366: Book Club: Die with Zero

Buck: Welcome back to the show, everyone, today. My guests are, of course, very well-known to the well formula podcaster Christian Allen and Roger Bruschi of wealth formula, banking, fame. Guys, welcome. Welcome to the show.

Rod: Thanks.

Christian: Always happy to be back.

Buck: Good, good, good. And you guys have an event of your own coming up pretty soon. You want to you want to mention that real quick?

Christian: Yeah. Rod, plug it for us.

Rod: Absolutely. Yes. So May 4th, we have our virtual summit. We’re calling it the Alternative Wealth building Summit for high income earners. And we have some really cool speakers, none less than Buck Joffrey himself will be joining us as one of our speakers. But we also have Sharon Lechter, Ken McElroy, Adam Carroll, Tom Wheelwright, Chris Larsen and ourselves. So anyway, we have a pretty cool lineup.

Buck: It’ll be fun. A Yeah, no, I’m a most of the people in this podcast I’ve heard heard my schtick before, but I assume there’ll be a few others there listening as well.

Rod: But yeah, so yeah, if you have anyone who interested, they can check out at mivirtualsummit.com.

Christian: And my virtual summit. Okay. Yeah. And it’s just one, it’s just like a packed full of all sorts of good stuff. I think it’s going to be really valuable. So thanks for letting us throw it out on your podcast buyer.

Buck: So today. Okay, so here’s what happened, right? And I was reading this book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, and I thought, boy, this is, you know, this is a this is a book that’s very relevant to our cohort, you know, our our wealth formula nation and the people and I sort of working really hard and and maybe not paying a lot of attention to their own lives and putting things off and that kind of thing. And so I had actually reached out to Bill Perkins and I think like I was not on his list of things that were worth time to see. And so that’s okay. I still appreciated the book. Am I going to take it personally? I think, you know, there are some other podcasts that have had him who I think he he thought was maybe more worth his time, but that’s fine.

Anyway, so this so this is a this book called Die with Zero. Again, really what it is about is this idea of optimizing your life by making the most out of your time, money and energy. It’s divided like sort of, you know, into different parts. But I want to kind of, you know, get your your guys’s well first of all, let me give you my take, my initial sort of gestalt on it. I think it’s a very interesting it’s an interesting book. And I think it’s worth a read because I think so many people in our you know, in our world, I mean, they’re making a lot of money. I mean, relatively. Right. And they’re making maybe a half billion, a million, whatever, plus even even a few million doesn’t matter. But most of the time, in order to do that, they are working pretty hard and they gamble a lot of time on their hands and that kind of thing. And then the game becomes, you know, sort of the as he describes it, you know, the the this tyranny of more of constantly wanting more and constantly wanting more. When the ultimate goal that he is ascribing to is to, you know, the goal is to die with zero. And what he means by that is using up all your resources, not just money, but time and you know, also your energy before it’s too late and and you drop dead. What’s your I’m curious on kind of like what that those initial thoughts made you think of.

Christian: So maybe all star first I have a I have an anecdote that hit close to home in this because my own dad died at the ripe old age of 49 from being created cancer.

Buck: How old are you Christian?

Christian: I’m almost 40. I’m turning 40 in less than a month.

Buck: You’re a youngster.

Christian: But here’s the thing. Like it does, it does hit home in a really meaningful way. When I think about this idea that my parents, who were probably upper middle class and maybe not as not maybe not as high income earner as the average person on this show. They’re listening to our show here. But but I think the principles absolutely apply. He spent much of his life saving, working out. He was, like I said, kind of this upper middle class. And, you know, he saved like crazy so that he could retire at the age of 55. That was his goal date. The problem was he just never made it there. Right. And so, like all of that, like and that’s where the idea of this really resonates is that you could spend all of your time, energy effort reaching for this goal that you ultimately never get and that And so for me, like, that was the initial reaction.

And then I had this conflicting feeling of like the financial advisor in me that’s like, well, how many people out here are just like, happy to save anything? So we don’t want to tell them to keep spending. But but anyway, once, once I was able to, like, rectify the idea that it really has to do like it is specific to the high income earner, high net worth audience. This is not for people who don’t have discretionary income. And he mentions that. Yeah.

Buck: And just to be clear, like, you know, just to be clear on this, like Bill Perkins is, you know, got a lot of money raised like a oil and gas hedge fund guy and all that stuff. So. So some of this may, you know, I think for some people reading it, I think it’s going to be like, well, easy for you to say, buddy, But like, I think that it’s relevant and to various degrees to everybody. How about you? Right.

