In episode 28 of The Real Talk, Raquel Ramirez interviews Angel Gonzalez, a group health, life, and supplemental insurance expert. Angel shares his expertise on infinite banking, a concept that helps individuals and families create financial freedom without relying on external banking institutions. He also discusses the Money Max account, a debt elimination solution that acts as a GPS for your finances.
Tune in to learn how to recapture wealth, pay down debt, and achieve financial independence.
TIMESTAMPS
[00:01:15] Infinite Banking and Debt Elimination.
[00:04:25] Infinite Banking System Affordability.
[00:09:12] Debt Management System.
[00:25:34] Infinite Banking Process.
[00:31:19] Tax Deductions and Interest Rates.
[00:33:14] Buying Cars through Whole Life Policy.
[00:40:08] Bi-Weekly Mortgage Payment Strategy.
[00:43:00] Death Benefit and Cash Value.
[00:50:45] A Life Insurance Policy.
[00:55:23] Infinite Banking and Financial Freedom.
In this episode, Raquel Ramirez and Angel Gonzalez address the common tendency for people to avoid discussing their finances due to discomfort. However, they emphasize the importance of confronting the realities of one's financial situation. By facing the realities of their financial situation, individuals can make informed decisions and take necessary steps to secure their financial future.
Furthermore, Raquel and Angel emphasize that money is essentially our currency and serves as a barter system, but many people struggle to retain it. This highlights the importance of finding effective solutions for debt elimination without negatively impacting your credit score.
QUOTES
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Raquel Ramirez
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/featured_properties_intl/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/featuredre
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-ramirez/
Angel Gonzalez
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mbimiami
WEBSITES:
The Real Talk: https://www.therealtalkpodcast.net/
Featured Properties International: https://msha.ke/featuredre
Millenium Benefits Inc.: https://mbiwealth.com/
Welcome to The Real Talk. I'm Raquel Ramirez, your host and real estate professional here to bring you insightful conversations, expert advice, and powerful stories about what really goes on in life, love, divorce, and real estate. Are you ready? Let's get real. Hello and welcome to The Real Talk podcast. How are you doing today?
Feeling great, feeling great. How are you doing?
I'm doing very well. It's really great to have you, Angel. For the people who are tuning in today, I want to tell you a little bit about who I'm going to be speaking with today. His name is Angel Gonzalez. He is not only a friend, but he's a group health, life and supplemental insurance expert serving business clientele in 67 counties in Florida. So in case you didn't know how many counties we had here, it's roughly 67 counties in Florida. As the owner and president of Millennium Benefits, Inc., he has built a very strong customer base since 2002 through reliability, technological aptitude, white glove customer service, all things that I can attest to. Angel can also help individuals and families recapture their wealth and pay down debt through a unique concept called infinite banking, which is going to be very interesting. Infinite banking is a way to create financial freedom and establish a personal bank without relying on external banking institutions. We're also gonna talk, I think, a little bit about debt consolidation, or let me rephrase that, money max account, right? And what that is, it's a debt elimination solution that is like having a GPS for your finances, which I find is very interesting. So much like Waze, that directs you automatically to where you wanna go, Money Max is designed with the sole purpose of getting you out of debt in the most efficient way possible. So these are two very interesting topics, topics that I think hit home for everybody, because we all use money basically as our barter system, right? And most people have a hard time keeping it in their wallet. And honestly, it's the thing that we use, it's our currency, it's everything in our life, our currency through and through. So without further ado, Tell us a little bit more about you and I guess pick one of these so we can start.
Okay. About me, I mean, I've been in the life insurance industry and the health insurance industry since 1996. So I've been doing this for a really long time. I learned about infinite banking about seven years ago. Really?
Yeah. I didn't realize this was that old.
Infinite banking is older than I am.
Oh my God. Okay. So I've been in the dark about this. All right.
Infinite banking is something that was discovered by Nelson R. Nash. Sorry, R. Nelson Nash. And he discovered the system back in the forties. He's the one that pioneered the system. So he's known about it forever. And he basically has a whole institute that teaches agents how to do this correctly. There's a lot of agents that learn how to do this through YouTube. And they turn around and they're like, yeah, I know how to do this and let's do it. But I am a tutor. Yeah, exactly. But I actually went and got the certification from the Nelson Nelson Nash Institute. Oh, OK. Learn how to do this properly.
So I like it.
Yeah, there's a lot of things I learned about this that I didn't know seven years ago, that now I know as of three years ago, when I got the certification, and you know, I'm on their website as a practitioner. So it's, it's very cool.
All right. All right.
actually learn from him directly. It's cool.
I know that is, I mean, if you're going to learn something, you might as well learn it from the authority. So, okay. All right. And then, and then the MoneyMax account, is that, is that the debt elimination system that we had talked about that time that we got together? Okay. So that's very interesting too. All right. So is there a, do these things, I guess, do they relate to one another in some way, somehow, or are they two very different services?
No, actually, generally speaking, depending on who I'm talking to, I'll start talking about the MoneyMax account because in most cases, when I'm talking to somebody about their debt, it's because even though the infinite banking system is something that anybody can use, you do have to have money to be able to do it. So if if your discretionary funds on a monthly basis are 50 bucks, I mean, infinite banking is is something that I think everybody should should have in their life. But you have to be able to afford it, at least at the beginning, because you have to be able to capitalize your banking policy. OK, so usually my conversation with people starts with money banks. Money Max's is essentially a way of paying off debt in a way that doesn't hurt your credit score. OK. It's a living system. It's it's a web based program. It's not static. It's not something where and this is one of the things that I really attracted me about it. And I use it myself, by the way. You and I are both not to point out, but you and I are both old enough to remember the guy from the sheer amount. The guy that said, I'm not only the president of the hair club for men, I'm also a client. Yes. That's me. The Money Max account is something that it's not only for people that want to get out of debt, it's also a good tool for forecasting debts that you want to incur.
