Wealth Building with Your Most Important Asset, YOU! - Sarry Ibrahim

Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here. Welcome again to another episode of Contractor Radio. Contractor Radio is all about giving you guys this edge out there in the field and in your business and in your life. We work on strategy, tactics. We bring in special guests that help you with your business and your life and even your wealth. And so we have a really awesome guest today. This guy was introduced to me. We had a fairly long conversation about what it is that he does. And it was super interesting. I was sitting there going, man, our industry really needs to understand this and what this is all about. And so we usually will start off with a bit of a tip of the week. And this tip this week is going to be pretty straightforward. As contractors, we tend to focus on the present, the here and the now. How many sales do I got to make this week? How many jobs do I have to have built? What crews do I need to assign? And we get really caught up in that aspect of what it is that we do. And we don't always think about the financial end to what we're doing. Why are we doing all this stuff in the first place? And most of us as contractors are after this financial freedom. That's a big part of impersonal freedom. We talk about it all the time, that we help contractors get control of their business so that they can grow their business so they can get what they're really after, which is that financial freedom and that personal freedom to chase the dreams that they really want to chase. And so in this particular day, my tip to you is to think about the things that you may not normally think about. We're going to talk about one of them today with our guest. But I want you to think about tax planning and how that works. I want you to think about life insurance and taking care of your families. I want you to think about investing and how that goes so that you can get to that place that you want to be a little bit quicker. Most of us, this business is a vehicle to achieve something else. And so that's why we're going to be doing our episode today with Sarah Ibrahim. He is with fin. I want to make sure I get this right because I want to make sure that we get the name right because I want you guys to go and find us. He is with Fin Asset Protection or Financial Asset Protection. The website is finasset protection.com. he is the founder of this. And I've talked to lots of people about what he does does. I haven't met anybody that knows it like he knows it. So I Want to bring on today. Sarah Abraham. Welcome to the show, man.

Hey, Jim, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, no problem at all. This is one of those ones where I'm going. This is not something you normally hear talked about in the contracting space. You hear us talk about, you know, proper application and how to sell better and be more profitable and all that other good stuff. But. But today we're going to talk about how we build wealth and how we build wealth using our greatest asset, which is us, which I think is really kind of a cool concept. So, Sari, before we get there, though, tell us a little bit about your background and why this whole finance thing and this life insurance thing that we're going to talk about today, what that kind of means. And don't let me lose anybody, because I said the words life insurance, you're going to want to pay attention because this is really unique and really different about how you can build wealth with that. So, Sarah, tell us a little bit about background, how you got here.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. So I'm from Chicago, Illinois. I'm a financial planner. And I started off in this industry about five years ago when I was in grad school doing my master's degree. I started working at Allstate Insurance. I was helping a lot of business owners with, like, protecting their assets. And then I kind of took a twist in my career. I got into the healthcare world, and I was working with companies like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Humana, Cigna, healthspring, and I was a Medicare consultant, working with people who were like 64, 65 years old, retiring. They were merging off of their employer plans onto their own individual Medicare plan. Medicare plan. So I did that for a couple years. And then during that time I started to build a relationship with these clients. And one of my clients asked me if I could help him with life insurance, and he said something about it having cash value and the cash value building up over time and eventually paying for itself. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I. But I told. I told him I would do research for him. I get back to him. So I went to Amazon and started searching for books about life insurance. And one book that came up is called the bank on Yourself Revolution by Pamela Yellen. And this book pretty much talks about using something called dividend paying whole life insurance for the living benefits while you're alive and to become your own source of financing. So now this kind of completely, like, threw a curveball and I fell in love with this concept it's, it's something that's based off of the infinite banking concept. Both are the same. The infinite banking concept and the bank on. The bank on yourself concept. It's just two different trademarks. And the book also had, at the end of it, I had a section that said if you wanted to join our group as an advisor. And I did that. And I went through an eight week rigorous trading program, became a Bank on yourself professional. And then I founded Financial Asset Protection. I still do Medicare plans, but now I've merged more into. My primary niche is using the infinite banking concept for, specifically for business owners and real estate investors. And with this, and to kind of take it a step back, there's, there's pretty much three types of the life insurance. There's term life insurance, whole life and universal. We're talking about whole life insurance here because of the cash value. And the intention of this is not necessarily to get life insurance. It's to become your own source of financing. So I'll kind of pull over from here and, and see what questions you have.