Rod: Yeah. My take is that I think as he makes points, he he makes extreme points. Yeah. So and because he himself, you know, admits that the idea of dying with zero is probably not very practical unless, you know, the exact day and minute that you’re going to die. And we don’t know that.

Rod: But I think the principles are are really helpful to to just think about because, you know, he gives examples of people who like like one that comes to mind where, you know, the guy says, hey, when I have when I’m amassed, you know, 40 million, then, you know, punch me in the face if I don’t retire. Right?

Rod: And he didn’t he didn’t retire. You know, he got into the, you know, 4 billion or something before he ended up retiring. And and, you know, Bill’s whole take on that was that that was even to him, even to the individual when he could think rationally about it. That was unnecessary for his what his goals were in his life to, you know, become a billionaire. And yet, when he was in the middle of it, it was just impossible for him to to to draw back and say, well, how do I stop this this train?

Buck: I think I think the you know, I think the analogy I think of is and some of it’s also related to education, too, right? Like, this is you know, we’re talking about in terms of money, but there’s a lot of doctors on this show and who’ve gone through a ton of training. And I remember I was in college and I got really into biochemistry and molecular biology. I was a total geek, you know, that was not like a money oriented guy at all, was a science guy. And, and I was talking to my chemistry professor about possibly doing an M.D., Ph.D. program instead of a M.D. program. And it would have been, you know, you know, more years. And then also it would probably end up with a postdoc and also, you know, residency and all that stuff. You don’t spend the rest of your life waiting to get where you want to be. And I think that’s what a lot of us ultimately feel. Right. We whether it’s whether it’s the resources of time or money or energy or whatever, we’re just there’s like this this idea that you’re going to eventually get to the top of the hill and then you can start sliding back down.

But you really haven’t identified what the top of the hill actually is. And and I think that is a real problem. And I’ll tell you just another anecdote for me. Like, I mean, I used to be a guy who just like, spent very I mean, I couldn’t spend any money at all, right? I mean, and then COVID happened and then a divorce happened and all this stuff. And I’m like, Jeez, now I’m sitting around like, you know, I’ve got I’ve got all this money. But like, you know, I’m not enjoying it. Recommend doing anything with it. The next thing you know, like years later now I’m like, spending probably too much. But and that’s not what he’s advocating necessarily to spend too much, but not really just constantly restraining yourself.

Like, okay, you’ve made a lot of money, you know, enjoy a little bit of it, do the things that are give you happiness. It’s not just about buying things, but it’s about, you know, experiences. It’s about, you know, you know, vacations, whatever. It’s doing things with your family and relationships, too, right? It’s not just again, it’s not just monetary. It’s all these things together. So I found that and just sort of more for me, it was like a reminder, right? Because we get into these situations, we just, you know, we’re a treadmill, treadmill, treadmill thing. It and to the point about this guy, I mean, there is there is another aspect to that issue of the, you know, the 40 million for 4 billion guy and that is there. The exception of that is if you really, really enjoy something. I mean, it doesn’t mean like I mean so like why give it up right So that’s the exception but just make time for the other things you want to achieve in your life and actually think about it rather than just let life happen to you.

Christian: So but I can remember being on a show and or listening to your show and you mentioning that accumulating wealth is often viewed for successful people like a game. Yeah, right. It’s like how you keep score. And that thought kind of resonates when I think about this. So the question is, can I can I take a step back and actually think about, like you said, where that where the peak lies, where I want it to be? Well, the problem is, is that it usually changes for most of us. Right. My peak today, sadly, I don’t know if sadly, it’s very different than what my peak was a decade ago. And my guess is that what I believe will be so. So part of it is almost like taking a practical and realistic approach about what we need and want and then determining like is going above and beyond something that’s going to fulfill us in that way. Or does it make more sense to shift our efforts and maybe be more balanced? And I think that’s what he’s advocating for balance and experience.

Buck: One of the one of the concepts I thought to like going back to this idea of dying with zero, it’s not that he’s saying don’t leave anything for your kids, right? That’s not what he’s saying. In fact, there is a there’s a couple things there I think that are really important that we don’t really think of. He goes into some level of detail about how people often end up leaving their kids with a lot of money, but by the time they leave it, those aren’t the times when the kids really needed the money anyway.

