Next Level 298: Does Whole Life Insurance Make Sense Today? with Blake Brogan and Rod Zabriskie

Show me a life insurance, a whole life policy, what you're going to see is you're putting in, you know,

Primula, let's just say it's $100,000 a year you're putting in

You'll put $100,000 in your one and you'll have zero in your cash value

Welcome to the next level income show, it's hard to take your income your investments and your life to the next level

I'm your host Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website nextlevelincome.com

That's www.nextlevelincome.com. Just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in

Well on today's show I'm excited to welcome

Blake Brogan and Ron Zabrisky of Money Insights and we're going to talk about why I first started my life insurance policies

over 16 years ago and

Whether it makes sense for you and how you can use properly structured life insurance to pay for things like college

Emergencies like I face during Colleen COVID and other times during my life and my business

You can also structure them in conjunction with your investments to get a higher rate of return

We're going to dive into all those topics on today's show Blake. We're on welcome back to the show

Hey, thanks Chris. Yeah

Gentlemen, we have you guys are part of our our regular guest rotation, which is a rare group

um

But for those of us that don't know I've been working with money insights for oh jeez

It's been almost what five years right rod

Oh, I would say at least I was the guy maybe five six. Yeah, so for those that don't know the story

I want to share a little bit about you know my story with um

With you know through the life insurance

Journey and I talk about this this in my book, but for our newer listeners

You know I started our policies actually 16 years ago now rod my my older son

This is going to air

On March 10th and my son turned 16 on March 7th. So we're a little bit before that today

But yeah, he's so when I found out my wife was born the first thing I thought was can we still do our trip to Europe next year

And the second thing was oh my gosh like what am I gonna?

You know, what am I gonna do for college? What am I gonna?

You know, what am I gonna put in place to protect my family if something happens to me like you know happen to my father

And through my journey I I came up on like overfunded

Cash value whole life insurance and those were the policies that we originally started with the intent to you know

Have a guaranteed and we can't say that in the investment world

We can say that in the insurance world a guaranteed pool of capital for my son to have access to when he got the college

And you know as important

It also was if something did happen to me that money would be there for him as well

Through the insurance component

But what led me to to you rod and money insights and and your partner Christian

Over five years ago was that we started using our policies and we're specifically the cash value over policies

To build spec homes and then invest and when I talked about it with my agent at the time

He he was kind of surprised and but he knew about using these things and he said Chris I wish more people

Use their policies like you do this is awesome

And I remember hanging up and I was like now to be fair this gentleman is in his 80s

You know, he's kind of winding down his practice, but I was really frustrated

I said well, why didn't he tell me about these things? So I went in search of

Resources that could could help me you know get more use out of my policies

And that's what led me to you guys rod. So I'd love for you to share a little bit

More behind you know why you funded founded money insights

And Blake love for you to share before he does that a little bit about your background as well

Because we do a lot of work together and when you join money insights as well

Yeah, so I I joined money

It's four or five years ago, but high cash value life insurance has been

My entire career up until this point. So I was fortunate my

Parent or my dad my uncle's my grandfather were all in the insurance pace space

You know at some you know during their careers doing different things there

I actually learned about these high cash value life insurance strategies while I was in college

Professor of mine had talked told us about how we use this to fund

Businesses that he was doing and then a fraternity brother of mine said hey my family's been doing that for a long time

They tried to explain it to me it didn't make sense. I didn't have any money, you know at the time in college

But as I was getting out of college

I was you know, I knew I wanted to be in business and do it for ownership

I went to school to study entrepreneurship and I said, you know, I want to put my my savings in a place where I

I'm going to have access to it have liquidity

It's going to be there or just like all the things you mentioned Chris when your son's born

You're starting to think about how am I going to protect my family?

So for me, it was just a great place personally to start saving money

You know, I got connected to some business owners locally

So kind of got me got me going helping people with the strategy and then you know, I've been

blessed to be part of money insights for the last four or five years work with a lot of people from your audience

Chris and really my role is that client interaction so perspective clients

clients

Having conversations helping them set up the policies

But but what I enjoy even more are

Meeting with our clients on a regular basis to continue to see how the world's evolving

See how the the policy can help them facilitate the different things they're doing investment

So frankly, it's just it's a it's a dream fit for me

Oh, it's a dream fit for us to Blake you've you're you're awesome at what you do helping helping our clients

And more specifically are investors that are looking to the structure of these policies to really optimize

Their investments and what they're doing and Ron how many people do you know?