For me, that is fantastic. So I told you, like whenever you talk, there's going to be questions that come up. And so first question is, you said whole life insurance, right. And this is something a lot of people don't know about me. At one point in my career way a long time ago, I sold whole life insurance and there was the old school, like boiler room type insurance type deal. And I quickly felt that I was being a little bit scammy and that kind of stuff. And, and so do you deal with that? Like, do you deal with kind of that historical viewpoint or perception of what whole life insurance is?

Yeah, absolutely, Jim. And that's the reason why I'm doing podcasting now is because I kind of want to go out there and elaborate on this. You know, so first of all, the word insurance, not just life insurance, but the word insurance does have a negative context to it because people think of something either that they don't want to do, but they have to, or they have, they've had a bad experience with like auto insurance or homeowners. And there's something that probably happened in their past that just makes them hate the word insurance. And that's how it is for a lot of people. You know, I think there's a study, like 20% of people trust their insurance agents. You know, there's a very bad taste when it comes to the word insurance. But again, this is why I'm on podcasting. I'm doing podcasting now to kind of spread the message about what this is. Exactly. So it is whole life insurance. And for a lot of people, when they think of whole life insurance, they think of Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman and pretty much because they talk a lot of about whole life insurance in the sense that it's a terrible investment. And they're right, it could be a terrible investment if it's structured the wrong way. And usually they're referring to whole life insurance that's like 100 years old. It's like a very old fashioned form of whole life insurance where you pay really high premiums and you get really tiny cash value. Yeah, in that sense that would be a terrible investment. But we're talking about more of a modern form of whole life insurance. Something that's been around for about 20 years now. It was invented by Nelson Nash and he created the infinite banking concept. He also wrote the book Becoming youg Own Banker and pretty much talking about how people nowadays are spending about one third of their money on servicing debt. So about 33% of every dollar somebody earns on average is going to service debt. Why can't we be on the other side of that where we're servicing our own debt that we're borrowing from ourselves and earning compound interest to ourselves? And that's pretty much the second trademark, which is the bank on yourself concept, which is banking on yourself. Literally you're banking on yourself. And then to kind of break it down a little bit further than that is whole life insurance has cash value to it, it has a cash value portion to it, and then it has a life insurance portion to it. Of course, if you were to have a whole life policy and then you passed away, your beneficiaries would get the death benefit, the life insurance part of it. But while you're still alive, you have a cash value like a savings account policy that earns compound interest and earns dividends from the insurance company that it's a part of. And with this, your cash value eventually grows outpaces what you put into it. And this is always accessible. You can always access this money via a loan. Now one may ask, why would I borrow that money if it's my own money? And the reason why is because of something that banks actually do and, and something that in the investment banking world happens a lot is that you have this pool of cash, right, that's earning compound interest. And if you access this pool of cash and deduct from the principal, then you interrupt the overall growth of it. So if you're Able to borrow at a lower interest rate and use that money while you're, while your cash is still growing, then you can definitely do more than one thing with your money. This is very applicable to a lot of business owners and this is why I wanted to jump on your podcast and talk about this for business owners is that over the years of doing this, I kind of seen, and I'm an entrepreneur myself, so I see the good problems in business and the bad problems in business. Like for example, one bad problem is not having enough sales, not having enough revenue. That's a bad problem. And you kind of have to improvise. And for a lot of business owners, this is why we're good at it. We somehow somewhat make it happen, you know, and then there's a good problem, like having too many clients, having too many appointments, and then also having too much cash flow or a positive cash flow of what do you do with this money now? Do you let it sit in the bank? Do you reinvest it in your business? And this is something that we always kind of dig with our clients and figure out what they want to do. And some things that people could do is invest, they could invest it back into the business. But what about retaining that cash flow? What about retaining those funds? Somewhere that grows, earns compound interest, but it's still accessible. You could still access this for your business and for your personal life while still growing that wealth. That's what kind of puts all this together and why I think this is super beneficial, especially for self employed contractors and business owners.