So when he says Die with Zero, part of that is give what you want to give today or not, you know, before you die. And rather than rather than waiting, which I think is a really important thing to consider. Right? Like, for example, you know, if your kids are if you’re planning to give them a bunch of money when you die, I mean, why not help them out with the house when they need it rather than let them struggle and stuff like that? Any takeaways on that?

Christian: Yeah, it really quick. So this this resonated for me as well. Again, my dad dies at 49. His parents are wealthy like they’re quite wealthy probably, you know, $50 million type wealth. And certainly there could have been an opportunity. So now both of my my mom passed away two years ago and now this wealth that they have to give on, like it’s not even going to get to the second generation now. It’ll still get to the to the third generation. But I think at the core, like it’s it goes back to what you were saying and what he’s suggesting in the book. There’s huge value in making sure that you’re taking the opportunity to to use those resources to create the experiences, because obviously you can’t take them. You can’t take money with you.

Buck: Yeah. And it’s about creating not just wealth for other your your children or your legacy, whatever, but also the experiences you potentially want them to have. I mean, I I’m making it a boy, you know, right now, to every chance we get, like with my daughters and me and my my three daughters, and we will we’ll just take off and go do something. And it’s always going to be something that like, you know, that I know they’re going to remember forever. I took my oldest to the Grammys. You know, I took the three of them to the Taylor Swift concert in in Arizona. We went hiking while we were there. It’s like things to actually remember this. So again, it’s important to think of when you’re giving it’s not just about money, but it’s also about experiences.

Clearly, obviously, the those experiences cost money as well. But my, my feeling on this is, again, you know, why only accumulate I mean, ever unless okay, maybe you’re in your twenties or something like that and you can accumulate a little bit more. But on the other hand, there’s also things in your twenties and your thirties and even in your forties that you can no longer do when you’re in your seventies, right, to try to do those things. And that’s a big part of the story as well because like I say, and I’m not like a guy who likes climbing mountains or anything like that, I’d rather not fall off a mountain. But if that’s what you want to do, do it while you’re healthy. Do it now. Don’t wait because you don’t know what’s going to happen later. Right?

Rod: Absolutely. And like kind of you guys have talked about already, it it seems like it’s a it’s about balance. Right. Right. And taking those opportunities while you have them and recognize that being very intentional about the way you live your life, being thoughtful about what is realistic to do in 2340s that you won’t be able to do later and vice versa. But then also, like I really like what you said about teaching your kids and we have kind of a unique perspective in because of what we do. Specifically with what from your banking, we have a lot of people who will be setting up policies where their children are, the insureds and even while they’re, well, they’re very young minors, kids into their twenties.

And then what they do is they still use the wealth formula banking strategy. But what they’re doing is they’re teaching their children as they’re going, so as when they’re analyzing a property, for example, to or any kind of investment, they’re involving the children in those the due diligence and the analysis of it. And then when when it comes time to to invest and they’re taking a loan from this policy, and especially when they’re minors, that the owner of it is still the adult. The parent. But there’s just the fact that it has the kid’s name on it as the insured and that eventually that money is that that policy is going to go to the child. Psychologically, it just makes a very different experience for them as they’re learning the ropes, so to speak.

Buck: And I’m going to get back to that because I think this how insurance plays into that in a second, because I think that that’s one of the reasons I wanted to have you guys join me with this. But but let’s just just moving on with some of the other topics that I think are important. So we need to actually talk about allocating resources. He is an engineer by training. So like, you know, he approached this with a very, you know, very, you know, almost like a spreadsheet, right. Where he’s got allocating your resources and, you know, he’s he’s got these things. He’s got these different separated currencies, so to speak. One is money, one is energy, one’s time. And effectively, his idea is that, okay, you know, you basically got to allocate your resources.

You have limited resources. So what do you want to do with this the rest of your life? And the idea is, again, to accumulate not just it’s a it’s about trading in financial resources for other assets, namely memories. I think that’s kind of what he’s saying is like there are things that you can’t do. You may not be able to do when you’re 80 or 90. Although with my new podcast, you may find that you may be able to. That as needing to eighties and nineties. You may not be able to climb that mountain, but if you at least you can remember doing it and that’s there’s some value, there’s significant value in there right? And then you take that and then you take the things that are important and then you eliminate the rest. And again, that’s probably why he did not accept my invitation to be here. This show, because it wasn’t a great use of his time or whatever. But I think that’s important. So do you guys think okay, so I think this I’ve talked about this in another way before, but do you say no enough in your own. Oh.