I mean Blake is like one-to-one in my world that in college was looking at these strategies with life

I mean, when did you start your first policy Blake?

weren't you like already? Yeah, 2023 24 right after soon as they started making me yeah incredible incredible. Yeah

Yeah, that's awesome and a great story and as far as on on my side Chris I

Well, I'll give a little bit of history on our side and then when we when we met up and kind of what we've seen with you

I just um again, it's second and none so

So you're asking how Christian and I got started and doing what we're doing. Yeah, so we actually come from a life

Insurance background as well. I actually started in the industry and health insurance

Once Obamacare was I was like okay the writings on the wall. I got I got to do something different here

So got got involved in life insurance and I think I bring that up because I think it's a little bit unique

out of people who are involved in this space

Come in from other directions, which isn't bad

But I think what what it allows us to do is to always be on top of building the policies in the right way

And I think we'll talk a little more about that the reason why that's so important here in a little bit

but

So you know, I was more of like you might say a generalist inside the life insurance world

Just helping people anyway and needed life insurance for whatever purpose across the spectrum of you know basic term to protect our families to

You know meeting with businesses who who are doing more advanced kind of planning and different things that involve life insurance with

Bicell agreements or or key person policies are all these different things

Well, then we

Working with and and really my my background is in entrepreneurship

I have an MBA in entrepreneurship, and so I've always just had a

Just a love for people who are out there living the American dream doing really cool things, you know building businesses

and investing and so you bring those two together

You know rich dad poor dad just all the different kind of background things all coming together and

Using the investment optimized you know life insurance policy in conjunction with that investing

Has just become a real core piece to what I do and crib you know Christian and I both and in the way that we invest

And then just helping other people once they catch that vision. They're like oh man. This is amazing

compared with the alternative and and so just you know doing what you're doing and so now kind of I want to I want to

You brag on you a little bit is

When we met you you were still doing your job

Yeah, traveling, you know doing the the sales

But you had the dream right the dream of having enough

Free cash flow that you could replace your regular income and then just everything's on your own terms

Yeah, and so it's just really cool to watch that that process and we were towards the latter end right you you

Done a lot of amazing things before that especially you know for you going back to your days in college and

Already starting to invest in real estate and and all those things. Yeah, well, thank you

But it's I'm amazing to watch you make that transition from a place where you were already a high-income earner

Doing really cool things in in you know the medical device space

But the things that you've done since then

It's just it's just amazing like

Even as amazing as things were it's still night and day difference

You are doing and have been able to do since then so it's been really cool to watch

Well, thank you for that and yeah, I think you know

What's neat about this strategy with life insurance rod is that it works

It can fill so many roles like you know

I just wanted I just wanted to guarantee pull a capital for my son and then ultimately sons

You know to have access to for for college and give them security and then we started using it

You know, we both spec homes. I think it's really great for you know people like myself at the time that are you know

High-income earners, but variable income you know sales. I mean, I was full commission

So you know, I had really lean months. I had really amazing months and quarters and you know the neat thing about these policies is

You know, you can fund them and and really you know as I as I became a 1099 employee and then have my own business

Really have your own personal pension. You have like a guaranteed income stream in the future

So, you know, you can have you know guaranteed pulls a capital you can have guaranteed

income streams for the future and then as as we've done now as we started to really optimize and build these policies

You know for myself for other investors so that they can actually have have greater returns on their investments

But I want to you know underscore why we ultimately partner with you guys rod is all the different agents that I talk to

They all said oh convert your policies do this we can bring and you guys said

You know at Chris you have good policies. Let me just help you optimize what you're doing

You guys didn't try to sell me on anything

You're really education forward, which is a good fit for for what we do

When covid came along I had some spare time with my hands that allowed me to get licensed and you know

What what happened was a lot of my investors were asking me

What do you do like how do you structure your personal finances and ultimately your investment?

You know, so I was telling people about this strategy and it was great because now I can I can put them in touch with you all

And we can do this together

You know ride when I first learned about this strategy

I heard it on the radio was called bank on yourself and I started digging and learning more and I read

Becoming your own banker by Nelson Nash and you know iBCs or infinite banking, you know concept

Can you can you just describe?