So obviously a lot going on there, right? You're probably talking about things, you know, I'm a contractor and so I'm sitting there going, wow, man, that was a lot of information. And I'm not sure I know what this whole life insurance thing is. How does that compare to my like life insurance I got through my insurance agent? You know, a lot of us have that. And so what's the difference between term and whole? Just on a very high level.

Yeah, yeah. So term is kind of like renting a home. Let's. You could either, you could do a term policy for 10 years, 20 years or 30 years. And it's just like the title of it, term. And it has a start point and it has an end point. So it could either end in 10 years, 20 years or 30 years. And it's only life insurance. There is no cash value or equity. It's like if you rented a home for 10 years, you would pay rent for 10 years and then leave and Then you don't take equity with your cash with you. From that same thing with term, you would pay towards, towards the death benefit only. And if you survive within that 10 year, 20 year, 30 year period, the insurance company keeps the premiums and then you walk away from it. You can renew it. But that's typically how it works. And that's not a bad thing. But that's just how, that's why it's termed whole life is the opposite of that. It's like the title of it's for your whole life. And there's only two ways that a whole life policy can cancel is if you or and is if you pass away or if you stop making payments towards it. Other than that, it's going to keep growing and it's going to, it's going to stay intact for you for your whole life. It stays in place. And then also the other benefit of it is that it has a cash value portion to it, it has equity. It's like when you buy a house, you have equity and the market value. Right? Same thing. In this situation you have two functions. The face amount, the death benefit and you have cash value. And for the purposes of the infinite banking concept, it has to be with whole life insurance. This won't work with term, it has to be with whole life.

So this is a little bit on me because I got on a little bit late on the instruction stuff. And make sure you're centered on your screen because that way whenever we go to dual screen, I got you, both of us in there catching half of you. Sorry about that everybody. That's on me. My fault. The host not doing a good job of helping out our guest. But a little bit more to your right. Yeah, there you go. Boom, you're nailed on it right there.

Perfect.

So a little technical stuff there. Thanks everybody for bearing with us. So hey, look at there, we can see each other. Good deal. So now I get it, I get it. The one is, hey, I'm gonna pay in a bunch of premiums and the only way I ever get anything back from it is if I die and I don't get it, everybody else gets it. And then there's this whole life insurance idea that I'm going to have this my entire life going to be investing into it and there's some capital return from it that I could access if I want to.

Precisely.

Okay, cool. So that's why I whenever I sold whole life insurance. Like why wouldn't people just buy whole life insurance? That seems logical. Like I could get the Money and use it if I need to actually build interest, builds wealth and that kind of stuff. So this particular whole life policy or process that you're talking about, it's a little bit different than that old school thing. And you walked me kind of through this a little bit in our pre interview session. But explain to me like I'm putting this money in, right? I can put in money starting like I don't know what the number is, what the lowest number is. Like I could start putting in or I could put in a big amount and at any point whatever my equity is in that, in other words, the amount I've invested I could actually access while that number is still there earning interest. But I'm using it as like a loan. Is that a, is that understood? Right? Correct.

