Infinite Banking FAQ Part 2: Policy Loans, Interest Rates, & Tax Rules

Okay, Richard and I are diving into FAQ part 2 of the most frequently asked questions around the infinite banking concept and high cash value dividend paying whole life insurance contracts. Anytime this topic comes up online, you know, some, some people think the concept is genius, the tool is amazing. Some people think that the concept is a scam or that the tool doesn't have merit. There's always one guy named CryptoWolf1978 with a cartoon profile who suddenly becomes a leading actuarial expert. We're just going to answer some additional questions and, and Rich and I'll do that just like normal human beings. And at least you'll disagree with us from a place of knowledge and you'll disagree with us intelligently, which already puts you ahead of about 97% of the internet. Okay, so let's, let's dive in, Rich.

All right. First one on the list that we have here is what interest rate is charged on policy loans?

Oh, that's a really good question. I think probably one of the biggest things to clarify out of the gate is that every life insurance carrier— so if your policies are with an ideally reputable mutual life insurance company, or even if they're with a stock company, the simple interest rate that accrues on policy loans varies. It varies by carrier. And so the question to ask What interest rate is charged on policy loans? That is best in sequence when you determine what carrier you're planning to apply and have the policies put in place with. Generally speaking, I mean, it can range as low as 5%, uh, can range as high as 9%. It, again, it depends on the carrier. And I think the, the distinction that Rich and I always like to talk about is, um, I guess it dependent upon how you plan to utilize your policy or your system of policies. The point being, you should never request a policy loan that you do not have a plan in place prior to requesting it in terms of repayment. And repayment obviously on your schedule because the capital is available from the life insurance company on demand, on your terms. And sometimes having an unstructured loan could be a bad thing if the human condition, if the discipline isn't there. But the comparison is not the policy loan simple interest rate. The comparison is, would I rather finance that thing, whatever it is, through a conventional bank and permanently transfer the principal and the interest away? Because when you make a payment, it's principal and interest. Who does the lender put the interest to work for? The stockholders of the bank, not the depositors who leave the money there, not the borrowers who repay the loans. Or do you want that principal and interest flowing back to an entity that you co-own, where the interest portion is deployed and put to work for the benefit of the participating policyholders. So it's not like Nelson says so brilliantly in his book, a fatal error in thinking is believing that the infinite banking concept is a function of interest rates. It's all a matter of where the money is flowing to and who it's being put to work for and for how long.

Yeah, and I, I will expand on this a little bit in the example of, okay, interest rate charged on policy loans, the best time to ask that question would be after you're already, first of all, determined that this is something you want to do. You've, you've gone through the clarity and the experience of education, you've met with a coach, and now you want to maybe validate or confirm a couple things about the, the specific insurance carrier that you might be working with. That's when that might be a relevant question, I think, is the key thing to identify. Because there's many reasons as to why you might choose one carrier rather. Choosing a carrier over their interest rate would be one of the last reasons on the list of all the different reasons to choose. Well, what is their participating account like? What is their dividend history like? What— how do they manage things? What is their loans process? What is the procedure? How, how visible is that information? How easy is it for me to deal with the company? Like, there's a whole laundry list of other questions somewhere near the bottom is what is their current interest rate on loans and/or what is the way that they determine or, you know, maybe look at adjusting their interest rate. These rates will adjust from time to time with carriers. So as an example, I have a carrier that I work with where my very first policy is what I call in the air quotes on the old system, you know, before they started making a lot of product changes. And that one is adjustable more with a prime rate. So as prime rate adjusts, the interest rate on that particular one adjusts as well. And so right now, today, I think I can, I can get out a policy loan today, Jay, at the time we're recording this, May of 2026. I think I can get one somewhere in the area of like 5.5%, maybe 5.85%, something like that.

Oh yeah, I have several in the same range.

