Infinite Banking Initiative (IBI) - Chris Bay

0:00Here's the phrase I would say is this is probably the most impactful for me And I share this with lots of IBC coaches is I don't need IBC for everybody I want it for everybody, but I don't need it for everybody Not everybody is gonna catch IBC and I'm a teacher So I really I fought against Nelson saying of you know, IBC is caught not taught I was like now wait a second. I think I could teach it to anybody He's right you can't not everybody catches IBC Welcome to the Infinite Banking Initiative a podcast from the Nelson Nash Institute The official home of the Infinite Banking concept and becoming your own banker I'm Lee Bargoneer along with David Sterns and we're your host In this episode we're joined by IBC practitioner Chris Bay from Lawrence, Kansas Thanks for listening

1:01Well Chris, thank you so much for joining us on the Infinite Banking Initiative We like to start off each episode by our guests sharing their stories and how they discovered the Infinite Banking concept Please share that with us today. It's a fun story for me to share actually And you guys have heard it before But and sometimes I get emotional about it because it's been so impactful in our lives. I will say that Get little context our family our little family of four. We were just your average family from Lawrence, Kansas and I had spent about 20 years in education. I was an elementary school principal And for about seven years, you know through church organizations We had been exposed to daybraums these teachings and so we actually were following daybraums these teachings for about seven years and We were pretty good like if you give us some information we will Execute it pretty well week shawning up my wife and I do that pretty well

2:06but as many people know In relationships oftentimes one of the top friction points is finance And the whole idea of you know by term and thus the difference you don't want to live on dog food when you're older all those fear tactics and things um Our challenge was we didn't have any extra to invest the difference if we didn't have the difference We were single-income education family of four and um when I One of those last years I was making about eighty thousand dollars a year gross for our family of four and So we struggled. I mean I remember Us having to Negotiate with our medical care providers because we couldn't cover the costs of what our family needed at the time So I was always I'm a learner. I'm a researcher and I'm always looking for ways to stretch the dollar right and we were disciplined

3:07We made it work, but we were struggling and we had arguments. We didn't go up to eat. We didn't go on vacations It was tough um So as I mentioned I was a elementary school principal and I had a dad in the school Who was a business owner and he he had two kids that went through our school and he would come up and volunteer and One day I just asked that we developed a relationship Trust and I just asked him one day I said hey do you mind if I ask how you manage your money? And he said have you ever heard of the infinite banking concept as like No, and I've researched a lot and I've never come across that that name that phrase the concept never I was like How do I learn about it because he wasn't teaching that or selling and he just used it as a business owner and as a as a as a individual They said we need to get a hold of this black book be called becoming your own banker and read it

4:10Maybe a couple times And and then you need to connect with this guy His name is Mike Everett Which I know you guys have interviewed Mike Everett And Mike and I are business partners now Um, and I had actually known Mike back when I was in college. I was part of a youth ministry Group in Lawrence. I was in college and our local high school had no youth ministry So there were a bunch of us college kids who just kind of started a we started showing up at football games and connecting with kids But we needed a place to meet and so Mike and Linda actually opened their home to us so that we could meet with the kids in their home and his his His niece was part of that group Heather was part of that group So that's where I first got to know Mike and then our lives intersected over years through church and etc So Sean I read the book and Sean and I um

5:10Reached out to Mike and said hey red Nelson's book and just curious would you be willing to Teach us about this So he came to our home and and I remember it so vividly I mean if you guys know what if the listeners know Mike Everett at all or they've seen the video the guy He's 70 years old and he has more energy than a fourth grader um You know who's out of control. He's just His passion and his energy is unbelievable. You cannot replace it And so you think about that big personality and that ball of energy in our little living room and he's like doing cartwheels Right teaching this stuff to us and I'm like whoa slow down dude man Can I just need to process this a little bit and one of my issues Backtrack Dave Ramsey right so whole life insurance is the worst possible place you could put your money and I'm stuck Psychologically mentally I'm stuck on that and I'm listening to this guy that I've known

