Why Getting Out of Debt 'The Normal Way' Is Keeping You Poor

When someone gets into debt, did they get into the debt overnight? No, it's never overnight. So don't expect to get out of that overnight also. But as long as we plan, we have accountability, we have coaching in place. You will get out of debt using this process. But here's the thing, you just won't get out of debt. You'll also end up building a positive net worth while your debt is eliminated. So if you want to build positive net worth, more money that you can spend in the future for retirement while eliminating debt, you're going to love the process of becoming a bank.

How I would borrow against my policy and write off the interest charges on my personal taxes.

The process of becoming your own banker really is capturing that cash flow, that financial energy that's leaving to you. And when you do borrow against your cash value using the insurance company's money, you are charged an interest rate of borrowing that capital. And it varies from insurance company to company. And then when you do look to basically write off the interest charges, some people do, some people don't. It's really a preferable choice, and it depends on what you want to do with that cash.

When it comes to the concept of becoming your own banker and taking the control of the banking function, there's definitely a separate component to it as it relates to accessing the funds from the insurance company. And technically speaking, how interest is allowed to be deductible is based on interest paid, and interest paid is going to be recorded by the insurance company. But how, what the money that was used to incur the interest, this is the part that needs to be very clearly separated. And there's procedures and processes that have to be followed in the Income Tax Act. And if it's used to generate income for business purposes, then it can be used. So there's a philosophy. If you want to use it for investment purposes and you want to deduct it for interest, by all means, you can do it that way. But there's a particular process that you need to follow to do that on a separate conversation. There are some times you need to think about is it worthwhile to do it. And that's a different business decision. And that's also up to individual circumstances that I would really encourage and let our clients get the access to. When they work with us, we coach them to see if it's worthwhile for them to do. Because sometimes capturing that information, tracking it, dealing with the administration of it, working with the CRA, may or may not be in your favor. So just because you can deduct the interest if it's applied properly. Using the processes for the Income Tax act doesn't mean you should. That's just a very high level process related to it. There are particular forms that needs to be filled out when you're using it and doing it. And you have to make sure you fill it out correctly. If you fill it out incorrectly, that's something that you just have to be very mindful of.

How do I go about writing off the interest on the policy loan I've taken from my dividend paying whole life policy? It's going to come down to the purpose of the loan. You know, what are you doing with the loan?

Right.

So is the loan. And again, you know, we always encourage people to advise, to seek the advice of a licensed tax professional. But what's the purpose of the loan?

Right.

Is it to go buy a snowblower? Is it a personal mortgage or is it a mortgage on investment property? Because those can be two very different things. Right. And so this is where we're hoping to add some value in terms of, you know, for your specialized circumstances, it's great to book a call with one of us advisors and we can really sort of pull back the financial curtain just to see where you're at financially and what your objectives are and we can give you that sort of specialized advice.

The whole sense behind becoming a banker is to do what?

Well, I mean that's to take control of the banking function in your life.

Yeah. So Nelson talks about creating a financial tailwind when you're working in an environment of recapturing interest. If you recapture all the interest on anything that you're going to finance using the system of policies, what did you technically lose?

A big nothing.

So you can deduct the interest if you wanted to and let everybody know in terms of CRA that you have a system like this. That's why the whole essence is to keep things private. So that's the decision that most of us have made. Yes. At some point in future we may look at it differently and maybe tax deduction at that time is very significant and we want to take advantage of it. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it. I'm just saying that if you don't do it, you didn't lose anything because you already are winning. The moment you take a policy loan, you already are winning.

The purpose of becoming your own banker is not for tax deductions.

Well, Nelson says this on his book.

Right.

Page three. And he says becoming a banker is Not a tax qualified idea of any sort. The income tax law as we know it today has been around since 1913. Life insurance has been around for over 200 years and it's not a creature of tax code. Well, there's more to what Nelson is saying there. And we had an opportunity to, you know, really get trained by Nelson directly from him. And again, everything begins with how you think. If you want to see it as an expense, you want to get a deduction. Yes. There's ways, there's processes in place. You cannot deduct the interest if you haven't paid the interested insurance company. And there's certain forms that are required with the insurer. In this case, the insurance company has to complete so that he can take those forms and deduct it. But really think about your thinking. If you didn't lose much, why do those sleep over deduction?