In the same range. And then, and then there's a couple of other carriers that I also have some policies with. And one particular carrier, I can get access to a policy loan. That one, I think right now it's 6.95%, right? But the rate has already come down. And so when my anniversary shows up, it'll reflect an updated rate. So from a policy loan, typically, typically the rate adjustment, if it happens, they'll make an announcement at some point in time in the year. Every life company does their annual reports at different times.. And when that announcement is made, when your policy anniversary comes around the clock, if an adjustment happens, the adjustment would happen typically at the anniversary date of your policy. And so if you have multiple policies at different timeframes, it's not really not worth paying a lot of attention to because you just go about your life and your business and your loan structure. All right. During the recent COVID interest rate spike that we saw, some carriers who maybe have a more variable type rate Yeah, their interest rates spiked up. There was one carrier in Canada, I think they reached maybe somewhere as high as about 9.5, 9.7%. And I have a policy with that carrier. And, and depending on when that rate announcement happened, you maybe had a year of that and then it went down and it went down again, etc. We have another carrier where they choose and they make their decision about adjusting their loan rate based on different criteria.. It's not tied to a prime rate. It's based on a, a long-term trend and trajectory of how they're bringing money in, what, what they expect on their par account rate of return and their different assumptions on how the, how the par account's working. And so they keep a closer parity to their dividend scale in this. And so like their rationale for their loan rate is just very different. And it's been extremely consistent for the last 15 years, roughly speaking, would you say?

Yeah, well, when I first got going, um, back in 2008, you know, obviously rates were much different then, but yeah, we were accessing policy loans at 4% or less. And, uh, the point being is that it's, it, it's, it's sort of like staring at the cost of fertilizer while you're completely ignoring the growth of the orchard. Like, it's It's just such, um, such an important, important frame of reference that if you can borrow money from a conventional bank— think of any conventional bank in the United States where we do business sea to shining sea, or Canada where we do business coast to coast— pick any large conventional bank, and if the rate is if you can access capital at 4% and you can access capital directly from the life insurance company that you co-own at 6.5%, yes, a, a, a child in grade 3 would go, 4% is the lower number. Of course it is. What comes into a person's train of thought when they're implementing the Infinite Banking Concept is being in a position of total and absolute control.

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When you borrow from a conventional bank, it's not an unstructured loan. Unstructured loans from a conventional bank don't exist. Credit reports, application, qualification, income verification. The list goes on and on and on.

Now, financial proctology— think of it as a financial proctology exam. You get to leave with all the pain and you get to walk, waddle out of the banker's office, whereas that doesn't happen when you're doing business with the insurance.

For some people, they're okay with that. We're not suggesting that any of those underwriting steps are good, bad, or otherwise. That is just the cost, the steps of doing business.

They're a cost of doing business and it's a cost of time and effort.

Well, and it's just an absence of peace of mind in the sense that if you were to do the math, God rest his soul, when R. Nelson Nash, the developer, the pioneer, The Infinite Banking Concept, when he would help us to think about our thinking, not his thinking, our thinking. And Nelson would say, "Let me ask you a question. If you borrow money from a conventional bank at a lower rate than the life insurance company, when you send repayment back to the conventional bank, may I ask, Who does that conventional bank put that money to work for and for how long? Obvious answer: the stockholders of the bank. Now, may I ask, when you repay a policy loan on your schedule, who does the life insurance company put that money to work for and for how long? The answer is obvious: the participating policyholders. When you're dealing with a reputable mutual life insurance company. So Nelson would simply say, "Well, I rest my case," because he wants you to think about your thinking as it relates to that. People get hung up on rate. It's not a function of rates. Those go up, those go down. It's a function of control. Where's that money flowing to? Who is it being put to work for and for how long?

And a good question. So a piggyback question that ties onto this, Jason, that One of the things that I think is one of the best ones you've ever kind of came up with, and I love this, is who do you want to be in a 100-year relationship with? Right? Right. And where that makes a lot of sense, you're a parent, you're a grandparent, and you have policies on yourself. You've got them on your children, on your grandchildren, and you're in that position. You know, not the grandchildren yet, but everybody's got policies. I've got policies on my kids. And so, you know, my son is 10 years old at the time of this. And so in 90 years, he's 100. I'm I'm likely not going to be here, although longevity is going a long way. We'll see. It's possible. If that is the case, well, anytime I'm doing business with a company, I'm doing business with a company that my son co-owns, my daughter co-owns as well. And so I want them to be profitable for a long, long time. So the mindset shift is very distinct. If you start to think about things the way Nelson talked about with his main rules, you got to think long range, learn how to think beyond your own lifespan. A lot of people don't even think beyond the weekend. They barely even think about the weekend.