Oh, OK.
It's got a lot of uses. So I'm at the point where I'm using it for forecasting things that I want to do, not just getting rid of debt that I've already incurred.
So like budgeting.
It's similar to budgeting. When you budget traditionally, you don't know what's going to happen unless you do a lot of homework. If you want to buy a home, like if you want to buy a house, you have to go and you have to get financing and you have to get pre-approved. Maybe you go on to like Bankrate.com and you figure out, you know, if this is my rate and this is my monthly payment. Right. The Money Max system, you don't have to worry about that. The Money Max system, you go into the system and you input the information. And the biggest difference is that when you go to Bankrate, and you put in the rate that you qualify for and the amount of money that your house costs, it's going to tell you, OK, this is what you're going to pay on a monthly basis for 30 years.
Right.
Very different from going into a system and saying, this is the mortgage I wanna take on, this is the interest rate I have, and this is the mortgage payment that I have, how long is it gonna take me to pay off this house? And the system will kick back out a timeframe, and that's not 30 years. Generally speaking, it's closer to nine to 10 years. So imagine you're a real estate agent. So imagine if you sit down with a client and you tell them, here's the house you just bought, Here's the mortgage you just told me you took on. Instead of paying this in 30 years, how would you like to learn how to pay it in nine?
Right.
How powerful is that for your client?
Yeah, that's huge.
That's huge. It's a win win for everybody. Now, all of a sudden, this person builds equity faster because obviously you're paying off your house faster. So you build equity faster, you pay off your house faster, and it puts you in a position to work with you again to buy another house investment or, you know, Rent out your old house and upgrade, who knows? But it puts you in a better position because now you're being taught how to pay off your house in the most efficient way possible.
So you said this is like a living system, meaning that, let me see if I understand correctly. So this is a system, let's say it's, I guess it's online, right? And it's almost like a spreadsheet of sorts where it has some form of built-in algorithm that helps you, I guess, invest your money or save your money or use your money in a way that is most efficient to get to your goals quicker. and it's constantly changing. Is that, am I?
90% of it, except it's not a spreadsheet. Okay. All right. So when you log in, it's great. So, you know, when you open up your, let's call it, let's use Waze as an example. When you open up Waze, you have the map, right? Right. And then the map, you just follow the map and it tells you where to go. Right. But there's also a part where you can switch over and it gives you a step-by-step of what you're going to do on your path to wherever you're going.
Yeah, the route system, right, it'll show you where to turn how long it takes you to get there.
So the MoneyMax account instead of a map, because obviously there's no, there's not a map system, but it does give you a list of things that you need to do. And it tells you what to do with your money on a week in a weekly basis. So it's a living system in the sense that when you log in, the first thing you're gonna do is reconcile the debts that you've incurred for that week and any extra money you've made for that week. Which is very different from a static system like the debt snowball or the debt avalanche where you do the initial analysis and you sit down on a piece of paper or you sit down on a spreadsheet. Okay, these are my debts and this is what I'm gonna do. Well, if you incur additional debt, now you have to go back You have to change the spreadsheet. You have to change.
You have to input it yourself.
And most people only do it once a month.
Right.
So at the end of every month, you go, wow, I took on a lot more debt than I thought. So now I have to put and put that into the spreadsheet. I have to recalculate all the things. So it's very time consuming on a monthly basis. for 15 minutes a week, you log in, you say, okay, on this credit card, I did this. My income, I actually made extra income because I sold a house or in my case, I sold a life insurance policy or whatever. Like if your income is more that week than what it was the previous week, you input that into the system. And in real time, it will tell you new steps that you can take to get out of debt faster. I see. And the great thing is it's almost like a game, because at the very top, like right here on the screen, it tells you time out of debt. And let's say that it says five years and then you make an extra thousand dollars for that week and you put that into the system that might take down to instead of five years, maybe four point eight years. Right. And so it it kind of changes the mindset of people, which is the part that I really, really love. When I used to deal in debt snowball, since I would only talk to people once every month or once every couple of months or that time frame, they weren't thinking about their debt. Right. But then all of a sudden they they dread sitting down with my clients. I'm not going to sit there going, oh, it's OK. It's OK. I go, why did you spend that money? Did you really need those shoes?
Sometimes, yes.
It depends, Angel. You know, but if you're trying to get out of debt, maybe, you know, don't buy those shoes for a little bit. So in this system, since you're sitting down every single week and looking at your stuff, it changes your mindset. you start actually thinking to yourself, if I buy this, I know that when I sit down and look at my debt, my debt might actually take up instead of taking down, which is what I want. Because once it gets to zero, you're free and clear, your debt's all paid off, your house is paid off, your car is paid off, you're done. And this system is something you have for the rest of your life. So even though you're done, you can now forecast things that you wanna buy without having to worry about, okay, if I buy this investment property, this is a 30-year commitment. Well, maybe not. If I'm forecasting a 30-year property and it can tell me that I can pay this off in five years, which by the way, that's absolutely possible.
I know it sounds insane.
My mentor just bought a house in 2017, he's paying it off this year. Wow. And it's an investment property and he he's paying it off because that's great told him this is such a great deal and in seven years you can pay it off using this exact system.
