Plan B for Main Street Finance – Episode 488

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. We’re going to be talking about your Plan B. And what’s alarming about this is this Plan B is now Main Street knowledge. So you as a listener have a leg up on everyone else. Kim, let’s start with the Plan B because you shared this with me. Well, so happy to chat about it. This originated from a long webinar slash podcast that had four gentlemen on it talking about Main Street’s Plan B. They all had their own perspectives on what Plan B was and how it should be enacted. And I thought it was one of the better conversations that I’ve heard about this because so many times, and just so everybody’s clear, Plan B is what do we do if the

[00:54] country craters or the dollar craters or the electrical grid crater or fill in the blank because they’ve all been talked about in the news these days. And as I was going to say, a lot of Plan B commentary is very fear-mongering based, very scarcity thinking. And I really have no time for that at all. I think it does no good. However, I do think it’s wise to be prepared. And Spencer, you and I have chatted about that before. But to go back to the Plan B Main Street conversation that spurred our interest is because one of the gentlemen mentioned having whole life insurance as part of his Plan B as a place to store cash. So you’ve, I think, listened to the, it was an hour long conversation and we’ll

[01:46] throw it in the show notes so that anybody can have access to it. But what was your take on the whole conversation? So here’s what I’ve seen is that we’re going to look at it from different areas of pressure, as I’ll call it. So pressure happened on the stock market. Pressure happened in the real estate market. Pressure happened with interest rates. And so regardless of your financial being, there was pressure that happened. And so Plan B was for a lot of Main Street people having conversations with their financial advisors, probably feeling somewhat hopeless. There were groups of people that were diving into precious metals and putting a significant amount of money there. And so that’s when I saw the overall consensus that I got was that they were,

[02:36] for the most part, being driven by fear rather than driven by prosperity. And that was one of the better conversations. Yeah. So you can imagine how scary some of the conversations are that are out there that are really extremely fear driven. So here’s the conversation I’d love to have with you and figure out because, I mean, we’ll just say names out there because I’m sure listeners know, but you know, we’ve got the Robert Kiyosaki’s of the world who have been amazing at teaching people how to focus on cash flow. And focus on becoming investors and business owners and use other people’s money. You’ve got the Peter shifts of the world that have been saying that the sky is going to fall for who knows how long and a broken clock is right twice a day.

[03:28] I’m not saying broken, but that’s the case of it. And then we have other people that just put on a mask and pretend that everything is perfect and they’re not willing to see. I would say that we probably lean more towards that, but you’re still aware. So help our listeners see through your filter, Kim, because you have a unique perspective of being very grateful of being optimistic. Well, I believe so strongly that no matter what comes, no matter what financial issue comes, no matter what weather issue comes, you know, we’ve had clients with extreme weather issues in the last couple of weeks. No matter what family issues come, you know, death is divorce, other challenges that human beings seem to get into.

[04:20] There is an aspect of human ingenuity combined with divine providence that can pull the good out of whatever comes if you look for it. And so human ingenuity plus divine providence pulls good. And that is a much better lens through which to look at all things, because we literally could spend our lives preparing, preparing, preparing, preparing, and, and there, there’s a right prepper, like that’s a thing. And then there are people that really focus on that. And I believe very, very strongly that you should, for yourself and your family, identify the things you are afraid of, do all that you can to solve those. So if you’re afraid that the country’s going to run out of food, buy those energy bars that are, you know, they’re special, they’re

[05:21] packed in a box, you know, there’s month supply of them, shove them in your garage, put a bunch of bottles in the back of a water in the back of the closet and cross off that fear. If you’re afraid of dying by life insurance and then cross off that fear, because to continue to be in prepare or fear or scarcity mode is going to eliminate your ability to pull good, to see good, to get your head up away from the mist and out to the blue sky or maybe the gray sky that’s there for that period of time. You know, we live on a lake and I walk across, we have a driveway that’s basically across the lake and every morning I walk across the lake. And sometimes I cannot see the other side of the lake because the

[06:16] mist is so dense, but I know that it’s there. And so I walk and Emma barks at the mist and it’s pretty funny and onward we go. And so that’s a good analogy of knowing that human ingenuity plus divine providence can solve problems. Being conscious of being grateful for what is there and digging and pulling, and I used that word earlier, the good out of whatever the occurrences are. And you do hear this on the news every now and then, you know, the news cameras show up and there’s a family in there and the, you know, the water has been six feet into their house and they’re pulling this stuff and that stuff and cleaning up the mess and even they’ll say, well, one good thing is, you know, we found whatever, or, you know, this mess got cleaned up.