How these policies these you know the investment optimize or iBC or bank on yourself how these

Policies are different than a traditional whole life insurance policy sure

and and

So let's start with with the traditional so and what that means is if you just went off the street and into any life insurance

You know

Business and said hey show me a life insurance a whole life policy

What you're gonna see is you're putting in you know premium. Let's just say it's a hundred thousand dollars a year. You're putting in

You'll put a hundred thousand dollars in your one and you'll have zero in your cash value

It's just all gone to cost okay cost of insurance administrative cost with the what the agent got paid

And you're two you put another hundred thousand in and depending on the company you may still not have any anything in your cash value

Really it's beginning in year three to where you really start to see something growing cash value

And then if you if you play that forward and say okay, well there is some growth right so once you now start having in money in your cash value

It's growing and earning earning interest in dividends

Well, you're break even point when you get to the place where you're going to have as much money in your cash value

Is what you've put in doesn't happen until year

1314 again depending on the company and the policy

So in my example you've put in one point three million dollars and you finally in year 13 have one point three million in your cash value

Yeah, right, so

Can there be situations where that's where that's attractive maybe

I'll let you know

What we're doing and and why I think there's no I would ever want to do that yeah because

When you designed it in the way that we're doing when and specifically what we're doing is we're trying to minimize the cost keep them as low as possible

So as much this going in that policy lands in your cash value and is usable to go out and use for your investing or other

purposes right whatever you want to use it for

so

When you put that first 100,000 in

80% of that is landing in your cash value

Okay, so you know you have 80,000 in your cash value you can start using that the soonity days later

And then in year two you put your next 100,000 in and 90% of that lands in and by year three the costs are so low

And now you have that growth. It's already in your

That's that's you know earning for you

So that by year three and forward it's net positive you put a 100,000 in and you're going to see more than

$100,000 of increase on your cash value and that just continues to compound and grow to the point where

Your break even point is going to be more like year five or six

in the way that we're doing

But again, you don't have to wait that long to start using it. You can start using that money immediately for what is there?

Yeah

No, and I love it and it's you we were in meeting last week out in Salt Lake City one of my favorite of the year

Because I get to see you guys like at the ski

You know the contents grade two got to speak on stage that was fun, but

Yeah, it's always it's always the partnerships and you know it's burned a lot of conversations

You guys had a booth out there and one of the topics that came up was like well, oh is this like a family bank

And it's interesting because a lot of people you know that are that are you know not not just high income earners

But are really really wealthy

Rod and Blake, you know, they they're using these to literally build their own bank

For themselves for their families to go forward

And you know Blake you know in my in my MBA studying finance, you know, it was like oh you you know

I did portfolio management so it was learning how how to manage and invest money and

You know what I learned was hey by charm invested difference and I'm like you know

I'm learning that really financial advisors are just salespeople and I found

Out the same on the insurance side. It's like wait a minute. This is not what the ultra wealthy are doing

You know what Blake went you know

A hundred years ago whole life insurance was the standard what what happened with term life insurance

And investments and why did why did really you know specifically the US kind of get away

You know the populations a hole from using whole life

Yeah, I think as so as I mentioned like my grandfather who was born in the 30s

He was in he was in the life insurance spate, you know early and here's career and I remember him saying telling me stories

Like he would go to fraternities knock on the door and like

Sell small whole life insurance policies to all the fraternters and then he go to the next like that was his kind of target market

Wow, but he's like everybody saved money in life insurance like it was like completely normal

That was just kind of par for the course. Oh great guy, you know, obviously everything was in person there

There's no electronic communication or anything back

But back then but really wall street, you know from my understanding just started to pick up

Especially with mutual funds and and retirement accounts and 401ks and just a lot of money started shifting

Into the market and so if you have this idea

The market and the accumulation of wealth meaning you know in real estate

We're investing for a lot of reasons, but you know cash flow being a big piece of that in

You're all into the market. You're saying hey, I'm gonna take some of my earnings

I'm gonna put it aside

I'm gonna let this thing grow for 30 40 50 years and then hope there's enough there for me to be able to sit down

In retirement and so where I think the term came in is they say hey, you know

This whole life insurance quote-unquote costs a lot more you're paying more premium dollars the same death benefit where

What we could do is just get a cheaper term policy

Where there's less premiums you still protect your family and then the idea is yourself insured by the retirement and you don't need

This life insurance and you know if you if all you're doing is

Accumulating money in the stock market potentially that strategy have

Some play however as people get older they think hey, I'm not gonna need insurance when I'm 60 65 years old in reality