So, yeah, it's very true.

If you can start to adjust your thinking process around multiple generations, the generation beyond you, when you're no longer here, the way you think and act and start to do things tends to shift a little bit as well. That's part of why long-term thinking is core, is a, is a core aspect. It's a critical element. To the behavior necessary to incorporate this process. And so the tool that does the best job at that is one that's designed for whole lifespans, you know, actuarially speaking.

Yeah, very true. Okay, uh, question 2: So what happens if I don't repay a policy loan? Now, before Rich dives into this, this is where, this is where I think people need, uh, calm, you know, um, adult level clarity. And so, Rich, what happens if I don't repay a policy loan?

Interest accumulates, the loan keeps growing, and that comes off the death benefit. Or if you surrendered the policy because, well, my— in my words, you're a moron and you decide to do that. I don't want to call anyone out, but if you're surrendering a perfectly good policy, I would say that that's not particularly logical behavior, right? Well, then you would have less that you get out of it because a loan's been accumulating. And so if you had a home equity line of credit against your house and you borrowed everything off of it and then you never sent a payment back, they're going to, they're going to foreclose on your house. Like they're going to take the house. So the same kind of premise applies here. The difference is that the traditional bank needs a payment and if you're not making it, it's going to be a problem. Life insurance company doesn't because it's an unstructured loan. So if you're not the one creating the structure, the insurance company is not going to do it. It's not their contract. They administer the contract. It's your contract. So you have to take the ownership stake as an owner to make that behavior operate, which is why the behavior element is the critical component. Nelson says on the addendum of page 44, before the twin sister example, there are only two hard, fast rules in building and carrying out this concept. Number one, don't be afraid to capitalize the system. The more you put in, the more you get back tax-free at passive income time. And number two, don't make policy loans without making provisions for paying them back. In essence, stealing from your system, just as in the grocery business, don't steal the peas. How simple can it get? So it's in multiple places in the book. Nelson identifies and talks about the critical component of repaying policy loans. The whole grocery store example has a lot of learning lessons about the concept in it, but one of the core fundamental things is not stealing the peas, which is about not stealing from your business structure, which robs from your future wealth. And that of the generation that follows you. So no loan repayments, no loan repayment provisions. If a person's even looking at this and they're saying, boy, what happens if I don't repay a policy loan? Really what they want to know is they want to know, am I going to get in trouble? Like, am I going to get a nasty letter? Am I going to get foreclosed on? Am I going to go, you know, I'm going to have to report that somehow? Like, There, I think there's those concerns, Jason, because that's what would happen in the traditional banking system world. So if you don't pay a loan in the traditional banking system, there are real consequences. Well, there's still consequences in the private banking system world where you're your own banker, but those consequences are, are the consequences that you choose. It's the choice to have loan interest compound with the life company, which you co-own. To have less available for tax-free death benefit and to have, you know, less available for utilization because you're allowing interest to build up unnecessarily. Whereas if you were properly structuring your loan repayment and setting a commitment, well then that wouldn't be the case. So the end result is what happens if you don't repay a loan is the loan keeps going up with interest, just like any other.

Yeah, policy loans, we've been talking about this so much over the years, they're not like bank loans where someone's, you know, calling you every month demanding payments. If those payments aren't flowing in, there's total and absolute control. There's a lot of flexibility. But I've been, you know, sharing for years, probably much like you, Rich, is that flexibility should not be confused with irresponsibility. If unmanaged loans grow too large relative to the policy values. So you have ever-increasing cash value, you have an ever-increasing policy loan balance in tandem with it. The policy could eventually lapse, and if a policy lapses with gains inside of it, there could be tax consequences. And that, that's why proper, proper coaching and ongoing management matter. Now, if you, if you're working with a coach, the coach is responsible to you, not for you, and the ongoing management is yours. That's your responsibility. And a policy loan is, again, it's, it's a financial tool, and, and like any tool, I think wisdom matters more, uh, than, than enthusiasm. And so really understanding that, yes, you control the repayment schedule, but that comes with responsibility. And how you do anything is how you do everything. And so if you're already very financially responsible, you have a track record and a clear understanding of the advantages of repaying your, your loans to other lenders on time all the time, then you're likely going to do just fine with the responsibility and flexibility of policy loans.