Yeah. So there's a couple ways that you can fund a policy. You could do it like for example a 10 year policy, this is whole life, 10 year whole life, you could do for 20 years, you could do it for infinitely. And then you could also do a single premium case. This is where it's just like a one time single premium deposit into a whole life policy with no further contributions. It's like buying a house cash, you just buy it all up. And then once you do that, when you structure it through a whole life insurance, through the infinite banking way or the bank on yourself way, a couple things happen is one is that every dollar you're putting into the policy, a portion of that goes towards the actual life insurance and then a portion of that goes towards the cash value, part of the equity part of the policy. And then a lot of old fashioned whole life policies, the ones that like Dave Ramsey and Susie Orman talk about are entirely life insurance only. And every dollar you put in, 100% of every dollar that goes in goes only towards the life insurance. Which explains why the cash value is so tiny is because you're not allocating enough money towards that deposit, towards that section or part of the whole life policy. Whereas for example if you did a 20 year policy and then you did like a 5050 split, so every dollar you put into it, half of it goes towards the life insurance and the other half goes towards the cash value. And then as you're depositing into that cash value portion, that portion is earning dividends from the ins the insurance company. It's a for profit business. They have sources of income that are profitable for them. Like they invest in the bond market and they give up private loans to a lot of banks and other insurance companies and other companies, and then they earn interest on that money and they give that back to their policy owners, the mutual owners, us, and then that grows a cash value, and then they also guarantee you an interest rate. So although dividends are not guaranteed, we only work with insurance companies who have a proven track record of paying dividends for over 160 years. And the compound interest is in writing, we show you an illustration, a breakdown of all the numbers, and that shows you what happens if you put x amount of dollars in and how much you'll grow by the next 20 years. And as you're doing that, let's say you reach a point where you have $100,000 in cash value in the policy and you needed to access $50,000 for your contractor business or for whatever is you want to do. There are no restrictions on what you could use the money for. You could use it for whatever you want. But let's say you access $50,000. What would happen is you'd borrow $50,000 from the insurance company from a separate account, leveraging $100,000 as cash value, and then you would pay it back on your own terms. And let's say you did this over five years. So over five years, you paid back principal and interest of 5% back to the insurance company. But while you're doing that, you're earning compound interest on your money. So you borrow simple interest and then pay it back at compound interest. When you do it this way, it creates an arbitrage sp spread between you and your money or between the money that you borrowed and the money you're earning. So while you're, while you're borrowing $50,000 and paying interest on that, you're earning compound interest on a hundred thousand dollars. Eventually, the cost of capital becomes cheaper for you to use your whole life policy than it does for you to borrow $50,000 from somebody else, or even worse, use $50,000 in cash. Because when you use cash for these large purchases, you can no longer earn interest on that money. It's like saying you have this turbocharged savings account at the bank and they're going to give you 5% compound interest on your money. And let's say you had $50,000 in this account and then you needed to use $1,000. If you were to go take $1,000 out of this account, you'd actually be taking out more than a thousand dollars. You'd be taking out the thousand, plus the loss of opportunity costs you could have had had you kept your money inside this account, growing at 5% instead, what you would, the logical thing to do, or the, I guess the better way would be to borrow at a lower interest rate against that, to borrow at 2% and then earn at 5%. So this way there's a 3% split, split on your money. You're earning money on money while still being able to use it. And this is exactly what banks do. Banks have large amounts of cash reserves and, and they earn compound interest on this money. And then when they need to access it, they borrow from other sources at lower interest, leveraging their cash reserves. So this way there's no interruption in the growth of their money. It's like when you go to like, you know, Costco or Walmart or Sam's Club and you see all their items on the shelves. You know, those stores, they don't buy in cash. They buy in credit from the, from the vendors. And then once they sell those items, they pay the vendors back. But because these are really large companies we're talking about, they have the upper hand in the agreements usually. And then they would pay it back on their own terms, on their own time. They could wait, you know, a year to pay that back. So imagine billions of dollars sitting around for a year, a year and a half, sometimes earning 5% compound interest. That's $50 million a year. And because these cash reserves have a lot of tax benefits, they're deferring tax, they're earning $50 million a year. Just, it could be even a lot more than that. But it's just an example on a tax deferred basis. So this is why, like we show clients how to do this, is how they can actually think like a bank or think like a large corporation at a small business level. It's also like saying, you know, a lot of business owners, you know, if they made a thousand dollars a month and they spent a thousand dollars, and then they earn a million dollars a month and they spend a million dollars, there's no difference in either scenario, you know, but if you could figure out a way to pinch your money between earning it and spending it, then you could apply these banking methods using these whole life policies.

