50+ Years in Finance: Why You're Losing Money (You Don't Even Know It)

People really need to stop believing people because they have an MD after their name or they wear a suit and a coat. You know, these are all thieves.

Today's guest is Alan Blecker. He's a former CPA, CLU, CHFC, and someone who spent decades around Wall Street long enough to see where money's quietly leaking out of people's lives and how to stop it.

The desire to not educate, abuse average working middle class people, that has not changed. This system has been taking and taking and taking from them, and they had no idea they were being taken. This is not a world that I can exist in.

All right. Well, today's going to be a lot of fun because when someone has been in financial services going into their 52nd year, two things are true. They've seen every cycle. They've heard every bad idea, usually more than once. And today's guest is one of those rare people who didn't just survive all that, He actually learned from it. And Richard and I have known Alan Blecker for years inside the Infinite Banking Practitioner community. And if there's one thing Alan is known for is that he has almost an unfair ability to, to take something that could otherwise sound really complex and, and explain it in a very simple way. He's a former CPA, CLU, CHFC, and someone who spent decades around Wall Street, insurance companies, and the traditional financial system long enough to see where money's quietly leaking out of people's lives and how to stop it. And so if you've ever felt like you make good money, but it never quite stacks up, or maybe you feel like you're doing all the right things, but still feel financially exposed and you can't quite put your finger on it, or you just want to understand money without needing a decoder ring, you're in the right place. Alan, welcome to Wealth on Main Street. Glad to have you back.

Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Very excited.

How have you been? Bring us up to speed. After all these decades in the business, what hasn't changed?

What hasn't changed is average working middle-class Americans need to access their own money. Ah, that, that has not changed. You go lunchtime, go down any Main Street, you look at all the people walking up and down the street. They have one thing in common, and that's their need for oxygen. But the other thing they have is a need for access to capital.

But funny how those things go hand in hand, isn't it?

They do.

They do try living without one or the other for a period of time and tell me how it goes.

Yeah, not, not very well. When I walk down Main Street and I ask people how do they Do they use money? Oh yeah, I use money. I use money to pay my bills, my rent, my mortgage. I said, well, where does that money come from? And they have to pause. People pause to answer the question, where does the money come from? Many of them, it comes from paychecks. And then I ask them, if that paycheck dollars didn't come, where would the money come to pay the bills? And again, silence. So, the need to access money is a constant.

And you spent years as a CPA and around Wall Street. And so, what was that moment or that realization where you said something here just doesn't add up?

I graduated college in 1974, started working for the 9th largest CPA firm. And worked in 3 of their 4 departments. I did 6 months of auditing, a year and a half of tax, and a year of small business. Went to a small firm in 1977, did that for 2 years, then started my own CPA firm in 1979. No sooner did I graduate, start getting clients through, through marketing, through joining the Rotary, hanging out at, at certainly restaurants that had people going there. But people didn't understand money. But I also realized I didn't either. So one of my first realizations was people didn't understand money and I didn't either. I immediately said, okay, well, what are we going to do here? And I got into being a CFP, a certified financial planner, in 1984. I thought that this was the best thing since sliced gold. It was good for me because it would help me to educate myself and then educate people. Well, many years later, I found out that was nothing more than an organization set up to accumulate money to be put under management for fees. An organization that I thought was educational and was put there to help people, wasn't there to put for education and wasn't there to help people, middle-class Americans. It was put there to help the advisors and their employers, Wall Street. What a realization. I happened to meet up through one of my Rotary meetings with a man. He was in the mutual fund sales business, but he also got into doing private placements. And he contacts me one time and he says, Alan, he says, I could use your services. Well, what do you do? Well, I sell private placements, mutual funds, etc., limited partnerships. This is in like 1980, '81. He was referring clients to me, his clients, so I can do a mathematical tax calculation of how many losses his client can absorb in a year. He said—

interesting approach, right?

I thought it was genius on his part. I didn't even realize how I was being used or abused. But, but then, if you're asking things that haven't changed, well, the desire to not educate, abuse, Average working middle class people, keep them working. That has not changed. And education, or the lack of it, has not changed. You and I, the three of us, we can go anywhere around, set up a forum, get a room, and just ask— lift people off the street, have them come in, set up some— they know nothing about everything, and they're just victims. So being victims also hasn't changed.