The people that we're talking to they're the ones who are always saying the I mean these are very wealthy individuals

They may be worth 10 million bucks and they're like man

I wish I would have bought so much more of this when I was younger and it was less expensive because I have this need for a permanent

Benefit whether it be for a state taxes or to more efficiently

You know pass my wealth on to the next generation or for charities or protect all the debt that I still have even though

If accumulated a lot of wealth and so really when you're thinking about the policy it's it's not in in and or I have a lot of

Term insurance myself

But it's getting to in my opinion the root of of life insurance, which is a place to very safely store your capital

Know that you're gonna have it grow in a tax advantage way, but give you liquidity to then go out and invest

You know in deals that you're offering and other type of cash flowing assets

Yeah, I love that you say it's not you know, you said it's not and or with term and whole

But that's the cool thing. It's not and or to build a policy like our investment optimizer policies or

Invest so Blake can you talk about kind of the core

Structure of how an investment optimizer whole life insurance policy is different than the policies that that Rod was talking about

Yeah, for sure, you put you put a you know a thousand or a hundred thousand dollars into a policy. You got zero cash value

Yeah, so when we're having conversations if you think about any type of insurance homeowners or

Typical life insurance auto insurance. Basically the conversation is how much protection do you need?

And what's the least amount of premium that I can pay you know for this where we're taking a completely

Cheapest shop it out. Yeah, yeah, and we you know

That's why you see a bunch of companies saying you get letters in the mail, you know every day saying hey switch and save type of thing

When we're having these conversations around the investment optimizer. We're doing it in the opposite direction

So when someone understands the principles of the strategy how it can increase their returns give them the safe pool of capital to then borrow against and go out and invest like all the things that we've been talking about

what we're starting with is

Generally speaking that the goal is to be able to get any dollar that's actually going to go into a syndication or into a cash flowing asset through the policy first

So we're going to build the policies more around your investing strategy

And then from there you're going to reverse engineer to the policy to say what's the least amount of insurance

The reason we want a low amount of insurance is we're trying to minimize the cost again our

Our focus here is all in the cash value

So we you know insurance is important. We have it

You know sometimes that's why we might get a term insurance policy on top of that to make sure all of that's taking care of

But the investment optimizer side we want high cash value low cost of insurance. Okay now once once you have that built

As Rod mentioned maybe 80% or one is landing in cash value as opposed to zero

So we have clients all the time who will fund a policy and then you know within a couple months when the next deal is coming around

Art that's where they're capital sitting that can take a loan and go out and invest and have your money growing for you in two places at once

And the last thing I'm going to mention here

When we build it this way and this kind of goes back to what you were talking

Chris in your sales role you might have a good quarter you might have a bad quarter you might crush it one month

You might you know have a have a very weak month that happens

We build in a lot of ability

So when someone thinks about whole life insurance $100,000 man am I committing to $100,000 every year for the rest of my life

Like if I don't pay this does the policy go away

The answer to that is absolutely not we build in a lot of flexibility

We'll talk about this idea of a funding range meaning if you want the ability to put up to 100,000

The insurance companies only are acquiring you to put in maybe 20 or 25,000 a year

And that's only really for the first you know, four to five or depending on what your age

A maximum of seven years that they're

I mean you to put even a low you know much lower amount than you would be able to

So for people who don't know what their income is going to look like don't know when investments are going to

kick off cash flow

These are incredibly powerful tools that allows you to store your money safely

But you're also not locking yourself into something you have a ton of flexibility and that's a lot different than kind of a standard whole life policy

Yeah, what I love the policies that we built together Blake is you know, they're self-sustaining after five six seven years ten years

Maybe at the most and I'm coming up on on my seventh premium on some of the policies that we started

It's like wow, I don't have to I don't have to fund these ever again

And you know, they're just they're just growing from then on one of the cool things um, I got a I got a phone call a few years ago

and my

Mutual friend of a friend of mine was selling a car wash

And he's like hey man, we can get a really good deal in this car wash

It was going to kick off like and it has about 20 percent cash flow is like but we need to close within four weeks

And it's going to be a half a million dollars between the two of us

And I had that cash value that 250,000 accessible

And I mean it was it was less than 24 hours that I can get that money. It was incredible

To be able to do that so it really gives you a place

You know as I talk about in chapter three in my book like your opportunity fund is as you talk