Wow, that's a. So I, I follow a little bit of this concept, you know, in my own life. I'll use maybe an analogy, hopefully, that people will kind of get, I guess, right now to buy a house. Interest rates are really low, right? Super low. And we went through buying a house during this time and we could have paid cash for it, like, hey, okay, let's pay for it. But we said hey, that would be stupid. Cause now I don't have that cash anymore. That cash is over here earning, you know, seven, 10, whatever number of interest on it. Let's finance this thing instead. That's only 2%. And I'm making the spread, right, I'm making the spread on that every single time. That's exactly what you're doing in this. Am I, am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah. And that's a really good example you mentioned, for sure.

All right, so I'm going, all right, I want to, I want to, I want to create some wealth with my own life is really kind of the way I'm looking at that. How do people normally step into that? Do they normally like throw a hundred thousand dollars in it right away or do they start contributing to it once a month? What does that usually look like for people?

Yeah, definitely. So what we do is with all our clients, we do a full, thorough 60 to 90 minute financial analysis. This is us just asking question questions, getting to know the client. We want to understand, you know, whether they do, what do they do for work, do they own businesses, are they already investing in the stock market, do they have other retirement accounts, you know, what's going on financially in their lives and where they, where do they want to go. And then from there we use that data, that information to, to structure a policy or even more than one policy sometimes. So it kind of really depends on where the client's at. Like, for example, if somebody's 21 years old, they just graduated college and they love this concept and they just got a job, you know, they're 22 years old, just got a job, you know, we might recommend doing like a $300 a month policy, something just to get the habit going of putting money somewhere away. And they could always access it too. So it's not an either or approach. It's not either I put, you know, I invest 30 years into something and never touch it, or I spend my money right now. It's kind of like an integrated approach where you could, you could do both. You could invest somewhere and be able to borrow against it to use that money. So if somebody's, you know, in their young, early 20s, we could do a policy that's $300 a month. And then, you know, we work with real estate investors who like, would sell a Property, earn like $600,000 in cash from it. And then instead of putting in the bank account, instead of rolling it all entirely into another property or numerous properties, besides the tax advantages of doing so, they could Roll it into a whole life policy, a single premium whole life policy, just a large lump sum, and then from there have instantly, like $550,000 in cash value. So when they would put the money into the whole life policy, two things happen. One, they have cash value, and the second thing is they have the death benefit, the life insurance, and then both of those grow without any further contribution. So they could do that, and then now they could essentially become their own source, or they could become their own mortgage now. So when they do find those properties, they can use their policy cash, borrow from it, and then become their own source of financing. Now they can also do it in connection with other loans, too. So it's almost like a martial art. Using this concept, you can start out with the white belt and then go all the way up to a black belt, where there are no banks in your life at all. And of course, it takes time to get there. But at the same time, I think that this could still help a lot of people, even with a few hundred dollars a month could still help a lot of people. So you don't need to be wealthy to do this. And I think it's the opposite. I think this helps people get wealthy just having the mindset of thinking like a bank or thinking like a large corporation and how you can retain your money and earn compound interest on it while you're still using that money.

So there was a reason I brought you on, because there's a concept I want to talk about, I think really applies to our specific industry. But before I get there, I told you before we hop on, I always ask these questions each time because I like to know a little bit about you as well. And so to this point, what is your greatest achievement that doesn't involve your family, getting married, having kids? That's obviously greatest achievement. But otherwise, what are you most proud of? What's your greatest achievement to this point in life?