It's interesting. I had a conversation this week with a wonderful lady who's going to look at implementing the process of becoming your own banker. And 61 years young, had an accounting background, was a CFP and everything, and was a CFO for multiple companies, helped companies go public. She always says, I'm unbelievable with other people's money. I don't know. I've never paid attention and looked at how to manage my own. So here, having a sobering thing shifted her life, actually got rid of her designation, about to launch a new business in a coaching model around some female empowerment stuff. Very cool, wonderful conversation. But just taking accountability for her role of the past and the awareness and knowledge that comes with that presence of mind of time to be able to say, I'm ready to begin this process now and being a constant student. In a way, I was really inspired by it. And I just thought, it's so interesting what you're sharing, Alan, your experience, your life experience. Here's a gal, amazing work at having her knowledge base in accounting to apply it to the business structure and managing people and, and growing an organization as a CFO, but not actually doing any of that CFO-related work for herself and her own family.

Yeah, much like the shoemaker. You know, shoemakers' children have no shoes. You know, attorneys, you know, people make money in a vocation.

The insurance agent who doesn't own any of his own insurance.

Exactly. No, it's true.

It's true.

People can barely survive. If you and I, if we were to pick these average people, 20, 25 people and get data forms on them, they have debt, they have credit card debt, they don't have a budget. You know, they don't know what their assets are, what they own, what they owe. They have no idea where they're going. You know, Dan Sullivan would say, well, where are you? Well, I'm here at about $100,000. Where are you going to be in 3 years? $300,000. Where are you going to be in 5 years? $500,000. And, you know, Dan would say, why so long? People have no idea where they're going. They have no idea where they are. Fundamental stuff. You're absolutely correct. They, they don't know what— where they are. They don't know where they're going. And if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going, how are you going to get there?

Yeah, that's very true. And if you think, if you think of someone, uh, you know, someone who's new to— newly exposed to the, the infinite banking concept, and like I mentioned at the top of the show, like, the three of us have known each other for years, and— but I'm curious, like, what, what do you think is the What do you believe the thinking is that needs to change in someone before the process actually matters to them?

Okay, so you want to keep the wealth in the family.

I get it. I hear you.

Me too.

That's why we wrote this book, Don't Spread the Wealth. Everyone tells you that you want to spread the money, spread the wealth around.

No, no, no. You don't want to do that.

You want to keep the money in the family with the people you love and care about where it belongs for as many generations as possible. That's what we talk about in this book. In this book, we have an incredible 15-page bonus you can download which instructs you on how to start the conversation with your family on annual family banking meetings, how to host them, some sample exercises and a sample agenda, tons of amazing great benefits. Go ahead, get a copy right now. Head on over to don't spread wealth. That's don't spread wealth.com. Don't spread wealth.com. You're going to love it.

What has to change is mindset. See, there's so much noise out there. There's so much clutter. There are so many financial entertainers. They're being bombarded. I, I listen to the drug commercials. I listen to the food commercials. I listen to the financial services. You know, you listen to this one company and says, we make money when you make money. And people's mindset says, oh, that's nice. But they don't tell you the whole story. So what has to change? Maybe they— people need a clearinghouse. I don't know. They need a place to go. I remember we used to talk about the no-load cardiologist. You guys ever hear about that?

No.

The no-load cardiologist. So the 3 of us, we go in separately to the doctor's office. He's a cardiologist. We have these predetermined thoughts, our mindset. And we're expecting him to do something. What do we want him to do? Ask us some questions, maybe fill out a data form, maybe do an examination, then maybe do some more questions. You know, then maybe in this technology, maybe put some information through some sort of machine and all of a sudden an explanation or a plan or a program. Well, this no-load cardiologist, he did not— he didn't do any intake. He didn't ask any questions. He didn't do any examination, but yet he wrote prescriptions. So what, what has to change is the mindset of people. People even in the medical community, Western medicine, they don't even know what to expect. Everything that's happening to them is thrown at them and they have no combat. There are people here waiting months for tests, months for tests. You know, there are people going into facilities and then somebody in the facility comes up to say, okay, we're ready for your whatever exam or surgery. No, I'm not getting that. So this really happens. So the point is, people really need to stop believing people because they have an MD after their name or they wear a suit and a coat. You know, these are all thieves. And what has to change is somebody has to get someone who literally will look out for them, not only today, but 3 years, 6 months, 9 months, put together program. What is a 61-year-old woman coming to you for the first time? I mean, all my career, these people are coming to me. When I used to send out 10,000 wedding style invitations a month, and I used to see 30, 60, 90 people a month in these workshops, they're 50, 60, 70 years of age. This system has been taking and taking and taking from them, and they had no idea they were being taken.