Christian: I see what you’re saying.

Buck: Hmm. Let me give you an example. Like, here’s it for me. And I got this this advice from Dean Graves. Jose, who’s, you know, it’s a marker of very good real estate guide, a dean said that he said saying, yes, got me to 10 million and saying no, got me to a hundred and 100 million. And and it actually did something I really thought about a lot because I think, you know, I actually I, I don’t really go, you know, there’s a lot of things I just don’t do anymore because I look at them very much as, why am I doing this kind of thing, right?

Buck: Like, for example, it’s rare you’ll you’ll never see me. You’ll almost never see me at an event like one of these podcast, like investing investor events. Unless it’s mine, of course it’s mine. It’s, there’s value in it for, for me. And like, I think it’s worth it for my, my, my listeners. But like, I don’t go to a lot of these things it’s in it’s nothing against, you know, the people who are putting it on. But I’m like, really? What am I going to you know, what am I really going to get out of this? And then the amount of time and then, you know, time away from kids, time that I could allocate to others. I don’t I just a lot of times just won’t do it. And so it’s very rare when I’ll do that.

Still it’s hard for me with phone calls. I know. Yeah. You know we have wealth formula, network and stuff so we I spend a lot of time, I spend my fixed time with those individuals who are in that. But you know, a lot of people want to have one off conversations with me, which I would love to do, but it’s really just not really practical anymore. It’s very difficult to do that. It’s not the best way for me to to give back. So so I can’t really do that. I’m curious on your own experiences whether you’ve experienced that or at least thought about some of those things that you could eliminate and therefore free up more of your life to do other stuff.

Christian: So you’re probably getting from A-Rod and I like to varying ends of that spectrum, right? I probably far more on your side, Buck, where I tend to like in fact, I probably think too many things are a waste of my time. Yeah. And Rod’s just like, oh, he just like he has the conversations. He’s always good to have the conversations. It’s amazing. Really. Yeah. His like, stamina and energy. But it’s something that we as a business and like, even even the way that we work with your, your, your clients like that has become so much more efficient over time. So I think that that’s like something we’re constantly seeing. The question that’s starting to go through my head is, am I thinking enough about that on a personal level? Because I feel like I do that on a business level.

Buck: Well, business is business.

Christian: It’s personal.

Buck: Yeah, business is business creation. I mean, that that’s a totally thing. That’s that’s different in my opinion. But I think, like, you have a you know, you have choices whether you’re going to, you know, people invite you to things you don’t really want to go, do you go anyway just to be nice, you know, You know what I mean? There’s lots of those kinds of things that I feel like on a daily basis. Like, I don’t know, do we don’t we don’t really think of the the the time and energy as a resource that’s limited. And in look at it the same way you might look at something and decide whether you want to buy it, you know? Yeah, exactly.

Rod: I’m just going to second what Christian said because I was really shocked. Like he’s a big sports fan and I was shocked to find out that he he has no I shouldn’t say no interest unless he’s going with someone that really means a lot to him. He has no interest in going to the arena or to the field to actually watch the game because he again, I think it’s a time thing. It’s also a comfort thing. Just day he can create a better environment in his own home or whatever, whereas I’m the guy that’s like, hey, you know, you invite me to the game, I’m going to go, right?

Buck: Well, yeah, it’s different. Like, you know, it’s a different experience altogether. I mean, I think like, you know, like watching sports, if you really wanted to watch the Super Bowl and enjoy it the most, you probably watch it on on TV. If you really want to see every play and watch the ball. But you know, like a my friend of a friend who’s a part owner of the Seattle Kraken, Kraken expansion team.

00:28:10:14 – 00:28:37:08

Buck:

Yeah. And he he was nice enough to, like, fly us up to Seattle this weekend on Saturday and and sit in the owner’s box and watch the game with him That was that That’s a really cool was definitely worth my time because it was so fun What a great experience you know so yeah I get it like but I think you know, you do need to, you do need to. I think pay attention to the things that you say. Yes. And things that you say no to. And they they also like they relate to things in business to a lot of times, you know, I get a lot of you know, I get a a lot of calls from people who want to do business for me or or or, you know, emails and random things. And I don’t want to be rude about it, but I’m going to I mean, way you know, if I entered every one of those, you know, things that that I don’t think that very, very unlikely that anything was going to work actually be of benefit to our listeners. I just wouldn’t have any time to do anything and be creative and try to try to do things that are productive for this audience or for myself.