I don't have a lot of money. Can I still start?

Yes, absolutely. And this is one of the reason why I was attracted so much to this great system. It's because we can implement it at our own level.

You know, it's interesting because sometimes we don't even realize the money that's flowing through our hands as opposed to the funny money we're hanging on to. So it's really interesting. You know, our teammate here, Sarbo, he did a great video and it's entitled becoming your own banker is not just for the rich. And so I would encourage anybody who's not familiar with our YouTube channel, it's called Banker's Vault. It's got over 900 videos to go and check out that video again. IBC is not for the rich. Sometimes when you think, okay, I don't have a lot of money, you're alive to the fact that there's, there's some money that's passing through your hands that, that could actually be the fuel for your future system of becoming your own banker.

And beautifully said. And the thing is, we all need our money to reside somewhere. That's, that's just a fact. It doesn't matter where you live. Your money need to reside somewhere. So why not allocate it into the system where you can take control of your finances no matter what comes in. You know, the, the idea is to stop the compounding effect, to reap the.

Benefits when you book a call with your coach. There's a process that we try to go with each of our clients and that's really education first. Really get you understanding the process to become your own banker. And then from there we're going to analyze a holistic picture of your financial picture to get a better sense of where the cash flow is leaving you permanently, forever. And then from there, demonstrate how we can recapture that cash and redirect it back into your system. Now that's part of the process that we do. And when we do find, you know, a situation where we can raise capital based on the money that's permanently leaving you, then we can decide how you can get started. And if it's to get started now or prepare to get started in the future. It's all important about understanding. It's a process that we want to go through our clients by educating them, getting them understanding the system and, and then from there, give them a hard, close look at their financial picture to see what we can do for them. So, you know, booking that call with your coach is so important because each of our coaches here really emphasize the education part and the process of understanding your situation to find out how we can solve your financial problems.

Everyone wants your money and you will be lost in your day to days. And sometimes that extra insight from the coaches that we have will really help share some perspective and help with this process. For you to go through that honest introspection, you just got to have the commitment and mentality to want to do it. And you have nothing to lose when you schedule a call with our coaches to approach it from that vantage point.

The reason why you don't have enough is not because you're not making enough, is because you're not keeping enough. That's a problem. So when you implement becoming a banker, you will get to keep enough. And the reason why you want to start becoming a banker, it doesn't matter where you start. You can start small, you can start big. The real reason why you want to start becoming a banker is so that you can keep more of your money going forward. You don't need more to start becoming a banker. You do need to start becoming a banker so that you can keep more of the money going forward in your family. Now here's some of the sources of premium which you haven't even considered. Think about this. Just imagine this. Do you have a property tax bill that you have to pay every quarter or every year? Do you have car insurance and home insurance that you pay every month or every year? Are you setting aside money for charity donations? Charitable donations today, doesn't matter what amount is. If you are, that could be a source of premium. Are you setting aside monies for kids education? That could be a source of premium. Are you setting aside money for emergencies and it's sitting in the bank. That could be a source of premium. So that's why it is such an important thing to book. Your becoming a banker call is because you will have clarity on what monies you can move into policies. And the reason why you want to move money to policy is because you can use the system to keep more of your money in the family. You know, if someone doesn't take action on really becoming a banker. So let's just say you didn't flow $1 through your system of policies today. And you are age 40 today, 15 years from today, you're going to have $3.50 less in your net worth. That's the cost of not becoming your banker. And again, I say this because I didn't start with high premiums. I started with very basic policy. My first policy was 2,400 a year. My second policy was 500,000 thousand a year. I started because I understood what I had to solve. And most clients get started where they want to get started, but the important thing is having a plan in place to keep more of your money in the family. That's the reason why we want to get started. Everything begins with how we think we don't need a lot of money to get started. We do need to get started so that we can keep a lot of our money in the family going forward. And how you can have all these sources that you're already spending money on the phone through a system of policies and work for you and still be able to pay for property taxes and insurance and all this stuff. Well, that's the stuff that we teach. And guess how much you'll be charged for teaching?