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Dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts are unilaterally binding. 100% of the risk is with the life insurance carrier, not the policy owner. Universal life is like term life insurance with a slot machine attached to it. Not that that's a bad thing. Um, you have an insurance component, you have a cash account that gets invested in whatever you choose to invest it in. With dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts, you have Guarantees. You've got contractually guaranteed daily growth. You've got contractually guaranteed access to capital. You've got permanent ever-increasing coverage if the policy is structured that way. You've got contractually guaranteed daily accumulation that you're paying no tax on. You've got a guaranteed death benefit that if it's set up properly, you pay no tax on. You earn dividends because you have a co-ownership interest in the company. You're focused on long-term stability. The insurance company itself manages the investment function of the capital in the insurance company. You have no say, engagement, involvement, opinion in how the life insurance company deploys and invests that capital, which they're far better at it than you'll ever be. Universal life, flexible. Uh, more moving parts.

Now, for full disclosure, a lot, a lot of moving parts actually.

I've never illustrated one. I've never sold one. I've never purchased one. I would never utilize a universal life insurance policy for the implementation of the infinite banking concept. It's an investment-oriented contract. Um, you're dependent upon market returns, investment selections, cost, right, can increase over time depending on the structure. Requires more active management. A par whole life contract is— it has engineered outcomes. Universal life is assembled.

That's actually pretty— that is really good. And, and the outcome, however, depending on how it's assembled and then maintained, is extremely variable.

And I would say that neither is automatically good or bad. Correct.

Neither one. And, and then additionally, so like, so there's, there's no maintenance or effort really in a, in a dividend-paying whole life insurance policy. So you can have whole life that's not participating, pretty boring, relatively useless, would never recommend anyone have that, but there's a, there's a valid reason case for it that exists for a reason. You can have, so there's some plain old vanilla whole life, there is dividend-paying participating whole life, and then there's a variety of ways to structure those But in comparison to how many different ways you can structure a universal life policy, I mean, there's a, there's a much wider category because they keep coming out with new additions and variations of them over the years. And I will say this. So for in Canada, there is two primary ways you can choose to start one of those universal life contracts. And one is with what's called a YRT or an ART. Stands for yearly or annual renewable term layer. And then there's a level cost of insurance layer. Now, in the United States, from what I understand from our colleagues and everyone I've spoken to, you only have the one option, and that option is a yearly renewable or annual renewable term layer. And so it's really low in the early years. But as you age up and you get older and older, well, you have a hockey stick exponential spike as the cost of insurance as you reach closer to natural mortality spikes up, which means it, it's gotta pull that value from somewhere. So in a world where we've been trained that we quote unquote don't want to pay a premium or want to reduce our outgoing expenses, people want to stop paying premiums right at the point in time where the cost of required premium goes up exponentially. And the result is it has to get that money from somewhere to survive. A premium is required for the policy to survive. So it's either got to come from your cash flow out of your pocket and resources, or it has to come from the internal resources, the internal pocket of the insurance contract itself. Now, the same thing applies to a whole life policy. The difference is when you lock it in, you lock in a fixed price point for an actuarially solid determined period that never goes up. It's inflation adjusted, it's locked in place. That is not the case with a universal life policy in most scenarios. There is a level cost option in Canada. It's very infrequent. I don't see it very often. Jason, in 18 years, how frequently do you see one of those?

Never. For me, I just don't look at universal life policies. That would be like a dentist looking at an MRI.