Christian: But can I throw out a question or just a thought here? We’re switching gears just a little bit. So one of the areas that I felt the most like internal conflict in was when the author was talking about when he worked on worked on Wall Street. He was making like I think he said, $16,000 a year and he’d been trying to scrimp and save, goes to his boss. The boss basically says, that’s a terrible idea. What were you thinking? Like you’re going to make so much more money later that you shouldn’t be trying to scrimp to save this thousand. So that was the it was that kind of extreme thought that I had, like that conflict. I’m like, you can’t tell. You can’t tell people making 20 grand to spend more money.

But but from a principled standpoint, like it does make a lot of sense. And I look back on my own life and I probably focused too much on work and those types of things and not enough on like my health. So, like, money’s great, but it doesn’t do you any good if you’re not healthy. Yeah, right. So anyway, I just I thought about that and I felt conflicted. But I will say like, it’s it keeps going back to balance. I don’t think I’m going to tell the, you know, the 21 year olds that are making 15 or 20,000 that they need to spend more. But for me, like a philosophical principle standpoint, I absolutely think that we need to do more to enjoy money. He gave the example of like European countries who take far more time for other things, right? Personal time, leisure travel. And anyway, that resonated with me. It seems like something that I said probably take note and do a little more of myself.

Buck: Yeah. And just to piggyback after that, I mean, it reminds me of my when I was a medical student and I was working in this this lab, this neurosurgery lab. As you guys may know, I started out neurosurgery residency and I was talking to the attending surgeon who is like my my boss. And I was telling him about something. And, you know, he’s he’s and I was like, you know, I don’t really have any money to do that. And he’s like, Dude, just borrow the money from your school. It’s like super low rates and all stuff like that. And he’s like, you know, he’s like, you’re going to be you’re going to be a physician and whatever that, you know, if you borrowed ten grand to do something now and eventually it’s going to be so what you grant granted, you know, ten grand later in your future when you’re already on this, I guess this track to go on and make multiple six figures is is nothing.

And actually that actually was really good advice, I thought, because at least in that scenario, like I wasn’t, you know, an aimless 19, 20 year old, I was like a kid on a trajectory. Right. And I knew I was going to make money. So if I was going to really if I knew I was going to make money, then yeah, it made sense then don’t worry that much about like, you know, put five grand away necessarily in a Roth IRA or something like that to spend it. I totally get that. Totally. I think that that’s a different thing. But yeah, you know, this is probably a good time to pivot because again, why do I have Christine and Rod with me talking about they were zero? Well, first of all, like I said, Bill Perkins, I ended up being on his eliminate the rest list. And and then when I but when I think of death, I think of Christian and Rod.

Christian: And I know that, we’re flattered.

Buck: So you guys know this story, right? Like when I got, you know, I got the old guard COVID og COVID before the vaccine and stuff. And I remember waking up and I had all the symptoms and I was getting tested and while I was getting tested and I knew I had COVID because I knew someone had given it to me, I said, what am I get? What are going to need? Okay, I’m going to go to the hospital and I’m going to try to get the monoclonal antibodies and try to, like, mitigate my risk of dying here. And then at the same time, I’m going to call Rod, I’m going to make.

Christian: Sure it’s my first call too.

Buck: I mean, I call Rod and make sure everything’s good. Everything’s good. Okay. So that being said, so I associate you guys with death, and I hope you take that as a compliment, I guess. But the the concept here of Die with Zero. And I thought this was this this is a this is an opportunity, I think, to emphasize the potential role of various insurance opportunities, particularly if you talk about like, well, formula banking, where you’re obviously like leaving, you know, you’re using money, but then there’s a death benefit.

So I kind of like the idea of like using these, you know, putting death and putting putting die with zero in the context of like, say, a wealth formula banking thing and see how you could make it work. Like, could you, you know, to me, life insurance in this way is almost like a a backstop. Like, okay, so even if I screw everything up, right, at least there’s this, you know, this money for my kids, if I screw everything up and whatever and lose it, lose a bunch of money.

So I’m curious on your take on that, because the idea in theory would be, okay, now you’ve got a bunch of money, you’re giving a bunch of you’ve bought some insurance, you’ve got a big lump sum that they’re going to get no matter what. Then you can, with some more confidence, spend the money yourself and give them money while you’re living and have those experiences with greater peace of mind. Did this cross your mind at all when you’re reading this?