[07:09] We’ve been trying to clean them for years or whatever the good is. And that’s the lens, that’s the prosperity perspective that I want our clients to have. Yeah, fully, fully agree. So you are not avoiding it. You’re very intentional. And I want to say that you’re almost looking at it as an action list. So you’re saying, okay, if there is, but I’m not going to use the word fear, I’m going to say a concern. If there’s a concern about food supply, whatever that is, then, okay, address it, get it out of the head, have it completed and over. So I want to go again for just a moment over to plan B, which is some of these people are talking about precious metals. They’re talking about cash on hand.

[07:59] They’re talking about a variety of things. How are you looking at it with that? It’s still being prosperous. Yes. I think that’s a great question. And again, each person needs to decide for themselves and the family, what they are going to choose to focus on. So I, for many, many years, and I could change this in the future. I might be wrong. I have no idea. I have just never felt that precious metals were valuable to me for what I wanted to do in my family. And it actually stems from a time when I was aware of friends of friends that were in a country, a small world country where the currency cratered on a specific day. And what was most valuable was food and water and other things that were tradeable.

[08:49] And I have a hard time believing that gold bars in a safe in the back of my closet or stored in a vault somewhere are going to be valuable. And I know you can get silver coins, you can get gold coins. And yes, maybe someday those will be valuable. And I might be wrong, but for me, having food, water, and yes, absolutely some cash on hand gives me and my family peace of mind for my thinking. And so I’ll give an opposite example. My son got super into the precious metal thing and he went and got a couple of silver coins and a couple of gold whatevers and he’s all excited about them and you know, that’s fabulous and okay, beautiful. Again, each person needs to decide for themselves what they can do for

[09:35] themselves and their family to cross those concerns off the list. I would rather store a little bit of cash in the house, a little bit of food and water and some capacities for getting that food and water, like a straw that you can drink out of the lake that would filter the water, things like that, that’s more peace of mind oriented for me and then the next layer up is the cash value of life insurance and a mutual insurance company, which one of the gentlemen on the long webinar that we keep referencing did bring up and I was grateful for that because rarely is cash value and mutual insurance company brought up and so I know we could delve into that and have on numerous podcasts and that’s a

[10:23] valuable item again for me and for my family. I have confidence in that and so I make decisions based on what I’ve decided is going to bring me confidence and peace of mind. Okay, that’s good. I’m going to take us on not a tangent. It’s actually related, but it’s not going to sound related. Okay. Are you ready for this one? So the YouTube algorithms, which by the way, I love the ability for them to make it so that we can discover new things. So this YouTube short came up about this guy that was a drug dealer and he was talking about the inner workings of the drug dealer. So I watched his short is maybe 40 seconds long and went to the next one and he talked about money laundering and, but he said, look,

[11:15] like here’s the money laundering. He goes, let me explain how I look at it differently. And this is what, how it ties in. He goes, this was my plan B. He goes, cause most drug dealers, they’re in the situation because bad circumstance, maybe they’re doing it to eat and then some of the more sophisticated, you know, it’s a full on enterprise. So I, I’m not by any means seeing drug dealings. Good. I want to be super clear, but what he said was as a drug dealer, his plan B was to create assets that would be around after he got caught and he did go to prison, he felt remorseful for it. That’s good. But he had the forethought of that. And so we don’t want to obviously do any illegal activity, but when you’re

[12:09] mentioning this life insurance from a mutual backed company, that is a plan B for after the fact that’s so far out there, just like that drug dealer did where he was acquiring assets that would outlive and be generational. That’s the perspective. That is very interesting. I interrupted you. Was there more? No, no, that’s, that’s the, that was the piece that was an aha to me that he had the foresight of that and just, I wanted to tie that together. Absolutely. And I love that. And I think so much of our lives has become way too short term in our thinking. We make short-term decisions left, right, and center that are really detrimental to the long-term. And so that’s a good thing for us to just be conscious of as human beings is,