Well, to add some context, so we've had a number of guests on the platform. We've had Todd Langford of Truth Concepts explaining a lot about how these things break down. But we've also had a lawyer whose sole main job right now is dealing with class action style lawsuits against life companies and advisors who sold products based on universal life structures that have never panned out. And we hear constantly and we meet people constantly who have these kinds of structures that they might have looked good on paper when they were sold originally, but The market has changed. They didn't fund it properly. They didn't do this. They took a policy loan. What they thought about loans wasn't accurate. Like, all of the things that they remember or told are totally different, and they didn't follow through on anything because their behavior got in the way. And so even if the market performed, which it didn't in most cases, they, they're going to end up with an imploding policy or something that is going to— that potentially will, when they need the coverage the most, they end up not having it. And that is happening unfortunately to a really, really vast degree. So again, it doesn't make it good or bad or otherwise, but being aware of how it is built and the amount of extra energy and effort it takes to make it viable versus the— I don't want to say, but the more closely, you know, set it and forget it style of structure because of the built-in guarantees with whole life is just a drastic difference. Totally. The description of a slot, you know, a Vegas-style slot machine with a term insurance policy attached to the side of it is, is, I think, the most appropriate visual way of considering how a universal life structure for the average person operates.

There you go.

All right.

What's the next question?

All right. Next on the list we have: Is the death benefit tax-free?

Oh, we were chatting about this before we hit the record button. I would say generally yes. Now, again, we do business in the United States, sea to shining sea, Canada coast to coast. And so here are some things that are important to understand. So when you're working with owning a dividend-paying whole life insurance contract, or ideally a system of contracts, the death benefits are paid to named beneficiaries, and generally speaking, they're received income tax-free. Now, that creates, um, tremendous, tremendous estate efficiency, right? It allows obviously capital to transfer immediately and privately, um, outside of probate, and the, the tax-free nature of that death benefit is probably one of the primary reasons that dividend-paying whole life insurance plays such a major role in estate planning, business succession, family legacy planning. Um, obviously the policy must be in force at the time of death, and the ownership structure matters in the way of who the beneficiary is of the death benefit. Now, this applies to both countries. In Canada, we're dealing with corporate-owned life insurance contracts that have additional considerations like a capital dividend account, which is outside the scope of the question. We've recorded some great content on that. But the government taxes almost everything in life. And when you have properly structured dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts, It definitely changes what happens at death. We've had to deliver a substantial number of death benefit claims in our professional journey. When we think of our collective team, all of our advisors on our team, people, every now and then someone dies. And when we deliver that death benefit, we've never had a family say, "I wish this check was taxable." And I hoped that it would be for less money.

It's never happened. Definitely not. Yeah. So I mean, there's not a lot of things in life, like you mentioned, that we can be assured are tax-free. And but yet we, you know, there's a common saying that there's two known facts, you know, in life, and that's death and taxes. I'm like, okay, well, Being that that is the case and that is true, wouldn't you want to solve for those two known things with the one thing that takes it into consider— consideration? Like, like there's literally a product designed to combat that.

The only thing that doesn't get worse when politicians meet is death. Okay, next question.

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Are dividends taxable? And is dividend— is a dividend classed as income? For tax purposes? Because I think this is where people confuse insurance dividends with stock dividends. So what would you say about that?

Uh, well, dividends from a participating dividend-paying whole life insurance policy, as long as they are utilized to purchase more insurance, they are used effectively as a premium, and you— they're used as an opportunity to go and fund another premium, so they, they stay within the ecosystem of the insurance contract. They are not taxable, and in fact, they create an increasing tax-free outcome. So it's, it's actually the exact opposite. However, dividends have different options. And so when you're designing the policy and the adv— you're working with ABC Advisor, there's a, there's checkboxes on the application. What would you like your dividends to do if you receive any? Do you want to receive them in cash? Boom, taxable. Do you want to use them to reduce the premium? And then eventually they become, you know, that goes over and exceeds and then they come out to you. So like there's a couple of options available. What is the most effective and efficient model? Widely popularized is the use of paid-up additions. And so that's one of the options called a dividend election. Coincidentally, election, you're checking a box like you're at the voting booth. What am I going to vote for my dividends to do?. And if you vote paid-up additions, they're— they are— a dollar is buying a much greater than that dollar amount of death benefit that it's tax-free the moment it's paid. So you actually create the exact opposite of it, of taxation. You create an increasing, uh, tax-free outcome if you use it correctly.