Christian: So Rod and I have done a little bit of communicating back and forth on this over the last few days. And Ron, I think you probably take this one, you take the angle on wealth formula banking, and I’ll take more of a premium finance angle because I think both of them are super relevant. But we’ll let you hit this one. And what you just described back is what we we call it kind of that permission slip to spend. Because if because I know that that I’m going to have this this insurance that kicks in. And, you know, I should also say, you know, he he addresses this in terms of like a long term care type of perspective.

Rod: Yeah. So there’s the what I’m passing on to my kids. There’s the what if I get sick when I’m later in life and I’ve kind of spent this money, then what happens? And that’s the whole thing. Is you can add that on. So you can because you can add these things on the policy. And there’s no additional cost to adding that writer on the front end. There’s no reason not to. So we include these are called the Chronic illness rider that takes care of that long term care. And then more to your point, there’s that death benefit that’s going to pay out and leave a legacy to your children. You know, almost regardless, right now, we have people who are like, well, I don’t care about the death benefit. I’m going to spend it down. I’m going to live off of it. And they do, right? So they get to that retirement age. They’ve built up all this value inside of the policy they were using it for for investing, flowing the money in and out of their investments and making it more efficient as they did that. And then we call it phase two. They get to this stage. We don’t usually use the word retirement around here. It’s just like, Hey, I’m slowing down. I’m going to, you know, live more off of my cash flows and my investments and things like that. Well, the cash value in that policy becomes another source of of that. In this case, tax free income that you could cash flow that you can be creating during your retirement years.

And you can spend that down as low as you want and. And again, there’s still going to be some death benefit there or not. Like you temper that a little bit and and you want to leave some death benefit and so you tap into it when you need it. Maybe you have your regular expenses covered by the the cash flows that you were able to create through your real estate investing or business or whatever it might be. But then when you need to buy a car, you need to you know, you’re going on the special trip or whatever, then you tap into this tax free source of income in your policy to use that. But it’s more on an as needed basis. And and then again, this death benefits ultimately going to pass on and be that legacy piece. But it’s going to pay out regardless. Right. And whenever you pass away that that’s going to be part of it.

Buck: Yeah. So it’s again it’s to me it’s the backstop, right. Like if you screw up you accidentally, you know, whether that’s you know, you screw up in your finances, whether you know, you get covered and die on your way after talking to Rod or you know what, it’s a backstop. And to me that’s a if you have that backstop, it’s a lot easier to digest everything else in this book for sure. Question What were you going to say about premium finance? Because that’s a different role, because now you’re just really, truly accumulating, right?

Christian: Okay. Well, actually, I’m going to suggest to you back that I think that the premium finance side is the most effective way to accomplish this. Die with Zero. Okay. Okay. So let me try to lay it out here. So he he basically suggests that obviously we want to spend more money, but he uses the challenge of not knowing when we’re going to die. He tries to this like death date. Well, it’s hard to create a death date, but what you could do is you could buy an annuity which is guaranteed to run your lifetime. And he suggested in the book, Right. So he says, hey, one thing that a person could do and just think of it this way, but let’s say that I had $100 million and I know I need $1,000,000 a year to live off comfortably.

Christian: I could just purchase this income annuity, let it pay out for the rest of my life, and I’ve at least got that part now covered. Right. And then what he suggests is, well, that works great, except that there is the possibility that later in life I could need more money if long term care and medical expenses come up.

Buck: And for most people that’s the case.

Christian: Exactly.So what is he suggests to do there? He says long term care insurance. Right. So here’s what I would suggest. And this is kind of where my head went using premium finance is basically a more can be, can be and is a more effective way to accomplish both of those things. So if our objectives are one, to make sure that we have enough money to live, write premium finance does that because of leverage, right? It creates leverage into our income. So that well, let’s put it this way, Burke, If I were to compare my, you know, simple income annuity that I get from a life insurance company, the payouts expect even I mean, even if we went like, you know, 30% of the payouts expected in the premium finance model, it would strongly outperform what we’re expecting from the annuity.

So just from an income basis, yeah, it’s more it’s more powerful in that way. Yeah, no doubt. Additionally, additionally, you’ve this death benefit and if I have leverage on the death benefit, that means I have more leverage on the long term care benefit as well. So from my perspective, I looked at this and I was like, okay, I like the way to accomplish this, although I have one other thought and that is that why not leave a legacy if you can? So yeah, again, he’s suggesting you know, get long term care insurance and and again this is just one one example. But what I’m suggesting here is you could accomplish those things in a more efficient, impactful, powerful way and still leave a massive death benefit all at the same time. And so from that standpoint, my thought is why not do both?

