112: 31 Things to Know About Whole Life Insurance

112: 31 Things to Know About Whole Life Insurance

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. I'm John Montoya, and I'm John Perrings. We're authorized Infinite Banking Practitioners and hosts of the Strategic Whole Life Podcast.

John Montoya: Episode 112, 31 Things to Know About Whole Life Insurance. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the Strategic Whole Life podcast. I'm joined today with my co host, John Perrings, and this episode was born from something I said at the closing of our last recording, episode 111. I said that whole life insurance Was a homework test and it motivated me to start writing down some thoughts, which I'm going to share here.

And originally I had 21 thoughts and then I added 10 more for good measure. So , here we go. I'm going to read through this list and this is born out of love for truth and the desire to teach it. So 31 thoughts on whole life. [00:01:00]

1. People are against whole life before they are for it.
2. Whole life insight is restricted to those who are curious and enjoy learning.

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3. People who understand whole life buy whole life. It's a homework test.

John Montoya: 4. You will never be done learning about whole life. I'm 20 plus years into this and I still learn something new each year.

5. Don't wait until your health is compromised or until your savings budget is sufficient.

John Montoya: You can start with a convertible term and convert to a whole life later, if need be.

6. Whole Life is a private invention created to benefit widows and orphans, and it receives a tax favored treatment while you are alive and at death.
7. Whole Life has a 170 plus year track record because it is engineered by an immutable actuarial ledger.

[00:02:00] 8. Whole Life is the only financial product where you and your family win together. Avoid UL, IUL, VUL Life Policies which have no such guarantees.

9. Whole Life Policies are guaranteed contracts, not an investment.
10. Whole Life is a financial unicorn. It is the only asset that gives you the power to live in the present and future simultaneously because of the present guaranteed cash values and a guaranteed future death benefit.
11. No other financial product has a guaranteed blueprint for every year of your life.
12. Whole life is metaphysical. It is an idea which exists everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.
13. Whole life is built for the sovereign individual. I have clients who once lived in the United States who now live in Mexico.

Panama, England, Portugal, [00:03:00] Spain, and China.

14. Whole Life is the only engineered financial product that you can own and control without permission or extortion. You don't own your 401k or IRA, and you don't own stocks in your name. What happens to real estate if you don't pay taxes or if the government decides to build a highway through it?
15. Everyone gets whole life at the price they deserve. The cost to lock in your human life value increases with age and ignorance.
16. Another way to think about a whole life policy is as a savings account with a death benefit attached.
17. Tickets to escape the fractional reserve banking system are priced in premium.
18. The life insurance industry is a full reserve system rooted in Austrian economics.
19. The cure to economic reliance is financial sovereignty, the ability to make financial decisions without having to agree to terms and [00:04:00] conditions set by the traditional banking system.
20. Whole life is for people who think in decades and generations.
21. Having a whole life policy builds low time preference habits.
22. Become your own best advocate and your own privatized banker.
23. Respect your most valuable asset, your ability to produce income by locking in your human life value. Not having a whole life policy when you need it will only leave you with regret when you are older.
24. All your retirement income models will improve when you add a whole life policy.
25. Whole Life Policies are a financial bunker against worst case scenarios.
26. You'll never be in a worse position by having access to cash.
27. When building a house, you don't start with the roof, you start with the foundation.

A Whole Life Policy is the bedrock [00:05:00] foundation of your financial plan.

28. Understanding whole life protects you from the endless myths and lies about buying term and investing the difference.
29. Never cancel your whole life policy for something better. There is no second best permanent policy.
30. Whole life can't protect you if you don't own any.
31. Spread the benefits of whole life with love. 52 percent of Americans have a life insurance policy, meaning almost one out of two people you know don't have any coverage at all. Spread the gospel of love.

 I'm heavily influenced by Nelson and he used to always remind us that how you think determines everything. And when you do your homework, you're forced to think. And, I've been doing my homework on whole life for a long time now, multiple decades, and it influences my life in a way that sometimes, [00:06:00] this homework assignment for me it allows me to delve deeper into why I have whole life as part of my foundation, why I've built my life, my financial life around it and just thinking about it, meditating on these thoughts it's a It absolutely builds my conviction and gives me the strength of mind to know that everything that I've done has a purpose.