That's financial freedom. So you still need to be disciplined about this. You still need to find the time to sit. But like you said, it's only, let's say 15, 20 minutes to log into that account and work through, you know, the system to input any changes, whether it's a change in expense or a change in income, and then let that thing work its way through to tell you if you're still in line with your goals or what you need to do to stay in line with your goals. And then The cool thing about it, if I understand correctly, is that it provides you a visual, really, what's the word I'm looking for, that motivates you, something that motivates you to continue to move in the direction that you need to go. So it's a mental thing. It helps you hold yourself accountable, but you still need to be disciplined about the process. Otherwise, it's like anything else. If you don't do it, you don't go to the gym, you're never gonna increase your mobility or, or increase your health span or whatever.
I've had a gym membership for years. And honestly, I, I don't know how I'm not losing weight. I haven't gone in years, but still I have the membership.
But I've had it for so long, I just don't understand. Exactly, exactly. So for as much as we want to think of it as a miracle, you know, spreadsheet, I'm going to say that loosely, it's not I mean, still, you need to be disciplined and committed to that goal of helping yourself get out of debt or, you know, planning for a future investment or expense. But it seems very interesting because like you said, unlike a spreadsheet that it is static, this is a living system that moves with you and your changes to continue to, I guess, drive you in the direction that you need to go. So that is really neat. I remember we talked about this and I thought that was pretty, pretty genius.
Yeah, and it's great, because just like in a way system, do you know how so and this is something that that my partner says all the time, which I really like, when you're using ways, and you're you're basically putting where you want to go, how often do you get to an accident, and then reroute you and reroute you? Honestly, it doesn't happen that often, if you think about it. Because you're getting rerouted before you ever get to the access.
Yeah, that's right.
What it says. That's right. This system works the same.
It's really cool.
We'll reroute you. A lot of times you won't even know why it's telling you to do what what it's telling you to do. But if you follow it, it's going to get you to where you to your goal much faster without you even realizing how good it is. So it's, it takes a guesswork out.
Yeah. And it forecasts what issues might be along the way and helps you stay away from that. So like you said, it helps you achieve your goals in a faster, more efficient way.
Yeah. It's a, it's really a game changer. When I started using it, I fell in love immediately. I don't like selling anything that I myself don't have. So I have the money max account that I use for myself. I use it, as you mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, I use it in conjunction with infinite banking. Right. And that accelerates the process of paying off your debt even more.
OK, so this is a perfect segue. OK, so now we've now. Okay, so now we've managed to get out of debt. We paid off our house and a couple of other things. We've foregone the shoes, which I don't necessarily agree with because it brings me happiness. I'm just kidding. And so now we're here at the topic of infinite banking. I heard somebody mentioned this the other day, and I hate to say that I really didn't know anything about it. And now I feel even worse. You tell me that this has existed for like ever, and I'm not really sure. And mind you, I'm an ex-corporate banker. So I, of course, I didn't work so much on the financing side of things because I was a real estate manager, but I am familiar with how banks work. So tell me then, what's the next step? Let's say we got out of debt and we're in a good financial place. What is infinite banking and how does that insert itself now into the process?
Okay. So infinite banking essentially is something that we, we teach clients that banking is not a building. Banking is a process. And that process and like, uh, there's, there's online banks now, which point it's not case in point.
Yes.
So this essentially takes that banking process and brings it down to an individual. You essentially are going to build and capitalize your own bank using a specifically designed high cash value, dividend paying whole life policy. And I know that's a mouthful, but it is a very specific policy that we use. You can't just use like like I know I know some some agents think that using a universal policy works. I don't like it at all. I know that most of the practitioners of the Nelson Nash Institute don't use universal life policies. And when I say most, I mean pretty much all. The reason is that universal policies, if you're familiar with the different types of insurance, you have term insurance. Are you familiar with the different types of insurance?
I am, but I hate to say that's not my forte. Like it's the type of topic that I talk about. I listen to it and then I forget. I hate to say that because it's not a good thing. I don't know what it is. It doesn't stick.
This is the easiest breakdown. Term insurance is the simplest form. You have a monthly payment, you have a death benefit, and you have it for a certain amount of time. That's it. You're essentially betting on either dying before that timeframe or hoping that you live beyond it. It's a really weird place with term insurance because obviously you don't want to pass away, but if you do, so one of the reasons... So... I don't mind selling term insurance. I have a very specific purpose for term insurance, and it's not long-term planning like permanent policies have. I use term insurance for things like asset protection, short-term income protection, things like that. The reason that I do that is because, I don't know if you've ever heard this particular nugget of information, In most cases, you only have a 1% chance of your death benefit being paid out to your beneficiaries with a term policy.
1%?
1%. Wow. The reason is not because the carriers are doing anything wrong or they're thieves or anything. It's just you have a 99% chance of either canceling the policy or outliving the policy. Most people, they outlive the policy. If they keep it, they outlive the policy and then they have to renew and then the rate becomes astronomical.
Right. And then there's no price.
Yeah. Because in the eyes of the insurance, you just aged a decade or more in a few minutes.
Wow. So then by then you're a miracle of science and they don't want to.
So you just went from being 20 to 50. If it's a 30 year policy, if you think about it, you just want being 20 to 50 over overnight. So I basically use term policies for things like asset protection, like you bought a house, you have a 30 year mortgage on that house. You want to get a term policy that covers you for that 30 years, just in case. But the second that house is paid off, you can let the policy cancel because it doesn't matter. So that's term policies, asset protection, short term protections.
May I interrupt you there to see if I understand that correctly. So let's say somebody does buy a house, right? A husband and wife, maybe. I don't know if that works in that specific scenario or if there's a difference because obviously when you buy a property as husband and wife, you actually buy it under the term of, you know, tenancy by entireties, meaning that you both own it 100%. So if one should pass away, the other one should inherit, but that doesn't mean that the mortgage goes away. There is a mortgage and God forbid your husband dies 17 years into the mortgage. Then what this insurance does is, assuming he has it, is help you pay for the remainder of the, I guess in that case, it would be 13 years if it's a 30 year mortgage, 13 years of mortgage payments, since you're probably now on a single income and it would be much more difficult for you to keep the house at that point. That's what that does. As an example.