And I had a conversation today, Alan, with a gentleman. I'm actually going to be on their podcast. I'm going to record with them on next Monday. And I use the example of cars. Talked about a young man I met with. The mother introduced me. She wanted to have this conversation with her oldest son, 17, and looking at buying a truck. Great idea. Of course, young man, he's got a carpenter position. He's getting apprenticeship. He wants to get a truck. The truck was going to be $18,000. Now that's Canadian. So that's about $10 American, I think. Today, a 17-year-old's probability of living to 100 is much higher, certainly than when I was 17 years old. Medical technology, all those things. So if we look at that, that's 83 years. Well, at a simple 4% interest rate, if you would allow that money to actually work and grow, there's an extra $180,000 of opportunity potential and cost on that $18,000 at this market. And so you have an opportunity to be able to capture that or to not capture it. And everyone has the same opportunity. And I think what most North Americans don't realize, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but just the pure outlay, the outlay, whether it's monthly payments or in capital outlay for purchasing a motor vehicle to go about your daily life, get the kids to the hockey, the soccer, the, you know, basketball practice, go to the, go to the Christmas concert, go to the movies, go to work, go to the grocery store. You got to have a transportation model. The average North American, we live in a big a pretty big chunk of the world, you gotta drive there from A to B. And so the cost of these things over a lifespan is astronomical because you're leveling up. You always want the next best one, the biggest one, the this and the, the bum, you know, and what did Nelson say, Jason, the butt bum warmers, you know, and then they got the, now they got the heated steering wheels and stuff, all these things. And, you know, if you really tally and add all those up, that lost opportunity is the number one reason Sure. The education, we can take the education component, a big deal. But if you just look at the dollar value of all that accumulated, that's the number one reason most North Americans have an underfunded retirement account.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I think, you know, one of the things that I see too, much like what Alan was sharing as well, is that when, when you're having a conversation just to get a sense of how money is moving through someone's life, And, and you're, you're approaching and framing the conversation in that exact way. Like, let's examine how money is moving through your life. And it is very revealing very quickly that there's just a lot of, this is just the way it's always been. And so the mind relaxes around that and, and thinks that's just the way it's always been. And then when we look at Um, again, if you envision that movement, if we just say, look, what if we just rerouted? What if we just changed the route and just had a look at where that route takes you? So the person can visualize that immediately. I've done this so many times, and I always ask that same question, like, what, what comes up for you? What are you envisioning? And it's like, oh, I can actually picture money moving through my life and I see that this rerouting takes me to a completely different destination, and this makes perfect sense to me. So you override that part of the brain that has been telling you, no need to, there's nothing to see here, this is just the way it's always been, why, why even look at that, just, uh, try and make the airplane go 10 miles an hour faster.