Darrow, what if I started a policy based on a salary at the time, but my salary has dropped significantly since?

One of the great things about how we design policies is that there's a good measure of flexibility built into them as well. Sometimes people get required Premium vs Optional Premium A little bit confused. And just because there's a certain capacity that our system can handle doesn't mean that we're obligated to that level. So we do take that into consideration when we are coming up with solutions for people. Right? So if someone's salary has decreased, they may have a decreased capacity to capitalize. But if they can still capitalize their system when cash flows are better, there's more room to capitalize further. And there are other details and other other options that are there if people run into dire straits more than people realize at First. But this is why you gotta stay connected with your coaches, guys, right? Just because you got your system of policy set up, connect with us regularly. That's why we're here.

Is this a system, a process where somebody who maybe has seasonal income that it could still work for them?

This has a lot to do with stewardship of capital, right? So how responsible of a steward are we? And what if there's not a lot of capital? Is that not the same thing as someone who has seasonal work? Will there not be a season of scarcity and a season of plenty? How do we manage in the season of plenty to make do or account for the season of scarcity? Is this not all about stewardship? Is this not about becoming your own baker? There's a common thread here, right? And it's this kind of accountability and awareness that the coaching is there for as well. We're going to challenge people to do exactly what was right, to have some serious introspection into how we decide to use our capital both today and in the future. What are our goals? If these things are clear in our minds? It's more difficult to overspend when you shouldn't. When a goal is meaningful to you, if you've already decided what's most meaningful for you, we have a tendency of naturally making provisions for it and having a little bit of foresight. And after all, Neil, what is Nelson Nash's first golden rule to rethink your thinking?

That's what you want to be doing here, how you approach things and how you think about your finances. How soon can I get access to capital? With the infinite banking concept, it's all.

Based on, you know, if. If you're starting a policy, and let's say, for instance, you put that policy premium you paid and settled today, well, it's going to take a little bit of time for the money to shift from, you know, your bank account to paying the premiums, and then the insurance company applying your premiums to put it to work, I would say within about seven to 10 business days is what you're looking at to quickly access it. And then afterwards, your bank is going to ask you two questions. How much do you want and how do you want it? And those two questions, you just go in there, you answer, you put in how much you want and depending on how you want it. So if you want direct deposit, it's typically three to five business days. And then if you want a check in the mail, it's five to seven business days. And so that money comes to you, that Quickly. And so you're able to access your money at any given time if you have cash values that you can borrow against using the insurance company's money.

Ron, do I need to submit my T4 for the last three years, my income statement? Do I have to fill out like an asset balance sheet to do this?

Whose bank is it, Neil?

Well, it's our bank. It's my bank.

Right. So if you want to submit all that paperwork to you to qualify to borrow the insurance company's money against your cash values, absolutely. You can put all that information down. But that's what's great about becoming your own banker, is that you are the owner of your own bank. So you dictate how much you want to take out, how much you want to pay back, what the repayment schedule is going to look like. You dictate all the rules in terms of being the bank owner. And like Nelson said, he who has the goals makes the rules.

So most clients who take policy loans right away, the policy gets started, what applications, what are the things that they're using that money for? Because someone needs money immediately, there's a reason why they need it, right? So that's, that's what we're solving for, is the need for money immediately to do very specific things. So can you list or share some of the things that they'd be used for?

When we sit down with our clients, we paint a picture of what their financial picture looks like and what kind of problems that we're trying to solve by becoming their own banker. And from that point of view, we move forward to say, okay, you're probably going to take a loan to either recapture debt or to finance an investment, maybe an expensive item that you are annually paying. So property tax is a big one. Maybe there is home and auto insurance that you want to pay for using a policy loan, or maybe there's a circumstance where you're putting it to work in another asset vehicle, whether it's TFSAs or equities or even crypto. So there's a number of reasons why you would be taking out your money. Having a plan to take out that money for the purpose of becoming your own banker and then eventually repaying it back is why we're here. It's why all your coaches will sit with you as you move forward. Unlock the infinite banking concept by becoming your own banker. So you decide what kind of reasons you want to access those loans to finance the things that you want and taking more control of your money instead of permanently leaving forever.