That's a good question. So believe it or not, actually, speaking of guest podcasting, I've been. This is my 66th podcast this year as a guest speaker, and believe it or not, the vast majority of those happen in the last three months. So I'm doing a lot of guest podcasting, and I'm really happy doing it. I get to meet a lot of interesting people like you, and it's really. It's a really nice way just to, like, get out there and talk to people. So, yeah, this is my. This is my. Definitely my greatest achievement.

That's cool. All right, awesome. I'm going to Ask you one more question. I'm going to say the third question for the end. What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten from a mentor?

Yeah, so my mentor right now who's helping me with this, with this project pretty much told me one day, never take anything personally. So I was complaining to him. I was like, yeah, there's this client, I built this entire solution for him and now he's not answering anymore. And I spent like 30 hours working on this case and he's like, never take it personally. He could be in the hospital, he could be sick, he could be too busy to answer. Anything could happen. Anything. It's not about you. It's, it's, don't take it personally. And I have applied that to other areas too. You know, if I'm driving and somebody cuts me off, you know, don't take it personally. They don't know your situation. They don't know who you are, you know, and it's definitely my favorite, favorite part.

That's, that's actually really good advice. It's strange that you say it because it's kind of been a theme this week in a few of the things I've had with others is, you know, you don't always have to blame somebody. Sometimes things happen, it just does. And there's not really anybody to blame in the situation. You know, we have a men's group in the contracting world that we're a part of, and that was a big topic of conversation this week. So thanks for sharing that. That was really good. Okay, so back to the subject. What's the most creative way you've ever seen somebody use this vehicle that you have offering here?

Okay, good question. Let me just think for one second. Let's see. The most creative was definitely a real estate investor who put 400. He sold the property, took $400,000 out, put it into a single premium case, and then instantly had $375,000 in cash value and is now using that as his own, like mortgage or his own lender. That's pretty much the most creative. Let's see what else. I kind of want to talk about other policies besides there. I've done a 10, 10 year policy where this is the creative thing. Okay, So a client puts in 10, 10 for 10 years, puts in $50,000 a year. But the policy is structured so that way only 30% of the, the policy is something called base life insurance. And that means that every year he has to commit to a minimum of 30% of 50,000. So I think that's 15,000. Right. That he has to commit to every year.

I like that.

The, the rest of that is all optional. So he could add more or less every year, up to $50,000 a year. That I think is creative, especially for like people who are self employed who don't know what's going to happen year to year, they could commit to 15,000 and then when they have like a large contract or something, just dump in like $40,000 or $30,000 and then be able to use that money in and out. So that's kind of. It's almost like having like a checking account or a savings account on steroids that'll earn compound interest, but without the commitment. So you don't have to make that commitment for the next 10 years or $50,000 a year.

All right, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can be creative here. This is the real reason I brought this on. So we're contractors, right. We're selling stuff to homeowners all the time. Roof here, you know, sprinkler system there, a pool over here, whatever it may be that it is that we're selling. And we're constantly offering financing all the time. Some other is earning the interest off of all this money. But if I was taking the profits of my company and putting it into one of these type of accounts, could I then pull out of that account at that small interest rate, finance the customer's thing at a higher interest rate through my company?

You're a genius. Yeah, you could exactly do that. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You'd essentially create your own bank then. So then you would earn interest from the clients and you would earn interest from your whole life policy and you would earn your fees for your hard work.