John Montoya: And I put a lot of time and energy and thought into starting each and every whole life policy. None were done by mistake. And for people that are new to life insurance, to studying whole life, and, they're bombarded with all kinds of information out there it's really important that they do their own homework and really think long and hard about what they're trying to accomplish, [00:07:00] their goals and objectives.

That itself is a homework assignment that every single person. And the longer you think about what's important to you, I think the clearer your objectives become and ultimately, as you learn more about whole life insurance or even convertible term, if that's where you're at, you begin to have it crystallize in your head as what you should do to get started and the reasons why a whole life or convertible term makes sense for To start that foundation with.

So it's a homework assignment and you're not going to know everything about whole life by reading one article or even listening to one episode of the show. It's a process, just like Nelson said, banking is a process.

 So we've got 31 things on this list and I'm wondering what other asset you [00:08:00] could make a list of 31, I'm looking at number 14 here, whole life is the only engineered financial product that you can own and control without permission or extortion, borrowing from. Veteran, and I would say legend in the life insurance industry Steve Levy, who ran our office here in Northern California, I got from him that life insurance is just another asset class. Like a lot of people make a big deal about, what life insurance is, but It's just an asset class, just like stocks, bonds, real estate.

John Perrings: They all have our place in our overall financial picture. And so does life insurance. And when I think about that. And then I just look at this list of 31 that you created without any help. You just did it on your own and you came up with 31 things. What other asset class can you do that with?

John Montoya: Yeah makes me think of another thought that we've shared on the podcast [00:09:00] that most people are familiar with Einstein's eighth wonder of the world, compounding interest. And I had a, a two hour walk earlier this week with the son of a friend of mine. He's 26, graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a philosophy degree.

And my friend asked me to connect with him to go for a walk and just talk about philosophy, life, economics. His son is a very well read. Kid. I say kid. He's 26. He's an adult, but he's very well read. He's very intellectual. And my friend just thought it would be good for him to just get to know me and and allow me to share my thoughts.

My path and my journey, because his son is figuring things out with his philosophy degree. And we had an incredible conversation for two hours, and we talked about a number of different topics. And one of the amazing things for me is that at the very end, [00:10:00] we started talking about money.

And I explained to him how Nelson's book has influenced my life like no other book really has. Personally and professionally, and I started sharing some of Nelson's thoughts. And he was blown away and he asked me for Nelson's book so he could go buy a copy. And he wanted we, we had to cut our walk short at that point, but he was so interested.

and learning more. And he sent me a text afterwards saying that after his talk, and he'd come into it a little bit jaded about the world and and he sent me a text saying that he walked away informed, motivated, and positive about, about where he was at after the conversation and just wanting to learn more, having that thirst, that curiosity.

So I was blown away that I could, in some way, resonate with someone who was 26 years old [00:11:00] deeply into philosophy And just have a way to connect with him and give him a positive outlook on life that he was struggling a bit with up to that point. And who knows where it goes from there. But to give someone hope that for me made my day.

And it's it builds up on, what, Nelson has done for me. It's given me hope. It's given my family hope and what you just said about how many assets can do that? I don't know, but I knew, I do know that. Whole life is one asset that can give you hope.

John Perrings: Hope and peace of mind. I don't know, name anything else that you actually have peace of mind. That story Makes me think of number four, you'll never be done learning about whole life and really you'll never be done learning in general.

And that makes me think of what Nelson talked about in Becoming Your Own Banker about Arrival Syndrome. And, you know, Arrival Syndrome is where you show up thinking you know [00:12:00] everything. And it's a really pervasive problem where a lot of people just think they know. What they're doing and they're very closed off to learning something that maybe they didn't actually know.

And whole life insurance happens to just be one of those financial assets that there's a lot of arrival syndrome out there about people who think they know about it. So that, that's great that he was open to it because I talk to a lot of young people here in Silicon Valley and, in, in a lot of ways, some of the smartest people working in one of the smartest, fastest moving industries. Yet they're doing the same thing with their money that everyone else is doing.