So the Solution is a tailor to very specific goals. Right. So if you need money, yes, that is possible. We can make it happen. And now insurance companies also allow us to backdate the policy by almost one year. So imagine getting started with compounding or uninterrupted compounding. November 7th of 2023 in November 7th of 2024.

Yeah.

Like what? How do you put a value on that? Right. Because we get so many questions. I wish I had done this two years ago, three years ago. We can't take you back two, three, four years, but we can take you back one year and get you started with compounding. And then you can build a pool of capital immediately and then start to use a system right away.

If I took out a large loan, should I pay it back first or pay to fill up the EDO first?

With the way that these policies are designed and structured, there is your base, and then the extra that you can add in there, that's your Edo, or it's called paid up additions. In Nelson's book, you have to pay the base to make sure that policy stays in good standing in force. And the EDO is the extra. And that question is. It's all based on what you're trying to accomplish with taking out the loan. And that's something that we'd have to take a look at with a coach to help you walk you through how you would want to do this. Because we have to think of it like a banker.

Right?

You always have to have a plan to pay whatever loan you have out. And then the EDO is what builds the growth in your policy. And so it all depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Paying back a loan versus paying, say, the Edo portion of a policy. Are there any sort of time limits attached to either one of those?

Well, the policy loan there is. It's an unstructured loan.

Right.

So there's. There's no time limits, there's no minimum. There's nothing like that. And then the Edo, there's a time limit in that Edo is you have to pay within that year.

How does that, perhaps that consideration weigh on the question here?

I guess it. It depends on what the person's doing. Maybe it would be a good strategy to pay off to pay that Edo so they can build their policy knowing that they have cash flow coming in to be able to pay off that loan.

Is paying back loan creating more financial energy for your system going forward?

Yes, it is.

Yeah. And is paying to Edo more financial energy for your system going forward?

Yes, it is.

So they're Both good.

That's right.

Now, one thing I would say is when it comes to building a system for the first five, the first five years are very, very important in building the system. So the first five years you like, I got just capital to just capitalize my premium and I have to take loans to do the things I want to do. I may not pay back loans for five years, six years. That's okay because you can always catch up on loans. You got a lot of time to pay back your loans, but when you miss compounding, you cannot go back and recompound it. Premium is compounding Edo, so called pay depredation rider or so called deposit option. That's compounding. Don't compromise on compounding, especially in the first five years of your policy. But the beautiful thing is you're not going to make a wrong decision whether you pay back a loan or whether you pay back an Edo. Like they're both going to add financial energy. It's just going to be different kind of financial energy for you going forward to build behaviors that are going to create financial energy for you, your family, your business going forward. That's what we're looking to get accomplished here. Using the process of becoming a banker.

What's the best way to start becoming my own banker?

This is the best way. The next best thing to go along with this is the ascendant team. With those two tools alone, you're well on your way. But Nelson clearly tells us you must have a burning desire to take control of your financial situation. Frankly, that is the most important thing. If that burning desire is there, you're going to do what's necessary. You're going to learn what you need to learn, you're going to be humble enough to get the assistance that you need to. And no one is above the need for coaching. Even the greatest athletes in the world have coaches. Not because those coaches aren't always better than them at that particular sport, for example, but there's a reason they need the coaching, right? So being coachable, being ready to learn, being ready to rethink our thinking and having that burning desire, these will lead to you starting to become your own banker. Process is one of the questions that we sometimes do ask on some of our initial calls with someone when we're trying to understand where they're coming from is sometimes we ask them, hey, are you in the habit of spending less than you earn? If someone does says yes to that question, they've already demonstrated a certain level of discipline and a certain level of means or readiness That I would list as yet another quality that brings you one step closer to actually implementing the becoming your own banker process. And if you're not there yet, then Nelson's already pointed us in the right way. We have some introspection to do. We have to ask ourselves some questions about what are we choosing to prioritize with our, with our spending habits. I believe in these ideas are the keys for us to get a good start on byob.