Buck: Well, that’s right. And like to your point, you know, you still have grandkids there. You still have other, you know, descendants that can benefit from your successes. It’s not you know, so it’s not it’s not like it’s not like you’re doing this for nothing. And I also would just emphasize the point that you made earlier, I think, Rod, that I mean, this is, I think, a very good conceptual framework, but it I mean, like most of us would not go down this road of saying we’re going to try to literally we’re going to try to, you know, use up all of our money while we’re living in in some way or another. Like, it just it’s not realistic, in my view, that most people would do that. Certainly wouldn’t do. I certainly wouldn’t do that. But hopefully you have enough money where you can. You know, I think, again, take the lesson of not, you know, not just hoarding it and continuously continuously using it, but, Rod, I mean, I’m actually Christian. Can you remind us, though, because I know we just kind of have been using premium finance here, but for anybody who’s listening, who actually doesn’t know what you’re talking about, maybe you can explain how in brief, how premium finance works.

Christian: Yeah, happy to do so. So basically what we’re doing is we’re purchasing a life insurance policy or policies utilizing the bank’s money. Primarily, it might be a small percentage of our own money, but then we’re we’re using leverage. So it’s basically like buying life insurance the same way that most of us would invest in real estate. I might put 10% or 20% down on my life insurance policy. That gives me the opportunity to leverage the death benefit and the living benefits, which we talk about. So so anyway, that’s just a really kind of simplified overview, but if you think about it, it’s pretty logical, right? If I can amplify the things that are happening here, it just makes it more powerful and life insurance is incredibly unique in the sense that it’s one of those few assets that you can leverage. It’s just naturally built within it.

Buck: Yeah, So we’ve used the term Wealth Accelerator as well. So does this. A Wealth Accelerator is a type of premium finance. Are you thinking of this in the context of Wealth Accelerator? And maybe you can explain again specifically what Wealth Accelerator is.

Christian: Yep. Happy to. Okay, so in the Wealth Accelerator model, we we change up our traditional premium finance a little bit. Most most premium finance models are a little bit more aggressive than we like to go. So we take kind of we call it conservative leverage, right? We want to use leverage, but we want to use it really wisely. So we’ve developed or kind of in Concord word with a few other people developed a strategy that allows you to use premium finance without having outside leverage with outside collateral. Sorry, the leverage is there. The collateral is.

Buck: Basically non-recourse, right?

Christian: It’s like Non-Recourse. Yeah. That’s an easy way to say it. So so simply put, I’ll give an example and the Wealth Accelerator model, I might have I might decide that I want to have million dollars go into it over time. Again, I’m just throwing a random example out. Maybe I put the first hundred thousand or the first couple hundred thousand into it and then I let the bank fund it from there on out. And basically what’s happening is I’m getting all of the the benefits of life insurance built in the way that we do it to create income and and the other benefits, but specifically to create income. That’s really kind of the model that we’re looking for. And of course, again, if I think about this in terms of how it works in comparison to like, like income annuities, which again is the example, it’s just like a way to do the same thing, but do it significantly more like to do it better, right? I don’t know any other way to put it.

Buck: Yeah. One other, one other thought on that. Like as you guys know, I’ve been sort of tinkering with a lot of different things because I’m focusing, you know, I’m, I’m trying to like, you know, make sure that I’ve got legacy covered, right? So you just never know. And and I have purchased like when I was even a few years ago, right, Like when I was in I’m still in good health. But I was thinking to myself, I’m still in good health. And, you know, I’m relatively young. I’m going to buy a huge amount of of a convertible. Uh, term insurance. So basically what that is, it’s so I can I bought a bunch of term insurance and I, you know, when I was maybe five years ago or something like that, and it was a lot right. Like, so if I, if I were to try to convert that in or do that all in one year, it would be a huge premium. So I didn’t do that. But I wanted to have the option and I didn’t want my premiums potentially to be higher because. I was older or maybe I developed some health problem and so on, so forth.

So I grabbed as much term as I could. I maxed it out, was pretty cheap. But now I’m thinking, Well, I’ve got it there. One of the things I may do is what I’m thinking about doing is every year maybe chipping off some of that term, converting it and doing this kind of concept. So then, you know, you’re the nice thing about that is that you’re every year you are doing your job in terms of increasing, you know, the legacy that you’re going to have and, you know, over time. But you know, you’re not putting a huge amount at once, but you’re getting it to work. And then it may be a benefit from, you know, if you want to use that money later for quote unquote, retirement or whatever. But what do you think of that strategy?