Yeah. So you would get your normal profit. You would get spread between what you're paying interest wise and what your customer is paying interest wise. You could probably have a pretty low interest rate as compared to most banks to make it enticing for the customer. And this is where I thought it was really powerful for, for these contractors. A lot of these guys have some pretty serious numbers that they generate each year in profit. And they're always trying to find ways to keep it a little bit more tax deferred and not having all that problem that we have. But creating this almost a bank within your business that you could actually finance your projects through seems like a pretty brilliant thing to do. As long as everything's legal with it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that that would definitely Put you at a whole nother level. Because if something does happen to your industry, I'm not saying something's going to happen, but let's just say, you know, something does happen, you have cash reserves to fall back on. And also you could easily pivot. You know, if something happened where one niche got was hindered by, for example, a market recession, then you could easily like bounce into something else. If you're a roofer or I'm not, I don't know that much about contractors and what and how they find business, but I do know that businesses need some sort of cash reserves in place so that way they could pivot into different areas. You know, the SBA did during COVID they did a study and said like that if a small business goes like 18 days without any money, they're going to go out of business on average, most businesses without going 18 days without any money, unless the ones that have cash reserves. So this could be something that also a profitable way and also a safety net too.

Yeah, you know, I told you I've been thinking about it since we talked the first time. I like, man, you know, I remember like how much as a contractor I was putting back and setting aside and you know, it was not earning a whole lot of interest and it's just being really safe keeping those cash reserves. Sometimes it's just a money market account, you know, one and a half percent or something dumb like that. I'm a little smarter now, but you know, putting it into something like this where not only is it still earning that compounded interest from the insurance company on its side, I'm paying back a simple interest at this smaller amount and then I'm financing using those dollars and getting that spread from the. I'm making money on both sides.

You're making money on both sides? Yep.

I think that's, I think that's a pretty good idea it seems like.

Yep. And sorry, speaking of taxes, as your cash is growing every year, as you're earning compound interest and dividends in your in there, you don't have to claim that as taxable income if it's staying in the policy and it's growing. And then in most situations, if the policy is structured correctly, when you take the money out, you're using after tax dollars, tax free money. So this way you can kind of have this whole like tax advantage system where you're earning interest on that money and able to use it like in and out, in and out without having to claim this. So there's a lot of huge tax Advantages here using whole life insurance, especially in the way you've mentioned it with banking within your own business.

You said my two favorite words, tax free, literally the planet. So you mentioned a couple of numbers. While you mentioned one, I'm going to combine it with another. You mentioned the studies were done about 33% is what we're paying out. Is that was that number? Is that, was I correct there on our interest and stuff like that?

Yeah, yep, yep. One third of your money goes to service debt.

So service debt, okay. And so if you take the other side of things, anywhere from, I don't know, 16 to 30 some odd percent is going out in taxes. So in between those two is all you get to keep. So why would I, why would I follow that process? I'm working literally 2/3 of my year before I make a dollar.

And this is the reason why like 60% of Americans don't have $1,000 in a checking account or business account. It's because it's not an income problem, it's a spending problem. We have so much debt, we're paying so much interest. Like think about it, the average American, according to a cnbc study has $90,000 on average in debt. And that could be student loans, car notes, other credit card, credit card loans, credit card debt. So pretty much there's a huge crisis in the United States with spending. We spend too much money. And with this concept, what I really like about it is it gives you a way to kind of create an obstacle between you and your money. You could put your money somewhere that's liquid, but it's not too liquid. It's not a swipe of a card. You can just access it, you know, like debit cards and credit cards and quick pay and mobile apps and all these other ways of accessing money nowadays is so fast, which I think is the reason why so many people are having a hard time spending is because their money is too liquid. With when you put money into the whole life policy and you're building up this tax free money, a tax deferred money and you go to access it via loan, you have to fill out a form, send it to the insurance company and then five days later they send you the money to whatever account you want it to and any amount up to 90% of your cash value. So this is a good thing. You know, it's kind of like, you know, you're adding a couple speed bumps between you and your money which in return creates the possibility, the probability of increasing the likelihood of spend saving more of Your money.

Yeah. Amazon's the devil for sure. Hey, Sari, this has been really, really good. It's one of those ones where I'm going to go out there and really push this because I think people need to understand that there are ways for us to leverage ourselves and our money in this situation where money makes money for us, not cost us money or break even, which I see so many people do. I got one more question for you. Unless there's something else. Is there something else that we need to cover or touch on that's important, Important for these folks to know?