6:15I know his story. I'm thinking do I really want to take financial advice from Mike Everett right? So we're going through this whole thing and It took us nine months of skeptical research On becoming your own banker on infinite banking um Mike loves to make fun of me of that because you know he's a quick start. I am not I like to know what the temperature of the water is. I want to know how deep the water is You know, I want to have my towel set closed so when I get out at a pit cold all that planning stuff right So eventually after nine months my wife who also she probably knows more about finance and I ever did at the time She's a family farm business person owner and she reached over and grabbed my arm. She said this just makes sense And that's coming from her And her family going to the banks every year and begging and pleading for them to extend their loans

7:16And when she got the idea that you could actually be your own banker It opened up her mind and she's like this makes says and I looked at her as like Okay, now my position was We didn't have margin for air so I was scared. I was coming from a place of fear And so anyway fast track we started the plan We started four policies one on each of us in the family We started higher premiums than what Mike was recommending Um, I would not recommend what we did to clients But we knew how to do the daybrainsy thing and I know with finance The sooner you start the bigger you start the better it is So we had a plan as to how to make it work We even borrowed against our home to get started because Right Dave we didn't have any place to go And I worked for the school district here's how naive I was I went to the school district when I learned about all this stuff I said I'd like to liquidate my 403 B

8:19They said you can't do that you work for us I was like well, how are we going to start Well, we had equity in our home So we borrowed against our home started our four policies Turned around two within two weeks borrowed against the policies and paid off a bunch of debt And turn that outside debt we turn the wind current right we turn that outside debt into inside debt And started directing all that money back into loan repayments Within 26 months 26 months Two years and two months we were free of all of our outside debt including our mortgage We did not change our cash flow that yeah, well, we didn't change our cash flow We didn't change our lifestyle We just redirected the dollars and they got more efficient So that's how we were introduced in our little story of of I mean IBC has changed our life significantly So talk to us about the this move that you made from an elementary school principal

9:24To getting into business with Mike Everett what did that look like what drove that decision for you So we started researching in 2010 we started our policies in 2011 and in 2012 I believe was my first year. I'm going to the think tank. I wasn't licensed Um, I wasn't I don't know how I slipped in in the door But I got there somehow with Mike and I was still a school principal and so I got there and so now Not only was I I read Nelson's book of course, but then I was learning from Mike But then I got to hear from all these other voices and different teaching styles and it it connected with my learning style So my learning went so much deeper in attending the think tank and then I came home and you know In the back of Nelson's book and then at the think tank as well You always walk away with a list of books to read right and so in the back of Nelson's book There's all these books. Well, I start buying them and reading them

10:26And we're sitting in bed one night reading and my wife's over here and I'm here And she turns to me and I'm I don't know. I'm I'm reading something, you know on IBC or um fractional reserve banking or whatever and uh, she turns and she says You know, you'd be really good at teaching that And I turned back and I said You know that's a hundred percent commission and we already struggle financially. Are you crazy? As she turns back she says, I'm just saying you're a good teacher. You're trustworthy And I think you'd be really good at teaching it So this starts working in my brain and when your spouse gives you that kind of support Like you go um, okay, so we start thinking about it and I went and met with Mike and talked to him about the possibility now at the time Mike was pretty much a come one come all For any associate agency. He's like, oh, you got a you got a pulse. Yeah, come on in. Let's do this

11:31well Given our background and our story you can tell like I I'm cautious And but what allowed us to take this risk one I wasn't going to let go of my education license So I always had a and like a reentry point number two we had no outside dead anymore and We had put the peas back on the shelf so we had all the cash value sitting in our policy So we figured out we had some time to experiment with this so when ahead and got licensed and um, I Made a miscalculation. I'd been in the school district for over 20 years. I thought I'm gonna help all these teachers to this day. I have two teachers as clients out of the However many thousand you know all the clients that we have Two of them were teachers from the school district and part of it is I think teachers Are so busy and focused on teaching