And it's just like, how can you be this cutting edge in one part of your life, but just doing the typical stuff and then, and being super confident about it with your finances, which is just arrival syndrome and that there's. I don't know what it's called. There's probably a term for it where if you're [00:13:00] smart in one thing, you think you're smart in everything else.

That, that's a common thing as well that I think happens here, but not to bash on Silicon Valley people too much, but it is something that I see. And I just wish people were a little more open minded to, Trying to learn how things could work rather than just plying their money into the stock market, Bitcoin and really just hoping it all works out.

There's nothing smart about that really. So that kind of inspired that thought on my side with Arrival Syndrome. And I think if more people could get their hands around that and improve that in their life, it'd be a lot better.

John Montoya: Yeah. I think everything is a homework test ultimately. If you really want to know something, you have to put in the work whether, you want to be an ace in the money management, Wall Street, in addition to your full time job you got to put in the homework.

You're not gonna work 40 hours a week and then try to day trade to success. It's just not going to happen. And the main thing that I [00:14:00] see with a younger generation, cause I, for 12 years I coached youth soccer and all those kids I watched grow up and the last two years they, they've graduated from high school and a couple of them have reached out to me in the past year.

To ask for my assistance in maintaining their fitness level and we'll run a couple of times a week. Definitely every Saturday, I'm always on the track with at least one of them. And I talk to them about money and finance, recommend books. And what I gather from the kids that I coach is that they don't have the motivation to read.

And it's frustrating for me. I recommended a book to one of my, one of my former soccer players that is consistently out with me at the track on Saturday. And he's coach I appreciate it, but I'll probably never [00:15:00] read it. And I thought to myself, that's a shame. Because If you value your, your education and he's going to go to college, he's going to try to walk on at Chico state and make their soccer team up there.

And I'm just thinking, man, you're going to dedicate four years to learning. And you're going to learn what they teach you, but what you don't realize, and I tried to tell them the best learning you're going to do is what you learn yourself. And if you don't pick up a book for the rest of your life, other than what your professor puts on a syllabus, you're doing yourself a great disservice.

So all of life really is a homework test. You want to be good at anything, you got to put in the time and effort. And if it's too much, it's For you to set aside 10 minutes, even just 10 minutes a day to open a book, to read five to 10 pages, then I have to [00:16:00] really question, what what type of life you're trying to build.

I don't know I just hope that the motivation is there for everyone, not just younger people, but, if you're listening to the show. That's great. I applaud you, but take the next step. Find a recommended book to read. We talk about Nelson's book, Becoming Your Own Banker. Number one. But there's plenty others out there too.

John Perrings: It gets to education and who's actually doing the teaching and who's doing the learning. If you're listening to this, that means you've Willingly opened yourself up to some new ideas. And no one can teach somebody. It's really up to the person receiving the information to decide whether they want to, put the thought process and work.

So just getting back to your homework example, it's really up to them to take that information on and apply it so they can truly learn it. So [00:17:00] sometimes, we'll talk to people and you'll have a, one meeting and, they just have a bunch of questions, but then it never really goes anywhere.

And you can see that, it's almost like, um, they're getting gratification out of the information coming to them, but they're not actually doing anything with it. So, doing your homework includes applying things. And if you never get to that step, you're never really getting better, so I think this was a good talk, John.

John Montoya: Yeah, absolutely. It's, I like talking about philosophy and so this for me was a bit of my musings or meditations on whole life and I hope it adds value for people and they want to continue to learn more. And like you said, ultimately, Take action, but that action comes with the conviction level that you have and you have to do your homework.

John Perrings: And if you want to see [00:18:00] this full 31 point list, it'll be at StrategicWholeLife.com where, by the way, you can also book a free 30 minute consultation with us right there if you want to get serious and learn how this can apply in your life. You can also get access to our online course. Which is at the top of our website, StrategicWholeLife.Com. All right, Montoya, good talking.

John Montoya: All right. Thanks, John. Thank you everyone. Take care.