Yeah, pay off whatever's left. It's whatever's left of your mortgage plus whatever excesses in the in the policy. So if you have a $500,000 mortgage and you buy a $500,000 policy, each one of you, obviously, you know, either one of you can pass away. The other person has to collect. So if it's $500,000 and 17 years later, you owe, you know, $350,000 on your house. you can take $350 of your $500, pay off the house, and you still have $150 left over.
Okay. Okay.
Interesting. It's whatever the mortgage is left, plus whatever's left over of the death benefit.
And you can get that insurance at any time? Or does it have to be at the point of sale?
No, no, you can get that at any time.
So even if you've owned your property 5-10 years, and you say, you know what, I think it's a good idea to, we're getting a little bit older, we're middle aged, and God forbid. Okay. Yeah.
Now, the salient point is if you buy a house, if you bought a house 10 years ago and you want to buy the insurance now, you're also paying for the fact that you're 10 years older. So it's always better to buy it as a younger person.
The younger you are, yes. Except that the younger you are, I can't really say that correlates with wisdom. It's the older you are, the wiser you get. So you might not think about that in your 20s, but now that we're in our 40s,
Yep. Almost 50s in my case.
Oh, my gosh. You don't look a day over 35. Why? Thank you.
This is what we do. Edama and I together are about 40 years old.
There you go. There you go. One of you is 10. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Okay, so I interrupted you. So we talked about term insurance, and then you were going to go into asset protection.
And yeah, so that's, that's term insurance. It's like I said, payment amount, death benefit amount for a certain amount of time. Point, simple, no problem. Perfect. Then you get into permanent policies. And the two types, the two main types of permanent policies are universal policies and whole life. Okay. Universal policies are a lot younger than whole life policies. Whole life policies, most people don't know this, actually predate the tax code. Oh my gosh. They've been around forever. Doesn't mean infinite banking has been around forever, but whole life policies have been around for a really long time. Universal policies are a much younger animal. Essentially, it's a term policy that is going to go for your whole life, and then they add on a rider for cash out. And universal policies have their uses. I personally am not a big fan of them, so I don't sell them. I don't I don't think they're a bad thing. I just I personally don't like them because I like to focus on the infinite banking side of things and that I don't use universal life. Got it. Universal policies are are a different animal. It would take forever to talk about them. So we're just going to we're going to move on now. All my policies, all my policies are They basically have a bad rap because, like anything, if somebody's selling you a policy and they are not a good person, then they're selling something you probably don't need. Right. One thing that I've learned by working with Infinite Banking is that what's better for me is to sell you death benefit with a whole life policy because I get paid on the side of the policy that's paying for death benefit.
Hmm.
So I make a lot more money selling you death benefit than I do cash value.
Right.
With infinite banking, I make a third of what I would make. But I know that I have a much happier client because infinite banking policies are designed not just for you to buy them and wait until you die. They're designed so that you use them while you're alive.
You are essentially what you want. Yeah, obviously. I'm going to use my money now.
Yeah. You don't want to be paying a thousand dollars a month for a policy that you're never going to use. And it's for other people to to get rich. Yeah. Policy that you can use for yourself. And that policy is an infinite banking policy. It's designed for you to use. And it's designed for you to capitalize as quickly as possible and start using it. But there's a whole system behind it. It's not just capitalize it and use the money of it as if it's a piggy bank. The whole system and that system is the banking process. So if you go to a bank, when you borrow money, they're not just saying, okay, yeah, here you go. There's a whole process and essentially what you're doing is you're becoming a banker. You go to the bank and the only client for your bank is you. You're doing the whole banking process for yourself. You're lending yourself money and you're paying it back with interest. Now, the scary part is that you're paying it back with interest, but it's only scary if you don't understand that that interest is not actually, yeah. It's like a savings, right?
Because that's money that's going to you eventually.
It's money going right back to you. It's just, instead of sitting in your savings account, it's sitting in a whole life policy.
So as opposed to a penalty, it's more like a reward system.
It absolutely is a reward system because you're recapturing interest that normally would have gone to somebody else.
Correct.
So you're you're paying that to your banking system, but you're the bank. So you're paying yourself. You're just having it sit somewhere else. Now, the great thing is you're having it sit somewhere where it's going to grow guaranteed. It's. it's going to create dividends for you, which means that your money grows that much faster. Right. Like I mentioned, this predates the tax code. The money inside of a life insurance policy actually is protected from the government. They don't even know what's in there. One thing that I like to use as an example of this. Do you remember when Mitt Romney ran for president?
Oh, my gosh. It's a while ago.
a while ago, right? He came up with $50 million out of nowhere. Everybody was like, where did this come from? Like, this isn't money he had in a savings account. It's money he had sitting in a whole life vault.
No, really? Ta-da!
And he borrowed it. He ran for president. He didn't win, obviously, but this is a policy that he still has open. He's paying it back because the second you pay back that money, it's available to you again. But yeah, this is a policy that he had and he used. And you know who else uses these type of policies?
Tell me, tell me. Who? Banks. Oh, well, yeah. OK. Right. Right.
There's actually something called a bank owned life insurance, and they use these specific type of policies as a tier one asset. It's the most secure asset that a bank owns. And they have hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in these type of policies. Interesting. So like I said, if it's good for a bank.