So the question is not just what's the best way, what's the easiest way to become your own banker? And the easiest way to become your banker is to do it how Nelson teaches, because you can just tap into a system that exists and start practicing banking principles immediately. The other way to become your own banker is where you get a chartered license, AKA what TD bank did, what RBC did, what BMO did. And by the way, those chartered license are not just handed like hotcakes. You have to vote for it. It takes years to get it. And once you get the chartered license, then you have to get a fancy building. You have to put a lot of money in, you have to have a lot of money on deposits to actually get into the banking business. It's in millions. And then you have to ensure that people actually trust you to deposit money to your bank and hand off some iPads or Google tablets or whatever it is in exchange for deposits. And then at that time, you can start practicing becoming your own banker. And that's not easy, lucrative and fun. It's. It's hard, it's lame, and it's taxing. If you want to become your own banker, where it's easy, lucrative and fun and you can do it today, then Nelson has the best way to do it. And that's why the tool participating Bullet policy is such a beautiful tool because it enables you to implement the principles and immediately, hence we use the tool. So it's not about just becoming a banker, it's about becoming your banker quickly and easily and getting there faster.

Why should I become my own banker? What are the advantages?

It's taking control of the financing of the things in your life. And as human beings, we need stuff in our lives. We need cars, we need cell phone, we need TVs. And the big banks out there, they know about that. So that's why without thinking, we dump our money to them and they put it to work and they make a lot of profit with it. So we are just coaching regular people like you and I, the neighbors. Or you can duplicate that and reap the Reward for yourself.

When you ask yourself what the advantage of owning your own bank system, you control more of your money, that money is permanently not leaving you forever because you flow the direction of your cash through your own banking system to finance the things in your life. The same way that traditional banks are doing and collecting your weekly deposits from your salary, your income or your savings, they're putting your money to work. And Nelson identifies that problem that you're doing all the work, yet everyone else is getting your money. So why not put your money to work in your own banking system so that you can take control of the cash that comes to you and redirect it to finance the things in your life and control it for future generations.

When I take a policy loan, does the interest paid add into my policy? The short answer is a yes and no. Right. So you it's not directly paid into your policy, but when you become your own banker, as opposed to getting that bank charter, we do something called cogeneration. Right. Which means we team up with the life insurance company and they help facilitate our banking system. So just like any business, the life insurance company is dedicated to earning a profit.

Right.

And if you think about it and you look at Nelson's book at page 15, he talked about the grocery store example. This is much like owning a grocery store. If you own your own grocery store, would you go down the street and shop at the Safeway? Well, the answer is no. You want to shop at home for the financing you need, which is in your own bank. And while the life insurance company is getting the interest you're paying on the loan, who owns the life insurance company? If the company that you own is getting your interest payments as opposed to some commercial bank that you don't own and the company you own is paying you a dividend that includes the interest that you were paying on that loan. Is there any disadvantages to borrowing from your own company?

And then is there any disadvantage in paying the interest? And then when you need money, you can go back and re access everything that you repaid, including the interest.

Right.

And it's not some on demand loan that some third party banker can decide, oh, we're freezing it up because there's a financial freeze or there's a credit freeze in the global markets.

Yeah.

So there's three environments that you can work in when it comes to money and finances or financially speaking. One environment is the environment where you pay interest. When you borrow money from someone and you pay interest, that's called paying interest environment. The other environment is when you pay cash for things that you need. And then when you pay cash for things you need, you're losing interest because once that cash is used is gone forever when you pay interest, when you low interest, the money is gone. You cannot reuse any of that money. The third environment is called the recapture interest. And when you, when you work in an environment of recapture interest, you can still do everything that you want to do financially, but you're able to re access everything that you repay, including the interest, because you never interrupt the growth of your capital. And interest paid creates additional profit for the business that you co own, which means more dividends. So again, the process of becoming a banker has nothing to do with interest rate. It's all about when you pay back the loan, how much of the loan you can re access. And if you're able to access everything back, interest doesn't matter. And then who is that interest put to work for? If it's being put to work for, you're going to benefit from it. And the last thing is who's in control to repay the loan back. And if you're missing any of these three elements, you know you don't have a financial tailwind. That's the fact as time goes on, interest rates go up, interest rates go down, market goes up, market goes down. But one thing continues no matter what, and that's function called banking. And someone has to control it for you. And who better than you to control it? Right now that responsibility has been abdicated to someone else and that's the problem. And if you want to fix it, the solution exists. You just have to spend time educating yourself on it so that you can have clarity on it, as Neil mentioned, so that you can make a decision with confidence.

