do all of that. But then you need to go to work so that you can generate the revenue to pay the tax. And same with the corporate business owner. But yet if you fall behind or you don't pay something right, when you're supposed to pay it or whatever, they have the right, they have the ability to lock you out of your bank account so you can't even do business all of a sudden. Just imagine that. Now, I'm not trying to be negative Nancy here, but when they get something wrong, it seems like there's no accountability, at least in my experience. That's what it seems. It seems like. But if you get something wrong, they'll instantly pull. They'll put you on the street and they don't care. Now how are you supposed to pay your bills or go out and get more revenue to pay your taxes and to feed other families? Because that's what business owners do is they put food on other people's table. But yet if you don't follow their rules exactly to a T, there's no negotiation here. We'll just lock you out of your bank account. And it's happened. It certainly has happened in the past with, with our construction company. It just, it just has. Because sometimes there's a really lean situations, right? Because Chris told me that he goes, oh, we paid all the principal. He goes, the 78,000 that we owe is all interest. And what's interesting about this too is he said, after we pay all of the balance, because you got to pay the balance before you can dispute anything. But after we pay the balance of that interest that's accumulated on the taxes, we're going to go and actually dispute it. And I don't exactly know what the process is, but Chris is pretty dialed in on this. But because most of that interest was accumulated during COVID and we should have had some sort of forgiveness during that Covid time. So isn't that interesting? And then the debt's pretty straightforward. There's about 38,000 bucks on credit cards and about $20,000 on a line of credit. So that's the information that they wanted, along with this org chart that I attached down here. So by the grace of God or the higher power of your choice, put the vibes out there, Canada, that we get this policy approved and that we can expand our family banking system. Because ultimately, yeah, this is here to build and serve our family, but this is all in service of you because we are the example that we set for our clients. We practice what we teach. As we build and expand our program. We're able to use that experience to give our clients good guidance, give you good guidance on how to implement the family banking system. So I'm just thrilled to be able to share all this with you and that you're getting value out of it. The feedback on our videos is always amazing, and I'm really humbled by this and I'm so pumped about the opportunity to put together this video series and take a deeper dive and get vulnerable with you and share what's going on within our own family and what we're. What we're here to create. And the thing that you need to keep in mind is that think about what's possible as it relates to implementing the family banking system. Don't think, well, Vern did it this way and that's what he has to do, or that's what we have to do now, or that doesn't really work for me. Maybe it's not going to work for us. You just got to take the information that we're sharing and what we're doing and think about your own life and how does this relate to you. So maybe we're building up our system and we're recapturing family debt, but maybe you're in a different situation where you want to build up your system and simply just do private lending and lend money out to other people and you know, put some collateral on somebody's home. Or maybe you want to just, you know, take your, your policy system and, and recapture your own debts and redirect those payments back to your system, much like we're doing. Or maybe you have something else in mind. It's all about using your imagination because it is called, after all, the infinite banking concept. And Nelson called it infinite for a reason. Because you cannot put boundaries around infinite. Anything you can do in terms of money and banking, you can do by implementing the process of becoming your own banker. It just simply takes time. So the key is to success is never give up. You know, if you know that you need financing for the rest of time, you know that you're going to need to pay taxes, you're going to buy vehicles, you're going to invest in opportunities, you know that that's going to happen for the future anyway. So if you already know something's going to happen or you're going to need something, why not start planning today? Be able to build a process that will allow you to do that with ease in the future. Ready access to capital. Having control. Can you put a value on control? Control over your payments, control over the access to capital in live events? I ask clients, I go, hey, you know, do me a favor in the comments section here, when you think of the value of control, I'll wait, put something in the comments. What word comes to mind? What is the value of control? Some of the words that have been shared in the past are like freedom, opportunity, stress free, like happiness, relaxation, like that's what I think of when, you know, when I first started implementing this process, I had over 27 automatic debits every month coming out of my bank account. 