Yeah, it should be good enough for you. But it's like you said, yeah, and I'd like to reiterate that part because I think it simplifies the whole idea that when you borrow money, right, it's like, if I'm gonna lend you money, Angel, I'm not, I mean, for better or worse, I mean, we are friends, but I don't think I'd lend you $100,000 and just say, pay me back when you can. The process, let's say with a bank is you have to go through an underwriting, let's say an underwriting process to determine whether or not you actually have the ability to pay that $100,000 back. And then I'm gonna tell you, pay me back, say, I don't know, with X percentage or APR throughout the time. And so you pay me back those $100,000 plus interest, which is my cost of lending you that money and and mitigating that risk. So in this case, instead of paying somebody else that interest, you're paying it to yourself. You're saying, OK, I'm going to lend myself whatever, five, 10, 15, whatever, thousands of dollars. And as I guess, like I mentioned, as a reward system, I'm going to pay myself back with that interest and opposed to paying it to you, I'm going to pay it to myself. And then that money goes into, I guess you said like some form of account that grows. So it's invested as opposed to just sitting there in a savings account you would have in a bank, just, you know, growing anytime you put something in it, it's actually growing exponentially because it is invested.
Exactly. Got it. Is that when you're loaning yourself money, there's no origination fees, right? There's no no type of fees at all. You're you're not going to charge yourself fees. So right. Right. There's no late payment fees. There's no there's no fees. And the interest that you charge yourself is completely up to you. So what I usually recommend people do is charge the maximum amount of interest, which is $10,000, you're going to pay back that $10,000 and you're going to tack on a $1,500 interest. Now this gets interesting because first of all, the first thing you're doing is paying back that loan. Unlike with a bank loan, when you have a bank loan, if I pay you back, if you're the bank and I sit in front of you and I pay you back that money, and I go, oh, and by the way, I have this other project, can I have the $10,000 again? You're gonna go, hmm, we have origination fees, you have to qualify for it, the interest rate has changed, basically have to go through the whole process again. You don't have access to that money right away again without being approved. With this type of policy, you pay back the loan, you have that money immediately available again, because you're the bank. You're obviously going to approve yourself. And you have extra money available because your money has been growing, plus you just paid yourself a 15% interest. So now instead of having $10,000 available, you have minimum $11,500 available, plus whatever growth you have in the policy.
So is this something that you, I'm sorry, go ahead, I interrupted.
And the last little tidbit, which is the part that a lot of people don't think about, which is great, that 15% interest that you just charge yourself is also tax deductible. So that $1,500 creates a tax deduction for your business.
Ah, so it is for your business. Is there any way that that, I don't know, presents itself as a credit or something if you don't? I mean, okay, so let me go back. I've got a lot in my mind, and this is actually really exciting. Is this only available to somebody who does have a small business, let's say, or can you do it, say, on the personal side?
So on the personal side, you don't get the tax deduction because obviously you don't have a business where you tax deductions. So the tax deduction specifically has to do with businesses. Okay. you can still do all the rest of it and still recapture that interest into a place where normally you would lose that interest to, let's say, financing for a car. And that's a great example. Let's say that you want to buy a car. You have your policy, you've capitalized your policy, you have enough money in there to go buy a car. I'm going to go and you're the dealership. I go sit down with you and you as a finance person tell me, OK, this thirty thousand dollar car will cost you fifteen hundred dollars a month. That includes interest and everything. I go, great. I'm going to pay the car cash. Here's the money. And then I'm going to take the numbers that you gave me and pay it to myself.
Right. Mm hmm. Policy.
Right. All the interest that would have gone to you is now going right back to me.
It's smart.
Yeah, it's the best. Yeah. And if you think about it long term, the average person starting at 21 years old. Oh, my goodness. I about 11 cars throughout their life.
Really?
That many? That many. You're buying a car more or less every three or three to five.
Yeah, I could see that. Right.
So if you buy cars the traditional way, I go, you know, you go to the dealership, you finance, you do all this stuff. Assuming you're buying $30,000 cars, by the time you've bought 11 cars over your lifetime, you've spent half a million dollars in the cost of the car and the interest that you're losing out. If you do this through a whole life policy, you capitalize the policy, you use it to buy your cars, you recapture all that interest, 11 cars later, using the infinite banking system, you now have- Now you're, right, that much more richer, right? You've still paid that amount, but you've retained it because it's yours.
Right. Not only that, and I'm also thinking about it from a negotiation standpoint, if you're going to buy something in quote unquote cash, you probably have a little more leverage than you would if you were going to be financing through another lender or something like that.
You'd think, but it's actually better to tell them that you're going to finance it because I don't know if you know this, but dealerships don't make money selling cars.
Well, yeah, you're right. I have heard that. I have heard that make money financing cars. Yeah, I did. I have heard that. OK, so scratch that. That's a bad example with the car. But maybe for something else, it might. Yeah, certainly to buy a house, let's say. I mean, I don't know. Is there a limit to how much you can borrow?
Like against yourself, everyone's capitalized it. So if you've capitalized half a million dollars into your policy, you're capped at the five hundred thousand. Right. Because that's what you have in there. And the $500,000 is your collateral. That's what you can borrow whenever you want. And the other piece of collateral is the actual death benefit. Because one question a lot of people have is, well, let's say that you have a policy that you have $500,000 in that policy and you borrow $400,000 and then you pass away. Then what happens? Well, your death benefit on a policy where you have $500,000 in the cash value, you most likely have millions of dollars in death benefit that's going to be paid out.
Wow. So you would have a beneficiary, right?
Yeah. The death benefit, they reduce it by the amount of loans that you have outstanding and the rest is paid out to your beneficiaries.
So like a typical. Yeah. OK.