100%. And you know, the, um, the, the tax treatment, it, uh, It can vary based on the policy owner's decisions and behavior. And so, um, like Richard said, you know, when dividends are chunked right back in to purchase more paid-up additions at no additional cost to increase the death benefit, which in turn increases the total cash value, which in turn increases the long-range policy performance— insurance dividends that are paid declared and paid from a life insurance company are not the same thing as dividends that you would receive on stocks that you own in publicly traded companies that distribute dividends. Even though people use the same word, they're definitely not the same thing. Okay, Rich, here's another one. Why isn't everyone doing this?

Knowledge, aptitude, decision fatigue. And I would say 60 years of boiled frog theory in the typical financial system. So let me quantify what that means. So boiled frog theory is you put a, put a boiled frog, put a frog in lukewarm water and he's fine, he's comfortable, and you just slowly turn the heat up. And supposedly you can boil a frog that way. And I don't believe that that's actually true, but over time you become acclimatized to certain things. Well, over time, for the last 50 years in North America and US and Canada, the entire financial machine and world has been built around go see an advisor and give them your money to be invested. And that's the whole marketing machine and the banks and You know, you have until this day to come and get your contribution for a tax deduction. Like all of this stuff around the whole world has people accustomed to that world, like kind of like a boiled frog. And so frustration, maybe a little bit of anger, maybe a little bit of disappointment with how that's turned out for the last 50-some-odd years. Take a 2008 financial crisis, throw in some pretty chaotic elements around COVID and all these kind of things. And people maybe start to lose a little trust in the system. They start looking for what has been consistent all the time. They're like, oh geez, you're right. There's this thing called whole life insurance here. But everyone thought that that was kind of crappy, but apparently it's just been kicking butt for the last 200 years. Maybe we should take another look at it. So I think we're seeing a pendulum swing effect there. So why isn't everyone doing it? That's part of it. Not everyone can qualify for insurance. Not everyone is willing to read a book. Like this one called Becoming Your Own Banker, because that's work. And so they're lazy and they don't want to take the work. Not everyone wants to have the opportunity to control money. In fact, they would rather blame someone else for their failures by not taking responsibility. So there's a lack of— there's an abdication of responsibility aspect. So I think these are, you know, I could keep going on, but those are several of the reasons I think why not everyone is doing this.

Okay. Yeah. I would say, you know, my, my perspective, like, I think this is probably the most important question of this entire episode, because when, when someone asks inevitably, why isn't everyone doing this? Those who understand it are doing it. And traditional, traditional financial education. Um, I can even speak for myself personally. You know, I, I began a dividend reinvestment program when I was 19 years young. I'm turning 52 this year. And traditional financial education, what did it teach me? It taught me to save money. That's smart. Taught me to, um, transfer interest away permanently, something I didn't know. It taught me to, um, when I needed access to money, rather than deplete my savings, go to a bank, borrow the capital develop credit history and become a qualified borrower and access capital from the books of someone else's bank. And you're taught to do that and repeat it. And I didn't begin implementing the Infinite Banking Concept until 2008. I knew nothing about the process. I knew nothing about dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts. But when I attended that very first educational event, I left the event thinking I need to— and I didn't realize it at the time that I was a very high fact-finder as measured by Kolbe Index— I need to interview every life insurance company that'll talk to me and trust but verify everything that I learned. And very few people are taught The advantages of, of creating capital, controlling capital, and the infinite banking concept— it requires discipline. It requires developing, um, habit-based transformation. And modern culture, modern culture wants microwavable success. How long can I stick this thing in the microwave? And when it pings, I pull the success out. This is not a TikTok strategy. It's a, it's a long-range process. And many advisors, many home office personnel themselves do, do not understand the tool that's used to implement the process— properly designed dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts— beyond a rudimentary level. Others dismiss it without even, you know, studying it. And some critics will analyze illustrations while simultaneously ignoring real-world decades-long experience. It just— it boggles the mind. If something requires patience, discipline, long-range thinking, and delayed gratification automatically most people won't do it. Yeah, that's what I've been explaining to people, that it's just the truth. Most people are trying to look wealthy.