Should I close out all my government accounts like RSPs or RESPs?

That depends. And I, I can tell you my personal example. I was getting matched by an employer back in the day and when I learned this process I said, okay, they're going to match me and then they're going to wait and tax on my harvest once my account grows. So I said to myself, once I learned this process, I said I would rather get taxed on the seed and then put it in place that can grow tax exempt for the rest of my life and the next generation. And then so for some people that have RSPs and RTSPs, that's a good discussion to give us a call and talk with your coach because we'd have to look into that situation to find the optimal way to melt it down as A team.

We see about 200 to 300 people per year per advisor. And I met with many folks this year who are at that cusp of retirement or in retirement mode. And then one thing that they're sharing with me is, hey, we were thinking, so we got monies in the RRSPs and we were thinking we can maintain a lifestyle based on 40k because we don't have any debt and we don't owe any money to anybody and, and we can get it done by 40k. We actually need more than 40k to actually maintain a lifestyle now because what happened to the cost of goods and services? Everything became expensive. So now Instead of using 40K, they need to take 60 or $65,000 out to make the world go around. And when you take more money out of RSPs, what do you have to pay more of? Taxes? When I'm having conversation with someone who's in 60s or 70s, the question is, hey, what can I do to pay less taxes and money coming out of RRSPs? That's a problem that they have. But on the contrast, when I meet with someone who's 25, 30 and they're putting money into RRSPs, and my question is, why are you putting money into RSPs? They're like, because this is how I'm going to save taxes. I said, we'll have a different kind of conversation 30 years from today. I can assure you that. Don't create a problem that doesn't exist right now. That is what we say when you put money into RSPs, that's the seed. But that seed is going to grow into a harvest in 20, 10, 15, 20, 30 years and you're going to be paying taxes on the harvest in the later years.

Years.

It's cheaper to pay tax on the seed, but it's expensive to pay tax on that harvest. And don't forget about who's going to control all the use of the money, rationally speaking, logically speaking, for investment to make sense, think about all the interest you're paying to the financial institution that you have borrowed money from. And I'm not talking about the rate of interest, I'm saying think about the dollar amount of interest that you're paying to any bank. But if your investments are not earning the same dollar amount in interest per year or per month, then you're not making any financial progress. And the fact is, you're paying more in interest to someone than the interest that you're earning in investments. You focus on the wrong rate.

The other thing about these Systems, who's controlling this? Right? So if you think about the rsp, the tax door, it's got to come out when, when you hit 71, you got to start making these withdrawals. That's one of the rules that you don't control. I was helping out a client of the other day and this individual, very big believer in the rsp. I did a little bit of research and this individual, really hardworking individual and his situation was that even in retirement he would find himself in the highest marginal tax bracket. Many people's retirement planning, it's a long term plan over the decades, right. And interestingly enough, here in the province of Ontario, the top marginal tax rate just, just in the last 12 years, it's gone from just under 48% to over 53.5%.

Right.

So it's more than 5 actual percentage. But when you think of the, the share of taxes, it's actually an increase in the share of taxes by over 11%. That's so that's almost 1% a year. It's climbing this top tax bracket. Right. Do you have control of that? Who's in control of that? So it's just one more thing to think about. When we abdicate the banking function in our lives, who's got the control? And that stuff doesn't really necessarily show up on a spreadsheet.

Well, there's a really awesome analogy that Nelson says in his book, said, hey, Neil lets you and me get into business together. Are you okay if we do some business together?

Yeah.

Right. And here's the terms to the business and let me know if you want to go into business with me. So first term is, Neil, we're going to own the business together. I want you to put up all the capital for this business.