No. We touched on a lot of stuff and I appreciate the questions. There was a lot of good questions.

No problem. So final question. You seem like a younger guy. Younger than me at least. So this. You may not have thought about this one too much, but we all only have so much time on this planet, right? And at some point we're gonna. We're all gonna go, and hopefully when we do, there's gonna be. Be this big celebration and people are going to come by and remember us. How do you want to be remembered? What's the legacy you want to leave?

Well, so I. I'd want to be remembered as the problem solver, somebody who is just a good problem solver. And that's why I do. What I do right now is kind of like. I see a lot of. Arguably one of the. A lot of problems people have is financial problems. And that's why I do. What I do right now is to become like a problem solver for financial reasons, for people. If it was, you know, you can. If I don't really care that it's life insurance, it's just I look at it as a tool, right. And if it's. If this tool can be a problem solver, then I'm all for it. And that's how I'd kind of want to be remembered, as simply the problem solver. I like it.

I like it. I like people to solve problems. That's. We need more of those in the world today. Hey, great interview. Really great to have you on. I think you made it something that people can understand because it can be a little complicated, especially if you're not Mr. Financial wizard, right? You don't think about numbers. You don't do it. You just put money in your bank all the time and you hope that it turns out to be there at some point for you. You did a good job of sharing this in a way that I think people can understand. How do people get a hold of you?

Yeah. So they can go to my website, fin asset protection.com it's fin asset protection.com and then you could book a free appointment and we could. Most of my appointments are done virtually over zoom or over the phone, so whatever is easier for you. It's Fin Asset protection dot com.

Ah, that word. Free again. I like free. So you get to sit with people, talk with them for 60, 90 minutes, see if it fits right for them. And if it doesn't, no big deal. But if it does, maybe that's a way that they can do some pretty creative things with their business. We're going to get this all put together and out there on our podcast and all that. This is out going live to quite a few people and I hope you enjoyed your time. We certainly enjoyed having you.

You too, Jim. Thank you so much for having me on. I had a lot of fun with you. Thank you.

All right, everybody, that was Sari with Fin Asset Protection. You can look him up on LinkedIn and go to his website. That is just something I thought was so important. I think it's so valuable that it's something that we don't always think about. I thought the timing was really good too. The timing of where we're at. At the end of a year, we are starting to think about those type of things and moving into our coming year is really important. Some of the things I want to really kind of bring home and wrap up so that you make sure that you get these points. There's different kinds of whole life insurance. There's an old school way that is a thing you don't want to be involved in. And then there's this newer way of approaching whole life insurance where it can really be a vehicle for you to create some cash value in your life insurance policy. The other thing I want you to know is life insurance is important. It is something that is a responsible individual on this planet. If you have a family, you should set those funds aside in case the worst thing happens. And risk management, making sure that people are taken care of. The other aspect of this is, and the point I really want to bring out and why I really had him on here is because we can become our own bank, we can become our own investment and there's other ways to do it. This is just one of those ways. He mentioned a couple of books and I want to make sure you got those books. It's Infinite Banking was one of the books and the other is becoming your own banker. I thought those were really valuable. I'm gonna get them myself. I'm gonna read them, I'm gonna study them. Because this is something in my life I'm really working towards right now, is getting better at it because I'm pretty basic. Got some stocks, I got some savings, I've got some mutual funds and a retirement account and this kind of stuff that most people have. But I'm not really using my money to leverage myself the way I should. So if you didn't get anything out of this other than, hey, I need to start thinking about this stuff, Siri might be a good place to start, whether he's the right answer or not. Like he said, he's a problem solver. So if he's not the right answer, I bet you he can probably send you in the right direction. That's contractor radio for today. We hope you guys enjoyed it. We hope you were entertained a little bit by it today. I hope it got you thinking. We hope it helps you with your strategy moving into 2021. And thanks for listening. We'll see you again next week.