The average North American is experiencing, and they don't even know it, the death of a thousand paper cuts when it comes to their financial life. And like what you're talking about, Jason and Alan, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but here's a couple of examples, things that I do commonly with people, really easy to do, a small behavior change with a large impact. And that is, as an example, you have a home and auto insurance, you have insurance for a few other things. Maybe you have a critical illness or disability policy or existing term insurance policy that you've had in your life for a period of time. Well, if you fund it annually versus monthly, and when you do the math on the actual savings amount that you get, when you, when you've added up, in a lot of cases, it's 7, 8, 9, even on a Primerica policy recently I looked at, it was 10% savings rate. So it, you people, people are doing, they're bending over backwards, knocking over grandmas in the mall to try and figure out a way to get 10% rate of return on their investments. Meanwhile, they're happily paying it unknowingly in a, in a paper cut, 10%, 8%, 9% to someone else, not even realizing one simple behavior change would, would recoup all that capital. And if you did that, that over a lifespan, what's the opportunity cost on those decisions? Hey, here's the next thing I think about this, because you know, the idea of buying a cell phone, everyone's got to have a computer in their pocket these days. Okay. Can't go very far without one of these things. This is getting about as close to what you were talking about, Alan, the oxygen that you need walking on the street. You gotta have this thing now too. Well, you buy one of these bad boys and they're, you know, they're $1,000 to $1,400 retail price if you want to get one because of all the stuff it does for you. Then you think about it, it's a clock, it's a, it's a this, it's a that. It's a, it does literally does everything for you now. So I can understand its value, but with the, with the, the cell phone company's gonna finance it for you, but they don't present it as a financing option. They present it as, No, a no payment plan of this, that we just add, we just tack it all on and then they charge you for the screen replacement and all the, you know, if it's damaged or you drop it in the toilet, we're going to charge you for that too. Well, what if you just paid yourself all that capital? And if you did that in all these other areas, they try to get you with the, you know, all the warranty stuff. How many people buy a warranty, actually use them? Now, I've used a couple, but I've also bought, paid a whole bunch and never been able to use them at all. Or the time I needed to use it, the warranty had just expired. Who's ever experienced that before? Go ahead on our YouTube channel. You could put that in the comments if that was you. So what if you did the same price point of the warranty and you, and you usually have to pay a deductible. You add that on just like Nelson says in his book. And for that piece of furniture, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, the cell phone, all those things, you just committed, committed to repaying that to an account that you owned and controlled. And then when you have to replace it, you have the money to replace it. But it, it's a cash flow control element and it's a behavioral thing. But those little, little things aren't little. They stack on top of one another like Lego bricks and they create something truly powerful over a lifespan.

How would you like to see a 91-year case study that we put together to explain how this infinite banking thing can work for a family over 2 generations?

Well, you know what?

Real easy to do that. We have that right in our second book, Cash Follows the Leader. You can get a copy for free delivered right to your inbox. Head on over to CashFollows.com. That's CashFollows.com and pick up a copy right now.

Very true. And I don't know if you guys know this, just for trivia, who was interviewing— oh, it was, it was Tony Robbins who was having a conversation and he had, he had written this book where he had interviewed a number of billionaires that he's been associating with over the past few decades, and he really wanted to tap into, you know, what created success for them financially and how money moves through their lives. And he used an analogy that, speaking of a phone, he said, you know, if an individual just took the amount that they paid for every iteration of the iPhone and invested it in Apple's stock and then contrasted where they would be financially by just having made the investment in the company that built the device versus consuming the device, the, the output was astronomical. In contrast, it wasn't even like, it wasn't even remotely close. Like we're talking about a few hundred thousand dollars compared to the consumption cost.

Is the new saying buy Android, invest the difference?

Is that what you're saying?

I don't know. I'm just thinking that. Again, if you— it's just a sharp example of how money moves through your life. So if, if money is rerouted— so what Tony was describing was a reroute of money, in this case for an investment. What Nelson describes is controlling how you finance the things that you need throughout your lifetime, which can certainly include investment. And so if, if you think of the very same analogy If a person had just paid a premium, accessed a policy loan that they could repay on their own schedule, purchased their iPhone, their smartphone, and just rerouted money back into an entity that they own and control, what would that difference be today? And that's just an iPhone example. Richard, you were alluding to, you like, we're talking vehicles, we're talking property. We're talking anything that you would otherwise lease, finance, or pay cash for. But people don't make the connection because it's not being discussed out there. What's being discussed out there is, come in, get this device. If you can't afford it, that's okay, we'll finance it.

It's just a simple month— it's an easy monthly payment. You know what, you don't even have to pay for the device, we'll just hand you a— you're due for an upgrade, right? You deserve an upgrade, Alan. You deserve one. You've been a good customer of ours for 3 years, you deserve an upgrade.

It's reroute how money moves through your life and do that for an extended period. And you will put yourself on a path to build a peaceful, stress-free way of life financially. And when we talk about Richard and Alan, if you envision this, because I know Alan mentioned this too when I was reading through some of the material, Alan, that you supplied to us before, our show today is that you say people should use money intentionally. And so from your vantage point, what does that look like in day-to-day life?