So the life insurance company, there's no risk in lending you that money. Wow.
So then how do you pay yourself back? Is this very much like a, say like a normal bill that you get every month and every month you pay back, you know, whatever amount that is.
Who is to set up an automatic payment into your policies to think about it. Right. The great thing is that if you, if you come on under hard times, which happens to everybody, right. Let's say that you set yourself up in the example, I told you it's a $1,500 a month bill, which I think is a little high for $30,000 car, but whatever. Let's say it's $1,500 a month and you're paying that on a religiously to back to your insurance to pay off that car. Something happens like, I don't know, a pandemic and all of your money is affected. You can actually pause your payments and keep that $1,500 in your pocket. You're ready to start paying it again. And there's no penalty for that. And the insurance company isn't going to come to you and say, hey, you're not paying us. What's going on?
Wow. Yeah. So so if you do experience a hardship, which, yes, I think most people experience a hardship, at least a single hardship in their life. When you own a property, let's say there's only so much you can do. You can call your bank and ask them to give you some form of forbearance or to remodify the loan, but at some point that's going to come due. Same thing with your credit cards. You can call your creditor and say, hey, listen, I'm going through a really hard time. It could be a divorce. It could be children. It could be death. It could be a number of things. And that hardship, actually, a definition of hardship changes a little bit depending on who your creditor is, let's say. You know, you can call them and you can work something out, but that always has an end date. It's usually three months, six months. It could be maybe a year at the most, but you don't know when you're going to be out of that hardship. So this is actually a really, really good point that you're making there about that.
Yeah. And whenever you have hardships, it's not like they're they're helping you out, really. In essence, they're they're actually damaging you more because all they're doing is taking that payment and putting it at the end of your loan and you're going away. No, not at all. And you're actually paying a lot more. Most people don't realize how much 30 years worth of interest on a given amount is. Oh yeah. I mean, delving back into the MoneyMax account a little bit, one of the reasons why people love that ability to pay off a house so fast, they don't understand when you make an extra mortgage payment, a lot of people get discouraged because you make that extra mortgage payment and then next month your mortgage payment is still due.
It's still the same.
Why the hell did I pay that then? Well, it's because you don't see what happens at the end. Correct. You make an extra $3,000 payment. You don't realize that at the end of your mortgage, you might have just taken off three months worth of payments. Oh, yeah. With that one payment. Yeah. They don't see that with the money. They do see that. Interesting. Yeah. They automatically you make that $3,000 extra premium payment and all of a sudden you see the number take down three months and you're like, oh, wow. Now I understand why I do that.
So yeah, there's a rule of thumb and I don't know if I don't know how accurate it is. So so I hope nobody quotes me on that. But I think it's if you make one extra mortgage payment that is directly applied to your principle. If you make one extra mortgage payment a year, I think you can knock down about seven to 10 years off your the life of your loan. So and the principle is that as you amortize your loan, you can't be charged interest on money you don't owe. So if you've borrowed $100,000 and you send, you know, every month you send, I don't know, $500, those $500 include a portion of that principal what they lent you, $100,000 plus interest. So out of those $500, let's say you're paying $200 towards principal and $300 in interest. So if you send money directly to the principal, the next month they can't charge you interest on the full amount that you owed the previous month because now you've amortized or reduced that principle. I don't know if that's making any sense to anybody listening, but it does to me. No, but yes, the idea is that you cannot be charged interest on something you don't owe. So if you continue to take down that amount that you originally owe, then they can only charge you interest on what's outstanding.
The caveat to that is because they have a contract with you saying this is what you're going to pay on a monthly basis.
Right. That doesn't change.
Yeah. Your monthly payment stays the same. Right. All that gets affected is at the end. Right. But you don't see that. So people get frustrated. But one easy way of doing that, by the way, which I don't know if you've ever heard of this is Instead of making your payments for your house on a monthly basis, you take your annual amount, break it into 26 payments, and then pay every two weeks. That's a great strategy. I think there's two months in the year where you would make three payments instead of two. So you end up making one full extra payment for the year. And that takes off eight years off of your mortgage time.
That's a really great tip. That's a really great tip. So yeah. So break up your payments. Instead of sending 12 payments, you'd figure it 26 payments. And that's like your bi-weekly. So, you know, for somebody who is maybe budgeting, um, you know, people like to use that term budgeted from every one of your paychecks. If you're getting a paycheck, you know, uh, every two weeks, you can budget that out of every paycheck.
Take your monthly amount divided into pay that every two weeks. There it is. At the end, you'll have paid one extra pay.
That's right. Yeah. Because otherwise you're paying 12 one per month. And if you obviously, if you, if you doubled that you're really paying 24, but if you're doing it 26, which is biweekly, then yeah, you end up with an extra full payment. Exactly. And that's an easy way to do it without having to, you know, take out a full extra month or to kind of budget, you know, down to the dime, you know, what you're going to send every other month or whatever. So that's a, that's a really great tip. Thank you. That's a really great tip. So this is really fascinating, this whole infinite banking thing. So so I guess you purchase it like you would any other type of insurance.