12:32They're not thinking about money plus their civil servants in a way like they went into teaching to make a difference They're not really focused on the money And so that was a miscalculation on my point on my part so Yeah, so that was part of how we made the decision to jump into it and then it just took off from there and um, you know, I what I love Being a business owner, which I never imagined. I would be a business owner And I'm forever grateful to Mike Everett of giving me the opportunity Or allowing me to convince him to give me the opportunity I should say um, I love the fact that as an iBC coach, I still get to teach But as a business owner, I get to be that that school principal like I get to help build a team and make it efficient And think about how's the the best way we can get the clients They're very best experience and supporting them in their iBC system So I still get to use the skills I did in education, but I get to do it in this context. That's really fun

13:36I would think that if you are a successful elementary school principal then you can do anything Because that is definitely a challenging challenging job You talked about the four with three four three b right and then you talked about 20 or 20 years moving So did you retire from the your best at school job or be I resigned resigned, okay, David This I don't know a financial planner out there that would recommend what we did But in one year and I was not 59 and a half in fact. I'm still not 59 and a half I liquidated my 403 b That I've been contributing to for you know 22 years And we took our Kansas public retirement money as well all in the same year We paid the penalties and the taxes We tracked how long it was going to take us to recover the taxes and the penalties by turning our wind current It only took us eight months to recover the penalties and taxes when we turned our wind current

14:38So now all that money instead of being locked up in something that I had to ask permission for I couldn't access there were taxes there were rules all this stuff I couldn't use it to finance our life put our kids through school. I couldn't do any of that with it Now it was all inside our banking system. We eliminated our debt We recovered our taxes and our penalties and we've used it to finance two kids going through schools cars Down payment on a late cabin. I mean we've done all these things with it and I will tell you when we talk about the four things that IBC does Always joke that the fourth one the tax tree wealth transfers the one my kids are most interested in But truth be told that's the one that I care the most about Because before I never Thought I would have the ability to leave a financial legacy for my family And with IBC yes, we're using it. We're financing our life. We're doing all these things but oh by the way

15:40Nelson had the Wisdom to Utilize especially designed whole life insurance which just happens to have a death benefit attached And now I get to leave a financial legacy for my family that I never thought I would yeah, I mean You're hidden all the freeing High points of Obviously, but you talked about you know you eliminated that so for clarity Did you is that mean that you transferred that debt into a policy construct? And so you so you own the debt is essentially what we say yeah, what we say is we eliminated our outside debt Dead that we owned to some ode to somebody else where they got to control all the terms of that debt Yeah, and what we did is we were able to you know, I always put my arms out We shifted that outside debt to inside debt. We were still honest bankers We still made the payments, but we are making those to ourselves and getting to reuse that money We use some of that money to pay our premiums right some years

16:41We couldn't use new money to pay premium deposits So we use the money inside our system so You know all of a sudden we're making premium deposits with payments that we used to be making to banks and credit card companies Are you still expanding your your policy portfolio? Yeah, we're it we're at 10 now And one of the things I really appreciate about you David is You know, you can get in the IBC world and and it can become Comparing with the Joneses Yeah, how many policies do they have how much death bit of it do they you know all that stuff What I appreciate about you is you share and we do this with our clients I click on our policy tracker all the time. I'll say here's where we are Here's how much we owed our system Here's how much I make in monthly loan repayments And what I appreciate about you is when you share your family system In front of a large group of people right mean some of these people make a lot of money and they build amazing systems

17:42And you could get into that comparison game What I appreciate about you is you're like look we're all in this together Let's just show what we got and I know my story is going to connect with something and your story has connected with us So thank you for that Yeah, I was a little bit nervous about that and but you know You know we the first time I did that was 2016 and it was and it looked really good But it don't look so good no more because I haven't really been expanding the system But I will report to that that I did just buy two more policies on grandkids That they haven't been delivered yet But they they're approved underwriting and everything's in and so I'm getting back on the satellite increased that the little Family well, I think once you get to the phase of having grandkids your your number of policies all of a sudden jump up exponentially We've got ten personally that we own We had more but some of those we have actually signed over so if I looked at our whole family system because we've signed some over to adult children now