Well, going back to mindset, if you, if you take a 22-year-old and you ask the 22-year-old for how many years does he or she want to work, so you're going to get all different answers. You know, you're going to get FIRE, you know, financial independents retire early, maybe 40-year-olds. I worked for 18 years. Some will say 50. I worked for 28 years. If someone says, oh, all right, I'll work till 65, okay, so that'll be 43 years. What we have to look at is that 43 years of work, if life expectancy is 85, the 43 years of work has to supply 20 more years, 63 years of life, right? So when we talk about intentionality, that's part of intentionality. What is it you're doing? Why are you doing it? What are you trying to achieve? And that has to come at a cost, an intentional cost. And for most people, certainly even me, at a younger age, I had no intentionality. I had no understanding of what life would look like at 73. How much was I gonna need? Where was it gonna come from? What was I gonna do? Was I working, not working? So that's what I talk about, intentionality. We need to build a plan starting at day zero of life expectancy, however long that's gonna be. Have those conversations. What do you want? It all has to start with what do you want? When do you want it? How much is it going to cost? And how are you going to pay for it?

And I think another element of that too, Alan, what comes up for me, especially with the younger generation, even in speaking to my own family, my own children, my own nieces and nephews, is obviously the, the adoption of technology and, uh, convenience. And so the— this younger generation being exposed to much simpler ways to transact money in their lives, and not enough in simplicity in terms of how, uh, rerouting how money moves through their lives. Because people throughout their lifetime They're just busy in their day-to-day lifetime. They have their career aspirations. They have their personal aspirations, their hobbies, all those things. And then people like us are waving awareness flags saying, "Hey, we want to draw your awareness to something here as it relates to building a financial future that's bigger than your past." If we introduce technology, we introduce simplicity, we introduce convenience, that younger generation is going to buy into that rerouting how money moves through their lives because they don't want to apply the degree of focus, time, and energy that the three of us would because it's not their passion. Their passions lie elsewhere.

Well, that goes back to mindset.

Yeah.

And then that goes back to society. That goes back to the noise, the financial entertainers, Wall Street, the drug companies. It is just— what the word— it's like seismic, you know, like earthquake, you know. I always say, uh, there's a book out. I read it probably 25 years ago. A couple of years ago they came out with a 25th edition called The Power of Focus. Have either of you seen it, heard about it? The Power of Focus, uh, Lee, um, trying to remember the author.

Leave somebody.

Yeah, I forget, but I've got it back here someplace. But the point is, they ask a question: could you spend— would you— could you spend one day a week thinking? Not like Jay says, oh, busy life, oh, hobbies, you know, business. Just thinking, no work. No hub, just thinking. And here, when you talk about simpler ways to transfer money, we get to see less of that. We don't know where the money comes from. We know it comes from somewhere, comes from the job, it comes from the wages, but people don't— can't even read a pay stub, don't even understand the pieces of the pay stub, you know, and then with these retirement plans, you know, we could have multiple conversations about retirement plans, but that's turning over money to other people. They don't even see that. They don't see the taxes, they don't see the retirement.

100%.

We want you to understand the 5 strategies that you can use to reduce taxes now and in the future. Back We wrote about them in our book, Keep Taxes Away from Your Wealth. You can get a copy of Keep Taxes Away from Your Wealth by going to keeptaxesaway.com. That's keeptaxesaway.com. Ease on over there, get a copy today.

Yeah, it just goes.

It, it's worse that they don't even see it, Alan. They intentionally are trying to avoid seeing it. They're trying to hide it from their view so that they can blame someone else when it goes sideways and not take any responsibility.

Yeah. And to add to what Richard just said, so here's something that's completely different that opens people's eyes up a little bit. So I was sharing with some folks that I had gotten together and I was describing this process of dividend reinvesting. This is something that I've been doing personally for 32 years now. I asked the, the attendees that I was speaking to, I said, do all of you have, have your phone handy? And everybody was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we got it handy. I said, would you mind doing me a favor? Take a moment, go into your pantry or your master bathroom and just take a picture of what's on the shelves. So start with your pantry, open the refrigerator, open a cupboard, doesn't matter, wherever your food is stored, take a picture of it. Load it into ChatGPT and tell ChatGPT to give you a list of quality, boring, free cash flowing, dividend paying companies. And, and I had people come in and share what they had discovered. They're like, oh my God, yeah, Gillette, Procter Gamble, uh, General Mills and PepsiCo and all the, all these different things. I didn't realize that all these companies would pay me and I would continue and repetitively use their products. People are talking about what's going on with the central banks and the interest rates and all that other stuff. Would you believe that breakfast, lunch, and dinner are pretty resilient even when the yield curve is inverted and that people aren't delaying their surgeries because interest rates are going up in Japan? Like, it's— the point being is that There's so much right there in front of us. And when people then— I sort of shifted the conversation to say—

That's about as Main Street as you can get, by the way.