Christian: Well, so it absolutely sets. So first off, but I think you did a fantastic job of buying term insurance. I was impressed. That was before we met you. The only thing I would say is don’t buy your term insurance from Northwestern Mutual. But other than that. Yeah, yeah, I’m just be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, like, that was a really good move because it’s allowed, it’s been a catalyst and allows you to do a lot of things with it moving forward that you just may not be able to otherwise. So I really love that advice. And then I forgot where I was going. On the second point.

Rod: Yeah, I can, I can take that from there. Yeah. Okay. I see. Because you talked about like going in by steps, read the Wealth Accelerator. Yeah. But instead of instead of saying, well, I’m going to set aside $1,000,000 now or $2 million now, I’m going to phase into it by setting aside a couple hundred thousand a year for the next five or ten years or whatever.

And we have a lot of people who do that. I call it stacking. So it’s the exact same thing as Christine just described. We’re always staying ahead of the curve so that the part, the cash value recreating in the policy by itself is enough to cover the collateral. We don’t have to come up with collateral from outside. But but you can build into it and do it in bite sized pieces or where we have people who will say, Hey, well, I just I sold my practice and I have the 2 million right now. I’d rather just just jump in and do it. And so, yeah, you can do it all at once. And that’s the beautiful thing, is it works either way. You can, you can work towards this benefit and then we just build it to, to where the person is at this point in time.

Buck: I like these, I like these concepts because it reminds me of sort of like a Swiss Army knife, right? Like it’s one thing, but you can really use it for so many different things, whether it’s legacy, cash flow, stuff like that. And I think like it really works if you’re thinking about like this whole concept, die with zero or you want to like really enjoy your life in the in that right now without necessarily worrying too much about retirement, without necessarily worrying about legacy, it kind of is that Swiss Army knife that’s covering everything.

Christian: Yeah, actually that’s what I was going to jump in and say, is that what’s really nice about using like the Wealth Accelerator as an example is you’re literally doing both things right. If die with zero under scenario, like taking a step back and experiencing things as a goal, then that helps you accomplish that because it’s creating this guaranteed income stream that you could then move away from work and other things and allow that to play, to plug in.

And so you’re literally accomplishing like all of those objectives, Swiss Army knife style, by using really any of those. And, you know, similar I think the same thing applies with wealth formula, banking. They just have like slightly different now there’s there’s probably a few details that are different, but they have a similar impact.

Buck: Yeah, I’m actually right. I’m kind of with you on this one. I are not radical with Christian. I’m not Christian. I’m on Christian side here. I kind of really like this concept with accelerator. I really think it’s a really cool thing to to do. And, and I do highly recommend, by the way, if people are contemplating these kinds of like permanent types of things, but you’re not sure you want to do it, just go get yourself some term convertible, convertible term through writing Christian because it’s cheap and that’ll give you options and you won’t regret it if you know two years down the line I’ll send you develop diabetes and or like some sort of coronary artery disease and and now no one wants to give you insurance, right?

Christian: Yeah. Can I just tell you I wish that I had done that. I don’t have, like, any huge health issues, but enough so that it would create some challenges for me. And I look back and I think I if I would have done that, I would have been in a better place. No question.

Buck: Anything else, guys, or is it? I think that’s that’s a pretty good rap. I think, though, combining this with, you know, some of the things that we can do practically.

Rod: Absolutely.

Christian: I think it’s a good overview for sure.

Buck: Great. Well, listen, you can learn more about these strategies by contacting Ron and Christian. But I think the best way to do it is probably to go to wealth formula banking dot com. And I forget guys is there a there’s something with the accelerator on there right there’s a webinar with their accelerator. Yeah. So that’s that’s the one that that Christian’s talking about in any way. Check it out. I think it’s it’s worthwhile and again, I highly recommend reading this book Bill Perkins Die with Zero. I think you know, I personally don’t look at it as a manual that I would necessarily follow to a tee, but I think there’s pretty compelling things to think about, and I would highly recommend picking up a copy. But that’s all for this week. Guys, thanks so much for being on the show and doing a little book club with me.

Christian: That was fun. Thanks, Buck.

Buck: We’ll be right back.