Yeah. So. The purchasing of an infinite banking policy works the same as you would purchase any other life insurance. The only difference is how the premium is applied. So if you're buying death benefit, and let's say that you're paying $1,000 a month, most death benefit policies, 80% of your premium goes to buying your death benefit, and only 20% will go towards cash value, which is great for me because I get paid on that 80%. In infinite banking, we actually flip that whole formula. And instead of 80% going to death benefit, we'll do either 60 or 70%, sometimes even 80% into cash value. And then the smaller portion is death benefit. So you do get less death benefit at the beginning, but over time, it amounts to about the same. 30 years from now, you're gonna have the same in death benefit as you would if you would purchase death benefit from the beginning, because your cash value is growing so much faster, and you're getting dividends, which adds to your death benefit. So your death benefit grows, and over time, it pretty much equals out. Now the difference is, in a death benefit policy where you might have $80,000 30 years from now, in a death benefit, in a cash value policy for infinite banking, you may have half a million. Wow, that's a huge difference. Massive difference. And there's ways to mitigate that at the beginning. So I've had some clients tell me, well, you know, it's nice that I'm going to have so much 30 years from now, but what if I die tomorrow? My death benefit sucks. Right. We always put a term rider. for a certain amount of time so that your death benefit is a little bit higher at the beginning, but you only sacrifice a little bit on the cash value side because you're using a little bit more to pay for a term rider. But the term rider is so inexpensive that you don't affect it that much. Interesting. So there's ways to do it. There's ways to mitigate. Holdings policies are really versatile. There's so many different things you can do. One common misconception is that people think that a whole life policy means you're getting a policy that you pay for your whole life. That's not the case. A whole life policy stays with you your whole life, but you can actually design it to only pay for a certain amount of time.
That's it. But the policy remains in effect until you pass.
Yeah. So I've sold policies where somebody wants to set up for going back to the auto financing example. I don't want my clients paying on a monthly basis for their life insurance and for a car. Right. But what we do is we set up a policy so that within two to three years, they've capitalized the policy and then they never pay on that policy ever again. OK, the policy stays in force for the rest of your life, but you never make a premium payment again. And then you use that to buy cars. So the only payments you're making into that policy are the payments to pay off your loans. But the policy grows just like it would in any normal policy. But you never make another premium payment again.
Wow. There's really a lot more to this than I thought, and I'm surprised that nobody is just standing in a corner yelling, announcing how wonderful this type of program is.
The online forum is my corner.
People should be screaming this from across the hills, except that we don't have any of those in Florida. But yeah, this is very fascinating. I think, and I'm just gonna say it, speaking from my personal point of view, is that, you know, a lot of these things tend to be a little scary, right? We don't understand really how insurance works. I mean, insurance in general, we do how it protects you against, you know, loss or things like that. But for the most part, when it comes to, let's say a state plan, planning is one of those things. And I know that your significant other is an estate planner, but when it comes to like estate planning or life insurance, people typically shy away from those things for a few reasons. I think one is that it's, it's a little morbid. You never want to think about, you know, your end of life. And second, I think it, it, it, we don't understand necessarily how all of those things work. There are a lot of different programs, a lot of different investment vehicles, and a lot of different ways that these things work. And then finally, It's one of those things that it kind of forces you to get real about your finances, which I think people tend to shy away from because they know that it's not always pretty. We think we have more money. We think we have more life. We think we have all the right answers. And then none of those things really, you know, match well with, you know, estate planning and life insurance, those things force us to get really real about the things that we don't want to talk about, but they are very, very important. And I think for something like infinite banking, I mean, now that I understand a little bit more about what it is, I think it's, Forgive me for using this as an example, and you can tell me if I'm really, really off, but as you were talking about it, at one point it came to my mind, it reminds me a little bit about like a swearing jar, you know, the kind of jar that you have at home. And like, if, you know, your kids swear or your spouse swears, whatever, and you're like, I need $5 for that. And you start putting in a jar before you know it, you've got a vacation planned, you know, to Paris. You know, it's kind of something like that, that your cost, The cost that you're incurring for some of those things is actually not really a cost, but a benefit to you. A benefit that you don't necessarily see right away, maybe in infinite banking, you might, but it certainly comes back to you as opposed to going somewhere else or losing or flushing it down the toilet, like I like to say.
Yeah, this is definitely a conversation that you're long-term planning. This isn't something that you're planning for next year or for tomorrow. I mean, you could, it all depends on how much money you have. I mean, I have clients that, to give you a perfect example, I have a client that he's a chef. Ever since I mentioned this to him, he on a monthly basis uses a credit card to buy all the ingredients he needs for his business. OK. And so on a monthly basis, he's charging a credit card. He's being charged interest on that credit card until he makes enough money selling the food that he that he makes.
Pay it back.
Pay it back. But that interest is still charged until he pays it back. with infinite banking, all of a sudden it's very different because now he takes the money he needs, he buys the ingredients, he does his thing. When he makes a profit, he pays it back, pays it back with interest, keeps the rest as profit, has tax deductions, like it completely revolutionized.
Yeah, this is like a no-brainer.
And it happened quick because he had the capital to put money into the accounting immediately. So he capitalized it much faster than the average person does. So it could be something that starts to happen right away. Or if you want more of a slow growth, you could slowly capitalize your policy and use it when you're ready, which could be three years from now, it could be five years from now. It all depends.
This is crazy. So I'm gonna ask you a question to give you an example, only because I'm thinking about it. Say, I've been talking to different people, different financiers about, you know, investment vehicles, interests, you know, where to park your money, where it's really safe, where it's not, et cetera. Let's say somebody has a money market account, right? Because that's like a super safe vehicle. If you have a good amount of savings, you can put it in an MMA and it makes, I don't know, 3%, 4%, whatever it is. And that accrues over time and you can actually take money out. So it's not like an account with a big firm where you have to... sign 1700 documents and explain really why you want your money. So it's one of those safe vehicles. Is that something that instead of using an MMA, right, where you're getting three, four, 5%, would you put, say, that savings into this type of policy and then lend against yourself? Is that like an efficient way to do that?
I'm going to give you the attorney answer.
It depends. Exactly. You know that answer. Yes. I give it all the time.