Yeah. Right. So I shared with people, I said, you know, there's a lot. My point was, and Rich, you must've been right in my ear because the point was, I said, there's a whole lot of wealth-building opportunity. There's so much more on Main Street than there is on Wall Street. It's all right there in your home. It's all around you. All you gotta do is own these, these companies. And people, again, in their minds, if they don't understand, if they don't have the mindset like Alan described, their minds can go to comparison. Okay, well, a few of you told me you own crypto. Yeah, have you stopped shaving and taking a shower and wiping your butt with toilet paper because you own crypto? Like, it's not an either-or. So money is going to move through your life. When you reroute and you take control of the financing function of how money's moving through your life, you put yourself in a position of total and absolute control, gradually and incrementally over a long period of time, and great things happen. Nobody ever asked me once about dividend reinvesting until I brought it up. I've been doing it for 32 years.

I got a next book title based on that: Refrigerator Wealth.

Yeah, I like that. No, seriously. Yeah, Rich, I'm writing that. We got— I like that.

Um, yeah, write that one down. The point is that it's going to take a cold hard look at the real value in your home that you can leverage for life.

It's just, it's just ridiculously simple. And the process of becoming your own banker is just ridiculously simple. But Nelson told us, he told us repeatedly that it's more caught than it is taught. And it was in that moment, in that conversation that I was having with these folks, where IBC came into the conversation and it was a perfect fit. People caught it. I didn't have to teach anything about IBC. They just caught it. And I get to, much like the two of you guys do, I get to experience that feeling when somebody catches it. And it's like, "Oh, wow. This is such a good feeling." It's like, "Thank you, Nelson." Mindset. Mindset means more than I think people realize.

Well, Alan, I don't think you shared with us and our listeners really, I mean, 52 years in the financial world, you talked about some of the origin part of that story, but at what point did did the reinvention of Alan and the introduction of infinite banking come to play?

So the reinvention and, and inter— when I got started in IBC, 2014. So we had come off some pretty bad years. So '08, '09.

Yeah.

And I was associated with Wall Street at the time. I got very scared in like 2010, got very scared the world was coming to an end. And I was on my own and I went and associated with a Fortune 100 company. And, um, so I'm there and then the world continues to collapse, '08, '09. And, uh, then it started to come back, you know, in '11 and '12. And I had a lot of clients in annuities, annuities with guarantees, because I had already seen what happens in the earlier market shifts. I saw 2000 to '03. I saw what happened in '07 to '10 or '09. So, I had these annuities and my clients were protected. And then the markets started going up and I kept them in the markets because they had downside protection. Well, the market value started to approach the guarantees. The market value started to approach the guarantees. And I went— these were older people, seniors— and I went to them and I say, you know, we could annuitize this now. Annuitize meaning take a chunk of money and get a guaranteed, predictable, increasing stream of income for life. These were seniors. They needed income. Oh, that's good, that's good, that's good. Because that's all the annuity would have gotten them, 5%. Here they could have gotten more money. They could have used the higher market value. Well, I went to the brokerage firm. I forget exactly, but I may have given them 15, let's say, applications. Of the 15 applications to surrender the annuity and take the liquidated proceeds and buy an immediate annuity that distributed income for life, guaranteed, predictable, stream of increasing income for life. 14 out of 15, the brokerage firm denied the application, wouldn't process the application.

Wow.