18:47Like lilies 27 and and she has her policies now She actually was the one and I followed Nelson's teachings on this like When do you decide to sign over a policy to a kid? one They've got to demonstrate Discipline right If you've made a family loan in the past did they make their loan repayments, right? Have they demonstrated an interest in a willingness to learn about iBC? Well, I'll take you back when I got my My practitioner when I took my practitioner's test back in the day So this is the teacher part of me. I'm thinking this is a teachable moment with lily So we made flashcards for taking the test and I had her quiz me And she's smarter than I am so by the end she knew that stuff better than I did Well, we need to go back and see what score you got in that test. Oh, not very good I will say one of our team members at the time Chris Garrett's I think he missed one question

19:50And and he went to Bob and started arguing with Bob about the question that he missed I do remember that part there is one question. I think his act is actually the answer is actually wrong Even though we say it's right But you know what that does that that that gives us the ability to brag that nobody has ever maxed the test There you go. There you go. It does help to watch the videos Mike Everett Well, I will you know I think I mentioned this on on Mike's podcast for us that that he was so infuriated that we were going to make him take a test Then he refused to study for it and and three times later he found Okay enough said about Mike. I think he's actually proud of that He loves tell us. He loves tell us story. Yeah, he loves telling it. Yeah Well, Chris talk about uh share a little bit with us about your clients that you work with and how ibc has impacted their lives You know, I'm sure that you've you've seen some

20:52Success stories along the way and there's light bulb moments coming on and your clients lives so many I mean, that's it's one of the Privileges I think of being an ibc coach is to And part of our why we exist is about long-term trusting relationships and we take Nelson's number one principle of think long term And we just apply it to our business. We're thinking long-term with our clients It's not just about them. It's about generations. We have clients of four generations that use ibc That's phenomenal just this week. I got a text from one of my client uh a Great a granddaughter who just had the second great grandchild, right? And they're like okay. It's time to start another policy um That is so fun for me to see These generations in fact even on our team um page steward

21:53She's my she's 26 right? She's my kids age. We brought her on she lives in in north central nebraska in a town of 500 And they've got three generations of ibc all these ranchers up in in northern nebraska in southern south Dakota These ranchers all talk to each other, right? And they're all doing ibc that it because if one tells the other when they all trust each other like oh, okay. I'll start doing that um So it's fun to see these generations. I think of like a specific one. I think of our family chiropractor when my kids were babies Dr. Colleen Dr. Colleen took such good care of our family and We went to a chiropractic continuing education event one time And she was there learning and she came out into the hallway and mike and i are standing there at our table with our Nelson books And she comes by and she's like hey, how are you doing? This is what you do, right? Like yeah, yeah, yeah

22:55Well, it was probably two more years later when she reached out And we do something we call the dream conversation with with our clients And one of their dreams was to be able to move to florida her husband was flor Is from florida and they wanted to move back to florida and they've got a bunch of kids And she had a chiropractic practice and all these things And i will say and and they would say this too Finances was a serious friction point for them They they had lots of challenges around finances between them Now if you ask them by the way they live in florida They're on the beach and And Brad gets to go fishing in the ocean anytime he wants which gives him so much joy and excitement But they're in florida. They've kind of redesigned their life. They're financing everything They've got all these kids so they got family banking going on right

23:56And they don't have Arguments about money anymore. They're like our marriage has gotten so much better just because you took that Pressure point around money off the table for us So that's really cool. I think about um There's a A late a single woman and she's in her 70s and when we met her she had 16 credit cards She was really embarrassed about it Part of that and david you may be able to relate to this I don't know but as a grandparent most of the balance on that grand on those credit cards were buying stuff for her grand kids But she didn't have the money for it But she still wanted to do it right so she had accumulated all these credit card balances She was embarrassed by it From our perspective we were thrilled Because when you start taking all these little balances and you turn the wind current on those It's amazing what that cash flow can do when you start turning it into a tailwind