Okay.

And I want you to take all the risk on this business. I want you to be effort, energy, everything for this business. You like it so far? And then when we read yourself the business as a business partner at that time, I'm going to step in and dictate how much of the business I own. So would you go into business with me now?

Not willingly.

Not willingly.

Sounds like RSP or the 401k plan. So think about this. Who puts all the money into these plans? You do. Who takes all the risk to grow the money into in these plans?

You do.

Who pays all the management fees to grow this plan?

You do.

But the moment you're ready to take the money out, who's the first one who steps in and says this is how much of this business. I own the CRA and the irs. So you're in the business, but you said you don't want to get into this business with me based on these terms. But if you have RSPs and 401ks, you are already in this business. I fired CRA as my selling partner a long time ago when I killed all my RSPs.

The question is, what is Ascendant Financial and why should I start to become my own banker? With Ascendant, we'll arguably say we're the.

Gold standard when it comes to becoming your own banker. Implementing the concept. We actually.

Use and practice the concept. We're not life insurance agents. Masquerading becoming your own banker. We are actually believers that you should own and control the banking function as it relates to your needs. Money needs to be in your hands, your family's hands, and not in the hands of the government and not in the hands of the banks. You want to practice this process with those who are doing it and work with the gold standard.

And what are the some of the things that we can offer our clientele? We're obviously all practicing it, but what are some of the other things that perhaps unique here at Ascendant?

You're going to get top notch coaching and you can make sure you can keep your wallet and your checkbook at home because we don't charge you for that coaching that comes with it. And all of us come with unique individual vantage points and perspectives that can really add value to your financial journey. And aside from that, we have tons of videos, content in the form of podcasts, webinars just like Q&As. And we also have unique client access only portal that you can access to. And we just had a national live event where we all were bringing people together on this concept. Becoming your own banker, you won't find yourself with a community, which is what you need, because you are against the forces of everyone else who is comfortably paying the banks, their interest, their profits, and giving their money away to someone else and keeping less of it. You need to be surrounding yourself with a community and that's what Ascended Financial has. So that everyone else will think you're wacko except all of us.

How can I use IBC to pay off my mortgage?

As Nelson tells us, people are often tempted to go for the mortgage right away, but he recommends that we work our way up to it. However, the principle is no different. One way to think of it is essentially we want to purchase that debt back from the bank to our own banking system and then continue to do exactly what we would have done for the previous owner of that debt, but within our own system. So, for instance, when we look at what we know of interest rates that are used for mortgages, but we apply it to the breakdown of any payment, we don't see much of a similarity between the 5% and the 50% of the payment that is actually going towards interest. And therein lies one of the clues. So if we're able to first capitalize our own system, we then have P's that we can put to use and we can start chunking, for example, payments, portions of our mortgage. Each one of those payments would in fact, eliminate a great deal of interest that was scheduled to go to the commercial bank. And then once we've been able to absorb or accelerate our external obligation to the commercial bank, our job is not done because we have to recognize the value of the capital of our own banking system. So since they provide us with an amortization schedule, we have our model to follow. We could simply continue to apply those same payments back to our own banking system so that we would make what the banks have made. Will this happen overnight? Absolutely not. I believe Nelson said it took him 13 years to kick the banks out of his life. That's because once he ever absorbed those larger ticket items into his system, he then recognized wisely, so that he then had to go ahead and pay it back as well. Right. One could say that once you've got into your own system, you've kicked the snakes and dragons out, but you still have to be an honest banker. So that's the other side of the coin.

And Sebastian, is this something that you can do on day one to pay off your mortgage?

For most people, no. Banking is a process. Becoming your own banker is a process. We took us a long time to get accustomed and trained on behaving financially the way that most of us do. And therefore, it's going to take a little bit of time to reabsorb the banking function at the you and me level as Nelson attended it for us. All right? And as we know that work. So it's a gradual process. Any portion of the banking function we control now improves our situation compared to the time when we controlled none of it. If we increase our control over the banking function, our situation is improved to the time when we only controlled a small portion of the banking function. So as our ability to do so increases, we're able to tackle greater and greater problems or obligations. Let's say when it comes to control of the banking function Mortgages represent probably one of the biggest sources of control. Because if we look at someone's budget, who has a mortgage, what constitutes a gigantic pizza slice, out of our budget, out of our expenses. Right. That is certainly an elephant worth aspiring to take control of.