It depends. Money market accounts are great. I love money market accounts. They grow, the money's still liquid. It has a lot of the benefits that I look for in investments. One of the benefits to a life insurance policy like the one we're talking about for infinite banking is the actual death benefit. I'm not saying it's a superior product, but it has benefits that a money market doesn't. That benefit is one of those things. Because when you have money in a money market account, let's say you have, you just started, you're putting money into a money market account, you have $20,000 in there and you pass away. Your beneficiaries get $20,000. In a life insurance policy, you're putting the same process happens, the money at the beginning grows a little bit slower because obviously a portion still has to go to premium. But if you pass away when you have $20,000 or even less, $15,000 in your account, your beneficiaries don't get $15,000, they get the death benefit, which is usually hundreds of thousands of dollars by that point. And as the policy matures, that only gets faster and better. Right. It compounds one of the only vehicles that does that, where the longer it stays in place, the more efficient it gets. Hmm. I've always I've I was told this example a long time ago, and I love this example. A whole life policy is kind of like an airplane. I don't know if you know this, but when an airplane takes off, it's at its least efficiency.
Yeah. You know why? Because it's, well, because of gravity, I'm assuming, is one thing.
Gravity stays the same.
Okay. It's using a lot of force to take off. It's actually, what I've heard, is a very dangerous part of flying. It's the most dangerous part of flying. It uses a ridiculous amount of force to take off.
Let's assume after takeoff. Okay. It's the least efficient that it will be during its flight.
Burning all our fuel. OK, so tell me, tell me why. Fuel. That's exactly what it is.
OK. So at the beginning, the plane weighs the most. Right. Because of gravity. Right. As the plane travels, it's using its fuel. So as the plane travels, it gets more and more efficient. Right. Because it weighs less, it needs less, less fuel to burn to keep it moving because it starts weighing less. Right. This policy works the same way. the longer it stays in place, because it's based on percentages, the more money you have in there, the faster it starts to grow. So 30 years from now, you're going to be making a lot more money in this policy, ratio-wise. And because you're opening a business, you know this as well as anybody, since you're a business owner, the first year is the worst year. That's all of your, you're not making as much money. You have all your fees come into play here, all your setup fees for everything. You want to set up a credit card, you pay, you know, you get the worst of everything. At the beginning, it's the worst year. So in a life insurance policy, it's the same thing. All your admin fees are up front. My commission is calculated up front. I get paid all in the first year. Oh, okay. I get paid very little, but that's OK, because we're in this together. I'm going to take care of you. I tell most of my clients by signing this, you know, there was essentially we're getting married for the life of this policy. That's funny. Monogamous, but in life insurance, you know, because you have me till the day you die or till the day I die. You have me as your agent. Any question you have up here? I'm your agent, the whole life policy. And if I die before you, then you have the company, which will also take care of you. They'll sign you a new agent, and then you're married to that agent now. Then I have an upline, and my upline, he knows everything and everything about life insurance. I know a lot, and he knows more.
So my support system is great. Well, this has been very informative. Well, I've got a lot to think about myself, and I hope that others who are listening are feeling the same way, because like I mentioned, it's a very critical part of life. It's to, let's be honest, we can't do anything without money. We can't do anything at all without money. And we typically spend a lot more than we think we do. We're not saving enough, I think, as, I don't think most of us save enough. I know I try to save. I, by the way, I do have a spreadsheet for all my bills, so I may want to reconsider with MoneyMax. I do. It's this beautiful spreadsheet that took me, you know, some time to put together and now it works beautifully. But now I realize I'm living in the dark ages, considering there's something like MoneyMax. And I'm sure there are other people who feel the same way, too. So, no, I think this is this is very informative. I'm definitely personally going to be looking into this, particularly the infinite banking. I think that is genius. It's just the simple fact that as opposed to paying, if you're going to pay interest, pay it to yourself. You're going to have to pay interest. Why would you give it to someone else? That's the equivalent of taking your money, putting it in a toilet and flushing. You're never gonna see that money ever again. It's not gonna do anything for you. It's just paying somebody else's fee, somebody else's work, somebody else's risk.
Making somebody else rich.
Making somebody else rich. Thank you, Angel, for this session. I feel so much better, so much more hopeful about my future and my finances. I really do, actually. I think this is really fantastic. I will be reaching out to you soon. In fact, I will take your information and I'm going to put it out there for people who listen to the episode to be able to find a way to get in touch with you. Do you have, I guess, a social media account or a website? I'm sure you have a website.
I have a website under construction right now. I'm revamping the whole thing. So I have my website guy working on that and we're putting the finishing touches, but yeah, I've revamped the whole thing so that they can learn. I talk a lot about infinite banking on TikTok. I have a bunch of videos. So they just go to at MBI Miami and I have a bunch of videos there talking about the MoneyMax account, talking about infinite banking, talking about like some of the things that my marketer told me to talk about, which has nothing to do with anything. that are just like random, like famous people doing weird stuff and be reacting. So fun things there as well.
Cause people love that. Yeah. Okay. So that's on TikTok and it's MBI and that stands for Millennium Benefits Inc. So M-B-I Miami on TikTok. OK, great. Thank you so much for joining me. Like I said, this was really insightful. I hope other people find it as important and as informative as I have. And I look forward to chatting with you again soon.
I love talking about this stuff. So if you ever want to chat about this stuff, anybody, I'll just sit on the phone for hours.
So I can tell. Oh, yeah. You and I have long conversations. We could easily do this for another hour. Thanks so much, Angel.
Thank you. I really enjoyed this. This is great.
Me, too. Me, too. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The Real Talk. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't already done so, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you found value in today's show, we'd appreciate it if you would help others discover this podcast. Until next time.