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And very few are focused on actually becoming financially unshakable. And so the question isn't why every— why isn't everyone doing it? It's why so few people are taught to think this way to begin with. That's the right question. Why are so few people taught to think this way to begin with?

They want the Ferrari, but they've got a Honda Civic budget. Well, you can apply that to like their mindset to a large degree. And here's another thing I think I would add to that too, Jason. I totally agree with everything you indicated. The word insurance sets people's minds into a deep freeze. And that is not always the case, but it is often the case because we've been trained to think that the insurance salesperson is a bad person or or someone has an experience with travel insurance and it doesn't go well, or they have an experience with some other area of insurance, or they have a buddy or a friend that they had a car accident and, you know, the insurance didn't pay out. And so that aligns their thinking around the general category. And so then, then when the word insurance comes out, like they've, they kind of got their back up against the wall already. Like there's a, there's a preconceived feeling, and that feeling outweighs good sense. It stops rational thought from entering their brain because of what comes up for them. I've experienced that with a number of people, and there's probably a point in time in my life where I had that thought process, and I'm sure there's maybe other areas of our life, my life, where that occurs. And so the arrival syndrome that Nelson talks about is real. There's no point in teaching me anything new. I've already arrived in knowledge. Well, I would go one step further in that, that there's the arrival syndrome around how you feel about certain topics. And if you've got an emotional charge to it and it's not a positive charge, well, then it will dull your mental capacity to take in new information, right? So there's a physiological response to being able, willing, and open and interested in learning something. And if some feeling tells you not to do that, I mean, you're just going to back away from it. I think that that has a role because how often do we have questions of people, you know, they're very guarded around just the idea of insurance or life. Oh, what? Well, it's just life insurance, you know, like, but they say it with almost like a degree of contemptiveness. It's really strange. And I, now that I've been doing this for so long, I just don't understand because I literally believe this is one of the most valuable and most important jobs and careers on the planet based on what we do. I mean, we, we make real drastic and dramatic change in people's lives in a way that I didn't even truly understand and realize was possible. I only got licensed in this industry to do this, and then now having done it for so long, I mean, what, what we're doing for people is so much bigger than just this, like, It's really, really valuable.

Yeah. You know, I would say we'll leave the viewers and listeners with, with this. So I think the, you know, the, the older Richard and I get, the more I think we realize that financial frustration for the overwhelming majority of people that we are blessed to speak with, or that are all of our Ascendant Financial teammates, both sides of the border are blessed to speak with. It comes from one thing. People giving away control of their money their entire lives and never stopping long enough to question it. They finance everything, they transfer interest away permanently, they, they keep money in places they can't access efficiently, and then they wonder why they always feel financially tight despite the fact that they're making good income. And this process is like Nelson describes in his book, it's not a get-rich-quick anything. It's not some secret loophole discovered by a guy on YouTube wearing sunglasses indoors. You know, it's, it's a, it's a disciplined financial behavior paired with a very efficient, reliable financial tool. That's it. And, and honestly, I think that once people understand the mechanics, the reaction is usually the same. Why did nobody explain this to me earlier? Like, we hear that all the time. Well, probably because explaining— I wish I had met you 20 years ago. No, it's, it's simple. Why did nobody explain this to me earlier? Because explaining money properly is much harder than selling debt. Debt sells itself. It, it just does. And so hopefully, um, you know, this conversation around this whole frequently asked question thing. Hopefully this, this episode has created, um, the desire to have a conversation. Get into the conversation with the right person on our team. We'll make sure that there's a link somewhere in the description where you can connect with the right person on our team and, and just have a conversation. And what you'll see is another video that popped up. That's the algorithm doing what it's engineered to do, and, uh, we support that. We, we would encourage you to continue your journey of learning, and there's no such thing as having arrived in knowledge. And so, uh, until next time, keep asking great clarifying questions.