When someone gets into debt, did they get into the debt overnight?

No, not usually.

It's never overnight. So don't expect to get out of that overnight also. But as long as we have a plan, we get accountability, we have coaching in place. You will get out of debt using this process. But here's the thing, you just won't get out of debt. You'll also end up building a positive net worth while your debt is eliminated. So you'll be much ahead financially. So if you have a dollar of debt and a dollar of cash, the cash is asset, debt is liability. You take your dollar of asset, pay down the dollar of debt, your debt goes down, your net worth is zero, but you have dollar of cash value. You got a dollar of debt, you take a policy loan, your debt goes down, but your cash value goes up. Then you take another loan, your debt goes down and then the cash value goes up. So if you want to build positive net worth, more money that you can spend in the future for retirement while eliminating debt, you're going to love the process of becoming a banker, because that's what it does.

Can you please talk about your journey on how you became an infinite banking practitioner and coach?

At Ascendant, I was a policyholder and I was coached on infinite banking by Ascendant. And as a result of my years of being coached by them, understanding their processes, getting that mentality of becoming my own banker, it really sort of gave me a lot of drive to do the same for others. And being in the education for over 20 years, my love of education, along with finances, among, with other things, it was just a perfect melting pot of, you know, passions that I have. And so before I became a coach, I became a policyholder and I owned like 3 or 4 before I even stepped into this role. Because I firmly believe that what I was doing with coaches like Sarblo and Roman and the whole team before I got here, it allowed me to see how much control I have over my finances by becoming my own banker. And so that pushed me to become, you know, someone in that same position. And we all have similar stories of how we were policyholders and were educated, coached with and coached upon by guys like Sarblo and Jason and so forth, that we were just enthralled by the environment and when you look at the core of becoming your own banker, well, that's Nelson Nash. He's the one who instilled in our senior coaches. He instilled those principles. At Ascendant's mission statement, it's really to stay true to those same principles. And I think that that's what you get with Ascendant Financial. And I firmly believe because of that, it attracted me more to be part of a gold standard team. So my journey was simply because I got hooked on by the messaging, coached by the coaches here, and I was able to use my policies to better my situation in the hopes that I can do the same for others.

Why is it that you picked Ascendant to come work here?

I picked Ascendant because the integrity, the level of support that I got just before even I got a policy, the way that I got answers to my questions, and then also the way that I was like nurtured into learning more about this system. I could feel that it wasn't just another advisor trying to sell me a product, but truly wanting me to take control of my finances by learning for myself. You know the saying where that goes as, you know, give a man a fish, you feed him a day, but teach him how to fish, and then he will be able to feed his whole family for the rest of his life. So that's the main take that I can share right now. It's the passion and also the humanity at Ascendant. You know, the fraternity between the teammates also. That's really something amazing.

I'm 77 years old. There's no way I can start becoming my own banker, is there?

Absolutely. Where there's a will, there's a way. Where there's a desire, there's a way. Right, but with life insurance, 85 is the last year. But even if you're 85, there's still strategies where we can help do that. Because the way these policies work is that there's an owner and there's a life insured. There's grandparents that do that for their grandkids. So they have access, they can still practice banking and using their grandkids as the life insured. That's quick and short answer.

So, realistically, how old do you have to be to actually not become your own banker? What's the age limit? Is there an age limit?

No.

0.

Does bank have an age limit with how long you can work with them? Bank has told you. Bank has actually shown you there's a proof with the banking system, there's no age limit to become your own banker. Because if you're not the banker, the bank is going to become the banker for you for the rest of your time, or planet, or whatever your time you have. Age is just in the blind. The real reason why someone doesn't become your banker is because of the intention and not having clarity on what this can do. That's the limitation. Not putting time in to educate yourself is the limitation. Age isn't.