I was floored. I spent all of this time, which is irrelevant. I educated clients. They said, yeah, this is— I knew it was better for them. I knew they could lock in something that was fluctuating, which was the market. I knew they could capitalize on something by making it into a stream. 14 out of 50, they said no. And I said, this is not a world that I can exist in. And that's when I moved in 2014. 'Cause 2013 is when I started telling people to liquidate out, you know, just freeze the money. The markets had come up considerably in 2013. I went to IBC. I rendered my resignation around March of 2014 and joined IBC. And I've been with IBC, it'll be 12 years come about April. And that's correct. That was the trigger. All this other stuff. But then here they won't do what I believe is in their best— what they believe they wanted to do it. I just suggested the concept. So that was my, say, the straw that broke the camel's back. Just disgusting. And I went into the office, man, nothing I can do. I mean, no explanation, nothing I can do.

And what do you love most now around coaching others on the concept and teaching the concept? Like, what brings you the most positive energy around these past 12 years?

What brings me the most amount of energy is I never have to go back and apologize. Everything that I told somebody when I started selling policies, IBC design policies in 2014, everything that I told them then has happened today and more and more because of increasing dividends, increasing dividends, which I don't hear enough talked about. I, you know, Nelson was the one who said, boy, if I could write that 2000 book again, I wouldn't include one illustration. Well, I second that because people are looking at the illustration. Nelson says, no, no, no, you're getting all messed up inside of the— no, he's right, you know. And nobody talks about the value of dividends and the value of increasing dividends. So what brings me the greatest amount of joy joy is whatever I told somebody, it's working today and it's working better. And those who continue to become educated, I just keep giving them more and more education. That's the second thing that I like, continuing to get their updated data forms once every year or two, see where they are, because this doesn't, this doesn't operate on itself. Policies don't aspire to success on their own. It takes a pilot. So I like being the pilot. They are unable and they, they really are unable. It's unfortunate to pilot their own plane.

One thing that I think is I'm curious about, Alan, because, you know, we've had lots of our colleagues, IBC practitioners on the program before, and we've heard different stories about certain client stories or things that they've financed. And I'm always curious, you know, what's an impactful thing that you've seen a client finance or use the system for? Often it's an un— it's a surprising thing that we didn't anticipate. We talked about the equipment and the businesses and the investments that they've accumulated. But what's something that really you've heard a client do that just made a huge impact for their family?

Hey, I like free stuff.

I hope you like free stuff.

In fact, we got something for free you can download right now. It's a copy of our book, Cash Follows the Leader. This book is all about how you can develop uninterrupted daily growth with high cash value life insurance. We explain a ton in there. We even have some fun images so you can follow along. Go ahead and go to CashFollows.com, that's CashFollows.com, and pick up a copy for yourself today.

So what have I seen a client do? You know, there's two ways of looking at the question. What have I seen a client do and what have I suggested a client look at to do? So one of my bigger systems, and again, this only comes out when you're looking at the numbers, when you're looking at the, the profit and loss, you're looking at the household income statement. I have a client who spends $7,000 a month on his Amex card. At the end of the month, he gets paid. He writes a check to Amex for $7,000. So he never pays any interest. He gets whatever points, which I'm not an advocate of points, but he gets whatever point. But the point is he was using his net after income tax and FICA cash flow to pay that $7,000. I went to him. He had a policy that had a term rider. Policy I had sold him, $4 million term rider that sooner or later would come and expire if otherwise not. He converted $2 million of the $4 million, got a premium of $7,000 a month. So instead of that money coming in and going out, like Nelson would say, if the person doesn't know what the problem is, he won't see the solution coming. The problem that my client was, was seeing and having happen to him was he was making the money, but the money was winding up somewhere else. The $7,000 came in his net paycheck, but it immediately went out to American Express. Here, at least the way we've set it up now is the $7,000 comes in as a premium and the rest is history. That was the biggest because That's money that somebody says, oh, I make the money, I spend the money, it's in my budget. But yeah, you're losing use of that money. So we recaptured the use of $7,000 a month and we got the policy, we got the growth and on and on and on. That was, that was huge. He called me up and said, hey, can we do the same thing for my wife? She's got a $2,500 credit card bill every month. She wasn't even paying it. At least he was paying his bill.

He probably wants something else to be done about that.

Yeah. So pretty great question, but that was impactful. And you asked it in addition to the random normal things, watching somebody's credit card, how much money they're spending, looking at the budget. And I didn't even touch the budget. We had previously worked on reducing cost, et cetera. But great question.