[13:02] you know, food is a really good example. Like I can have ice cream tonight and no big deal, but if I choose that every single night, that’s going to have some long-term detriment, not going to affect me in short term, but absolutely in the long term, you know, pick whatever it is that you want to fill in. I’m not going to go on my walk today, not going to hurt today necessarily, but will long-term. So having longer-term lens or generational lens, so long-term, not only for our own lives, but generational is so, so valuable and it really causes different decision-making. And I know I’ve shared this before, but I have just such a strong memory of working on our farm. It’s a fourth generation farm, realizing there’s a project that I

[13:47] want to get done this Saturday and I’m stressed and I’m cramming through it and oh my gosh, we have. An entire lifetime to work on this farm and to improve it. And this project does not have to get done this Saturday. Enjoy the journey. That’s such a long term, often quoted. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that we need to remind ourselves of. And we need to remind ourselves of that not only on a Saturday, but also as it relates to money and so many money decisions are short-term. And so as you’re well aware, it has been our goal for quite some time. I mean, the book that came out a year ago on perpetual wealth was all about generational wealth and helping not only the next, but the next generation.

[14:38] And for a few of our clients, we’ve got four generations where they’re, you know, a senior grandparent is helping a very young, you know, seven, eight, nine-year-old great grandchild learn about money. And it’s a perfect time to learn about money. So it’s fun to see that. And it’s fun to realize the difference that our money decisions bring us when we are looking at things with that prosperity lens, with that perpetual wealth lens, because that is the way that is going to serve us better. We may have short-term gains and losses, and yet it’s long-term that we can look at and make better decisions in the book and have more certainty with, which then drives that peace of mind and confidence. Absolutely.

[15:31] You know, I think to tie this together, at least for me, is that we can’t achieve our long-term perpetual wealth piece if we don’t address the short-term, you know, we don’t address that, that plan B. And again, in, you know, defense to you, it may not be precious metals. It may be precious metals. It may be having, you know, a stack of cash and you’re safe at the house. It, in all cases, I haven’t seen where it doesn’t make sense, is going to be a whole life insurance policy because now you’ve got something generational and then you can figure out the other pieces, be it food, be it protection items, water, whatever that may be. But I think the short-term, I don’t think I know the short-term has

[16:25] to be addressed in order for that long-term to happen. Well, and I’ll be Frank, as we wrap up, the whole life insurance works beautifully because it addresses both the short and the long-term. Maybe not like tomorrow short, but next year short, it definitely addresses and that’s valuable and we get to use it our whole life, which is why the product is named that all along the way and at death. So that classic and asset definition that Todd gave it so, so long ago is apropos to address both short-term and long-term. Absolutely. I will, I want to, I want to add in one piece, which is I do think it actually helps the very short-term the right away. And here’s the reason why, because if we put off what is important

[17:13] in a medical issue or something pops up and we no longer qualify, then we have robbed our future. So there’s no time to procrastinate on it. That is well said. And interestingly enough, as we record that in the fall of 2022, for whatever reason, a quite large percentage of the people that we are taking through the approval process right now have medical issues that are causing either the insurance to cost more or them to not be able to get it at all. You absolutely can get declined for life insurance. And I have not had that happen much in my practice. So it’s sort of one of those odd things that does bring that around. And I’m so glad you brought it up. And with the stroke of a pen, you buy your family’s net worth with

[18:02] a stroke of a pen and a medical exam, you can assure your legacy. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s small, big, you know, we’ve always talked cashflow issues don’t go away. They have opportunities with small zeros and big zeros on them. And let’s take action so that we can make a short-term decision that then also impacts us long-term. Absolutely. Uh, for any of you listeners, if you’re still trying to figure that out, send a, an email, uh, to special email address for podcast listeners. Hello at prosperity thinkers.com. One other piece is that if you’re not ready cashflow wise to go all in, there are baby steps to take. Just send an email. It could even be subject line baby steps and you’re going to figure

[18:55] out like what is next to do. And if that is a period that takes years, that’s fine. But momentum is absolutely necessary. And, you know, me having close friends, seeing them go through medical mishaps where now they can’t qualify it’s, it’s sad. It really is. So again, great lesson today on plan B. Thank you. Thank you, Spencer. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit prosperity thinkers.com.