About Rod and Christian you guys have talked about for years like where are you storing your money in between deals

And you know a lot of people have this money was just sitting in a checking account or maybe a you know money market fund or something like that

You know, what are the what are the typical

Returns that an individual can see in these policies. I'd love to share, you know, maybe some of the

You know some of the different structures or cool strategies that business owners or you know doctors have used

I know you guys work with work with a ton of doctors

They've created creatively use these policies

Yeah, so in the policy

We've talked about how they're just they're pretty consistent in growing

And they're basically two components that make growth. There's a guaranteed interest rate

Associated with your cash value and then there's also a dividend the year and the dividend comes because

We're specifically using what are called mutual life insurance companies

Which just means the policyholders are owners of the company

So when there's a dividends paid out that goes directly back to the the policyholders

And we just roll that back into the cash value and keep that growing

Let's underscore that

I think this is really important because you know one of the reasons I

Originally invested with Vanguard is that they were a mutual company and the difference between a mutual life insurance company

And a public life insurance company is that the profit in in a company

It's owned by shareholders goes to the shareholders. Whereas in a mutual life insurance company that excess profit goes back to the policyholders

Yep

So that means that if you pay too much in terms of you know the cost that the life insurance company charges

It goes back into your pocket and the company has to turn a profit to stay a float and you know like

Pem mutual that we we do a lot of policies what if they've been in business for for how long

Since 1847. Yeah, so they're doing

Start doing a dividend in 1849. Yeah, they're doing pretty good. So you have you have the guaranteed interest rate

You have the dividend. You know what what's that typical range look like so for instance what in 2026? What what's Pem mutual paying out?

Yeah, so they're paying a total of six between the guaranteed plus the dividend and and that's going to vary a little bit from company to company

But but really they're all pretty instantly between right now five and a half and maybe six and a quarter

Yeah, so it's

And if you look over the past 20 or so 10 years ago

Yeah, interest rates had been zero for already was six seven years and

But they were still paying in that same range right that six six six percent range

And so does it adjust a bit based on interest rates? It does a little bit. Yeah, but it's it's just very very consistent

Which makes a big difference in this context because if I'm putting the money in there

Not to stay there. I'm not trying to make the policy the investment. I'm going to loan against that and go out and invest in something else

Knowing that the underlying asset and the cash value that they're acting as collateral for my loan

Is just going to do what it's going to do. I don't have to worry about it makes a huge difference. Yeah

Yeah, and I think there's really three levels to use these policies. There's hey, I'm going to put I'm going to put money into these policies

I'm just going to let it grow. I'm going to maybe use that money as

guaranteed income and retirement at some point

There's you know kind of the second level, which is the investment optimizer whereas you're using these policies

To fund and then ultimately borrow against and people might be saying well Chris like why would you why would you borrow a dollar?

You know to invest a dollar why not just invest it? So I want you to dive into that

But the third the third is you know using these policies as a as a generational wealth tool on top of that

So before we get to that

You know why rod why would you why would you want to put a dollar into a policy to just turn around and borrow it back out to invest

How does that make sense? Yeah

Yeah, it's a good question and what's interesting is that cash value is there it's your month

You could take it out as a withdrawal and go do something with it if you wanted to

But in this case the reason why we use loans is because

When I do that my money stays there and continue to grow

So you're using the cash value as collateral not

Correct. Yep. Yep. Yeah, like the equity in your house

Yeah, going back to the starting point. I've put money into the policy some of it

You know cost went and paid for for the insurance part of it

But most of it landed in the cash value

Where it's now growing in on a consistent basis

Automatically from the insurance company. I have a line of credit available to me

Using that cash value as collateral up to 95% of what I have in my cash value. I can get accesses alone

So then I use that loan I go out and invest it

I'm creating whatever kind of return I am out there and in the

The money that's sitting there acting as collateral stays there and used to grow as well

Yeah, so it's and so someone might say okay. Well, what about interest right? Are they gonna charge me interest in the answers?