Boy, I'll add to what you shared, Alan, just as another example, Richard. So a company wants to design a, what's going to be a really, really profitable private label product and the investment to tool it and build it and advertise it and get all that work done, it's somewhere around $25,000. And the business itself, the entity is operating profitably. It's, it's free cash flowing, positive net income. Things are good. And when the business owner, through their own thinking, the business owner said, well, The way that I looked at it was that if I tapped into the business's operating line of credit, well, I'm getting the money from the conventional bank to go and take care of this, but the minimum repayment schedule is something that the business would receive every month, right? Like, here's the payment that you need to make to service this. Versus all on his own, did the math and said, well, if I take a $25,000 policy loan and I know that it's— my runway is 6 months from product development to profitable sales, then I'm going to pay about $134 a month in simple interest over a 6-month window versus a lot more that would've had to have been paid on that operating line of credit. And the click, the, the moment where it was like, oh my God, this just makes perfect business sense because we know he's not interrupting any of the accumulation of cash value while products are being manufactured and packaged and shipped and sold. All of that accumulation is still going on, and he'll be able to replenish and repay that policy loan and re-access even more capital to repeat the process and develop more products. At an expense of about $134 a month, which is fully deductible, by the way, because the motive is to earn taxable income. So it's just, it's just brilliant. And when business owners get that, which business owners tend to get that very quickly, oh, what an incredible moment that is to witness. Isn't that good?

It's very good. Yeah. Once people get never use your own money. So you've got this example, $25,000 to open it up. If he has previously built up a bank, a bank account, a branch policy, 2 policies, and he's accessing money, he's not accessing his own money.

That's right.

He's accessing the money of the insurance company. If he gets a business loan, He's accessing his own money.

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I like the idea we could, we could, we could do a play on words there of something like, don't, don't use your own money, use co-owned money.

Well, well, I, I wouldn't— I, I would say your own money because it really is the, the more you really look at it, and you guys have been around longer than I, uh, have The premium dollars is my money. The premium dollars is my money. And that's, that's all I'm playing with. My money.

Awesome.

Rich.

Alan, this is a ton of fun. We loved having you on. Excited to see you in a couple of weeks when we get together in Birmingham for our annual Think Tank conference. Of course, this episode will probably air afterwards, but very excited to see you, my friend. Thank you for being on the program today. Now, 52 years in the financial world, you've seen everything, like Jason said, the ups, downs, the markets, the cycles. You even explained a few of them here today on our call. With all that time and all that history and all the things that you've seen, if you were to project forward and think about what's the legacy of Alan going forward, who do you most want to be a hero to?

Who do I want to be a hero to? Average working middle-class Americans. Average working middle-class Americans. They, they are the backbone of society and they get treated like trash. Nobody's there for them. Nurses, doctors, plumbers, auto mechanics, the people that go to work every day, 9 to 5, 9 to 9. Big question. Yeah, everyday people need our help. Nobody's there. And the insurance companies aren't really there to help either.

Yeah.

So it's very true.

They need the distribution force.

And just so happens that's us and the education and the warmth and the love, you know, and they really need— years ago, I'll leave you with this. Years ago, I was watching some sort of program. There was a speaker up there. and it was in the world of cassette tapes, little, little things. You guys may have been told about it, but they may not remember. Yes, it had that thing inside. Well, this person on stage said— did like a demonstration and said, said like, I have a cassette tape in my brain, and went like this, and he like popped it out, and he had another tape, a blank tape, and he popped it in. That's what I want to get an image to people, that we need to get rid of the cassette tape in their brain which is guiding their decisions and their thoughts, and they need to put it in with a blank tape. I want to impact people who want to make a difference in other people's lives, and the way to do that is to get a blank tape into their head and just Clear their mind of all of this rubbish.

Well, very cool.

This is why I love having these conversations. And so for everybody who's watching or listening, if, if this conversation made you stop and think that I need to think, rethink how money is actually moving through my life, that, that's a really good thing. And now here's to your next step. So don't stop here. So on YouTube, you will have seen the next video that shows up And that's a recommended video for you to watch. And so keep going down your journey, your path, your journey of learning. There's always something new to learn. And Alan, thank you for the decades of perspective. And to everybody who's watching, just remember that money doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be looked at in terms of how it's moving through your life and what a simple reroute can create for you long range. And so, we'll see you on the next episode. Guys, this was fun.

Bye, everybody. Thank you. See you soon.