27. Talk about having your debit to deposit ratio upside down. There was not as many deposits going into the account as there is as there was withdrawals. Now it's reversed. Because we lend money out to family members and because we invest money elsewhere that creates cash flow and we're generating revenue in the business, we now control the finance and function as it relates to our core core. Myself and my wife and my two kids, we have a home equity line of credit that we service that we're working on. But even though the interest rates are sky high right now, that home equity line of credit is not my top priority because there's much larger payments leaving my family then that we could recapture by lending it out to the family than the amount of money that we'd save on interest by lumping on onto our home equity line of credit. So that's our last third party debt that we are managing. But other than that, we control the whole financing function as it relates to our needs. So vehicle recaptured debt on vehicles, recaptured debt on second mortgage, credit cards, lines of credit, back taxes, things that we were dealing with, things debts and problems that were created while I was, you know, building my business and learning about insurance and then eventually discovered the process of becoming your own banker. And things didn't turn around right away when I started implementing the becoming process, becoming a real banker. But I saw the potential immediately and I saw an immediate impact. It didn't immediately transform everything. But Here we are six years later and well over $140,000 worth of debt recaptured in our system, which is payments that were leaving us like $3,000 a month worth of payments that we're recapturing in our system. So it's super powerful. Have you ever been in a situation where there was a great opportunity and you were either A able to take advantage of it right away because you had ready access to capital, or B, you weren't able to take advantage of it because you couldn't get the financing arranged quick enough? I don't have that problem. My clients and folks who are implementing the process of becoming their own banker don't have that problem. Because you can immediately access capital because you are all four characters in the financial the depositor, borrower, the banker and the bank owner. And as the depositor you get to determine how much you want to deposit. As the borrower, you're always borrowing money anyway, whether you're spending your own cash or you're actually accessing somebody else's pool of money on their terms. The banker. The banker is the third character who sets the terms and grants you access to the money. Well, if I'm the banker, I set all the terms and the bank owner, I co own the life insurance company and I own my policy system. So I'm all four characters in the financial play. The bank owner is the one who makes the most money in the equation because all the money flows back to the banking system. So when you have ready access to capital and an opportunity tracks you down, you can.

You can sit back, you can breathe, you can relax, you can take your time to assess an opportunity and determine if it's really a truly a good fit for you and your family. And worst case scenario, if the opportunity isn't a good fit, or if an opportunity doesn't track you down right away, your capital in your system is going to grow every single day and get stronger and stronger over time. Boo hoo Canada. This video series was amazing. What an amazing experience for me and my family to have these intimate conversations about what it looks like to actually expand the family banking system to our in laws and beyond. My family, my wife Crystal, my son Anias and my daughter Eliza, what I refer to as the Core four, we've been implementing this policy system in the family banking process for a number of years, since about 2016. But my in laws, you know, they have an understanding of how this process works. But the series was all about having an intimate look at what it's like early on in the family banking system, the family banking process, to have those types of intimate conversations with your in laws and what it looks like to actually double down and work together. So go to this link below. There'll be a link in the post description watchibc.com go to watchibc.com and you can start to learn how you can start to implement the program and start to build your own family banking system. We have a ton of valuable resources for you to learn from, but watch IBC is the number one step for you to take to start learning how you can start to implement the family banking system in your life. Hey Canada, you want to do something amazing? Click the link in the post description below so you can support Operation Feed. Any donation level would be greatly appreciated. Remember, use your family banking system so that your capital grows uninterrupted. Rather than using your own cash, we want you to use the life insurance company's money. If you donate an amazing level like a thousand dollars, Pat and I will send you some really nice gifts, some swag from Operation Feed and some of our most popular books from our bookstore. If you go way above and beyond and you want to donate $10,000 to this amazing cause, Pat and I will embarrass ourselves by jumping into a frozen lake and we'll post that on YouTube for you to enjoy. If you want to go way above and beyond and use your family banking System to donate $50,000 to an amazing cause, Pat and I will immortalize this. Get matching tattoos and we'll post the evidence on YouTube for you to enjoy, go ahead and click the subscribe button if you haven't done that yet. And Ascendant Financial will donate a dollar for every subscriber for that's generated from this video series for this month.