Yes, you'll pay interest on the loan

But one thing that's really interesting is when you look at the flow

And I so I've invested I'm creating some sort of

Cashville coming back and I'm using that to pay to a loan

I ended up paying simple interest on a decreasing value as I do that

So simple interest on the loan side

But the money that's acting as collateral is just staying in there even to grow on a compound basis

Yeah, and so and it's pretty incredible like Blake and I did a webinar that's on the website

Next level income.com forward slash banking or clicking on the banking link there

And it's wild like right now I can borrow money against my policies at five and a half percent

And I'm actually getting six percent on the value in the policy. I'm making 50 basis points

So if I took that same dollar and just you know put it into investment

I can actually put it in and get 50 basis points higher

Putting it into the policy and borrowing it back out first. There's actually a positive spread currently

Yeah, and that's a good point too because

Depending on company depending on the policy etc

Um will determine how the the internal loan works

But there are also banks. You can set up a cash value line of credit at a bank

And in your case that one of the nice things about that is speed of access

So it's a little bit faster getting getting access to funds

Yeah, a second benefit is that you have multiple policies

But you can aggregate them all into a single source of of funds there

And then the third thing is depending on interest rates

You can create an additional

arbitrage and additional bread in your favor

When you compare what you're earning compared to what you're paying interest on the loan. So

So

Options I think that's the biggest thing is yeah, there's flexibility. There are a lot of options that you can

You know use just depending on conditions. Yeah. No, it's it really is incredible and especially over time

You know, I've seen and you know, we work together and you know put put a plan together

To really really you know have these policies grow and self-funded just you know

Really build and now we're looking you know Blake towards you know this generational wealth component

Which is you know, you can take the the value in those policies that's grown and ultimately the death benefit

And that can turn into basically this cascade event for for future generations

You know, what does that look like you know for clients or investors that are looking to you know

Not say hey, you know, I talked to a financial advisor. I don't know a year or two ago

And he's like yeah, my my clients don't need that they have term in terms. They they have enough you know assets

You know, and they can just spend those down

You know in retirement and I said well, what if what if they want to leave like a legacy for their family?

And he just kind of looked at me and he's like well, that's not really

What we do with our clients, but for people that you know have have been working you know doctors entrepreneurs

um, you know people that have spent you know decades of their life

You know growing their wealth and and do want to leave a legacy

You know for the next one two multiple generations like how how does that play into that Blake

Well, one of the things I think is really cool

um about

This tool and and using these and Jesus

I'm assuming a lot of people who are listening to your show Chris who are you you're interacting with are trying to grow their investments

Right there they they they want to grow their wealth

They probably have their own reasons on why they want to do that

But one of the nice parts about life insurance. Yes, most of the people come to us saying hey

How can I maximize the investing that I'm doing?

But regardless of whether you want

Ash value to increase your investment returns or you want death benefit you're gonna get both right you're gonna

Get both regardless of which one um is more important to you

So yes, people are talking and when we're meeting with them. Hey, how's your investment flow?

How's cash coming in and out of your life? How would this policy interact and and benefit you

The day a lot of people say hey, I want the minimum death benefit minimum death

If it's like okay, well, we're gonna set it up that way

Regardless but one of the as I mentioned earlier in the show one of the cool things

I get to you know continue to have relationships with our clients and meet with them and you know

And see how their worlds evolve over years

And as people get older that death benefit while they didn't policy up for that that becomes a huge piece to their legacy

Right, it's a way to contractually guarantee if you're

Real estate empire blows up right and and your Bitcoin goes to zero and everything in the market crashes

No matter what contractually guaranteed your family's gonna get seven or eight figures of wealth

That's gonna be best on to them tax-free now. Hopefully that's on top of all the other you know things that you've created

Not saying this is the only tool you can use to pass on wealth

But I've even seen it in my own family where people will you know the

Grandparents passed away. They have a whole bunch of assets. They have house. They have you know stock market stuff and different

Type of buckets in terms of how the taxes work. They have real estate

But what's the coolest thing to inherit is is a life insurance death benefit right because that's a single tax-free check

That can be used either just to give cash to the next generation

It can help with the estate in terms of how we divvying this up if someone takes the house well

Here's big bucket of cash that another sibling can get

So it's an incredible wealth building tool and kind of legacy tool for those who are legacy-minded

even if you don't

Set the policy up necessarily with saying hey, I want to give my kit you know

I want to have 10 million dollars of death benefit a lot of times just by trying to optimize your investment

These policies you're going to create that type of legacy on top of it

Yeah, and the neat thing is you know if you you do this in conjunction with your investments these policies effectively pay for themselves

Yeah, which is which is really cool. So it's like you're you're almost you take the time to set this structure up

And you really get the death benefit is a bonus on top of all this with with all the other benefits