24:58Yeah, so that's almost my old major Yeah, yeah So those are just a couple of examples. There's so many I'd take the whole time just talking about examples of our clients So she became a client at 70 years old inner 70s. Yeah, we have several clients Yeah, no problem getting her through underwriting and getting the getting the policy put in place for her Policy is not on her oh oh tell us about that We have several clients who started in their 70s Either it was at a point where it probably didn't make sense to do a policy on them Whatever health age etc. Or maybe they already had enough death benefit. They felt And so what they've done is they've identified other people in the family that they have insurable interest on So they are the owner which is Nelson teaches us in BYUB That is the most important position in the play right That's the most important player in the play is being the owner

26:01Then you ensure Whoever makes sense, but the owner still gets to use the policy for banking systems right And so these 70-year-olds they're the owners of it They may not be the insured, but they still get all the benefits from it and they're utilizing that to finance I think about a family We have a family south of town here. It's a German Baptist family And so they all are business owners or they work in each other's businesses And we had the oldest generation there a generation of four doing IBC and the oldest generation in their 70s They would take their Their cash values and they would loan it to the to the younger generations And instead of all that money leaking out of the family system It's now all rolling right back into the family system and what we found Is that that oldest generation their monthly income increased simply by becoming the bank for the family

27:02You're recapturing cash flows in the name of the game right Yeah, yeah Well, what about Chris do you have any clients who come to you and they're just You know, they've heard their Dave Ramsey people or they have some misconceptions about IBC You know, how do you handle those situations? Well for me, I just tell my own story Right because I we did Dave Ramsey for seven years and there are good Good habits. There's good knowledge. There's good information there that can apply and and actually many of our Dave Ramsey people It can be a challenge opening up the mind But the discipline is there the challenge in working with with folks from you know different mindsets or whatever or Dataverse kind of situations. I've got some people. They just do not want to have a alone in their pa look against their policy Because they see it as debt right And so we talk a lot about thinking like a banker

28:03you know so um Yeah, those are some of the challenges. I would say For us and I I don't want to you know speak for everybody, but um For us when when people come and they think oh IBC is going to be my retirement plan and and I I say well And maybe they've read Nelson's book because we always you know require slashing courage people to read Nelson's book before we meet with them and They're like well Nelson shows people using this as passive income Or like yes, it can But look at when these people started and look at how they capitalize could it yes Oftentimes if you start if you come to me when you're 50 And you're only wanting to put in 10,000 a year Well, you're probably not capitalizing it enough to actually create that passive income for you But if you started it when you were younger or it was a policy that you was started for you when you were young

29:04Yes, it absolutely could but how we talk about it is It's kind of like maslow's hierarchy of needs right you've got those foundational things in the pyramid You've got to have shelter water food right clothing you got to have those things I think of The financial maslow's hierarchy of needs is the foundation is I need to have health insurance. I need to have home insurance right like I got to have things that will cover if something goes wrong And Controlling your own banking function. I think is that first level of maslow's hierarchy of needs is if you have and a system of policies and IBC system From there you can do anything you want Is it by itself always in every situation going to create passive income for people probably not Depending on where they are in life, but it is It Retirement's not the problem. It's controlling your own banking function is the is the solution right and from there

30:09I could do anything I want I can become more efficient with my debt my purchases my investments all those kinds of things So it is in my mind it is as Nelson's books it like it's the warehouse and many of those investments your Using analogy. It's like you build up this this investment this retirement plan And then you start lopping off limbs off the animal like you're killing the animal and you just hope There's enough left to feed you till you're till you're done Whereas with IBC it is a warehouse of your wealth That is collateral that you use to do other things you're not you're not killing that that animal It's like you're using the the eggs from the chicken the chicken still there Are very at the golden goose The golden goose IBC is the golden goose What would you say you have learned along the way since you started practicing and becoming an IBC coach as you say