And just to share a personal story of a very close friend

And he called me out of the blue about 10 years ago and was you know

Saying like hey like what do you do and I explained it to him and lo and behold he goes to his

His financial planner and they set these types of policies up for him and his wife passed away

Less than three years later and she was a surgeon in the military

She contracted

Very aggressive form of cancer when she was overseas from the burn pits and they had that pool of capital

So he could he could spend more time with his daughters and devote that so I think you know

I think that gets lost sometimes in these discussions of oh is it worth it does it make sense and

You know the one thing I really

It kind of you kind of great somebody when I hear financial advisors say oh, it's not a great investment

You know, and I give him that example and say well, what's the return on on that policy for for my friend

It's really high, but it's not it's not really an investment. It's a tool that people use and count on

But Rob rod I think you know to wrap up. I know you're an entrepreneur your business owner

You use these policies

Maybe you could share a couple ways that you know some of your clients have used these policies to really you know help

You know their businesses either when they're faltering you know during you know, I mean shoot we had Helene here

We had covid I relied on my policies both times during those not just you know for investments

You know, what are some what are some pretty interesting or cool

Examples that you've seen these policies help your clients

Yeah, it's a great question and we've been focusing so much on the investment part of it

um

But it

For the same reasons as we like for that as the opportunity fund for our investments. Yeah

It's also a great place to store our emergency fund or at least a good part of it right

I'm always going to keep some cash close close you know to hand

Yeah, keep most of my emergency fund in my policy because again, it's earning that consistent five plus

tax-free return

Tax-free when I need it. I don't know if we mentioned that earlier. Yeah

Yeah, and when we when I need it

I just go access it and I use it

But if I if it was my emergency fund from my bank account, I would replenish it as quickly as possible

I'm just using a loan to

Take that money and and use it and then

Replenish it as quickly as possible that right paying down the loan off for that to do that

so

Probably the most frequent use of that that I've seen is just taxes people

Get a bigger tax bill than they thought and it's like well, where do I have my cash? Oh great. There it is. I'll take a quick loan

At and then pay off the loan over the next you know, whatever six months or something. Yeah, and

But it really could be anything right. I've seen people using it for weddings for

for college right for their kids

and

and

The idea is well, I'm going to be setting this money aside for future need

So again now now all the sudden fits in a similar category whether it be an investment whether it be college whether it be the wedding whether it be the wedding whether it be

Whatever, I want to give a gift to my kids

You know when they when they buy their first house

Yeah, right? Okay, great. So we have a lot of people who put policies on their kids with their kids is the insured

But but the adult the parent is the owner still right they're controlling their pulling all the strings until they're ready to gift it to their kids so

Maybe I'm going a little further astray than than what you had intended. I love that too

Yeah, we do we see all kinds of

Of different ways that people use them in addition to and then on the investment side man

We've we've seen across the board a business owner has any kind of a capital expense and so they'll usually loan against the policy

By the thing whatever they needed

Been up in additional location like you said we work with a lot of doctors Dennis etc

They're buying into the surgical center. They're they're you know setting up an additional location

Or for their dental practice and so they'll use loans against the policy to do that

And then funneling that revenue towards it to to pay down the loan

Technically speaking that's what they're doing

But strategically they're freeing that money up because they're going to go and use it again and something else later

Right now and just kind of underscoring what you what you bought up earlier rod is the the immense flexibility that you have with these policies

Right, you can use it for so many different things

So as we wrap up here

We've got a ton of great resources on the website at next level income.com

forward slash banking you can check out the webinar that you and I did their Blake

um, and if you want to if you're if you're sitting here thinking well

How would this apply to my specific circumstance?

You can set up a call with our team. You can take a look with with Blake and I and say hey

How would this how would this apply to my specific situation? What are some different?

Options that I have and take a look at and I'm also available as well

So if you want to say hey Chris, how have you actually used this in conjunction with your investments?

That's why I got licensed so I can really help you to optimize your investments

With this strategy and really get the benefits of all those so

Blake rod always enjoy having you guys on the show here. We'll be doing a webinar

in the next few weeks. So check out the link in the show notes below you can

register for that and you can hop on and we can answer your questions live as well

Rod Blake. Thank you so much for your time today

thanks Chris

Hey Chris here again. I hope you found this episode valuable

Now I have one more thing to give to you

We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book

as well as much more from previous guests on the show

Just check out nextlevelincome.com

slash coaching to get a free copy of my book audio book and much more

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