31:13What would you say you've learned? One is I used to get very intimidated You know if we had a client who came in it was a big big income big cash situation I would get very intimidated in those situations Or if someone was very argumentative they had the arrival syndrome. I'm not a great Arduer right? I'm not a great debater and so I would just get so intimidated in those situations And I would say now I don't as much I I believe so deeply in what we do and I have enough experience now that I can ask questions rather than trying to debate with them I just ask questions And let them talk through their situation and then I might say, you know, well, okay So I see how you're taking you're taking a loan at the bank and you're investing in real estate investments I'm just curious who controls the terms of that loan or when you invest those dollars in your real estate

32:17How many purposes are you getting from those dollars if you're in if you're buying term and investing the difference And that term is going to run out at what age Well, what's what's going to happen if you outlive that term for your family if you thought about legacy so I just ask questions and honestly Here's the phrase I would say is this is probably the most impactful for me And I share this with lots of IBC coaches is um I don't need IBC for everybody. I want it for everybody, but I don't need it for everybody Not everybody is going to catch IBC and I'm a teacher. So I really I fought against Nelson saying of you, you know IBC is caught not taught. I was like now wait a second. I think I could teach it to anybody He's right. You can't not everybody catches IBC Well, yeah, I mean as a teacher you can sit there and you can have a student

33:19Right and take notes in your lecture. Okay, and then they pass the test and three weeks later. It's all gone because all we're doing is is Is being taught something, but if you don't it if it doesn't Me anything to you. You know, you know, continue your your search for truth like you did for nine months then uh, hey It's it's just you know just conversations all it really is and I would say Even within the first two years of us starting IBC personally I still had question a moments where I question my partly because there wasn't that much information out there back in 2010 2011 the noise was so loud and you couldn't find A group of like it was difficult to find a group of like-minded people then right And so I stood and everybody else is talking about all the things they're doing the noise And so I even in the first two years I had questions, but it feels so good to have moved beyond that point

34:21Yeah, I get it and that's that's why you know meeting meeting you know as a as our community is so important Um, just you recharge your batteries Uh, you get you get more confidence in what you're doing and why you're doing it And plus you like you said you get that community engagement you can meet more and more people that Hopefully, well, you'll connect within and continue your life journey with them one of my strongest Memories Nelson's come to Lawrence a couple of times to present um, and one of my strongest memories What this is funny my parents who are not IBC users right They've never been to any of our events none of the ones that we did but they came to listen and Nelson uh And I remember we went out to dinner um that night And so all the families came of our team and Nelson's there and um, we just had a really wonderful time

35:23And that's when um Linda And Mike presented the picture of mayor of Nelson that um Linda had had done her artwork And my kids are there and they're really small at the time And everyone's there and wanting to meet Nelson and talk with a kind of just like brushed everybody off A win over and he stood for probably 15 to 20 minutes with my kids And he's finding ways to connect with them and at the time it was about singing and choir And he just stood there and asked them all kinds of questions and they talked about the music they like to sing What's it like being in the choir and he so he just Had this ability to connect with all ages All personality types um just such a people person and so Well educated that he could go into just about any topic with anybody and no no something about it But I will forever be grateful and to this day my 24 year old will say I still can't believe I got to meet Nelson

36:33Yeah, the man the legend man that about that's right. That's right. Well Chris Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. I think a lot of people were really This will be really impactful for them And as we wrap up our time together we always like to ask what does I be seeming to you It's changed not just my life but my family's life and then um The the tentacles that reach out to all the people that we get to influence and share in their life like personally Amazing but professionally and then legacy wise what we've been able to create in using what Nelson left us um Like we all need purpose in life, right? We all want to contribute we all want to make a difference whether that's within our family or the lives that we touch And so Yeah, I just feel like it is. It's truly like that stone getting dropped in the water and then the ripples just go out from there

37:40So the the financial hope and freedom from my family and then the people that my life has touched It's really rewarding