Busting the Interest Rate Lies – Episode 095

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author, Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel, and we have bestselling financial author Kim Butler with us today, who is my co-host, but today we’re going to actually be talking about a brand new book that she has just gotten released, and the feedback on it has been absolutely just fantastic, and I personally think it’s a book that the market needed. So welcome, Kim, and tell us about your book. Well, thank you, Todd.

[00:50] Our poor listeners, we’ve been hinting about this book for a long time because this actually started in its writing a good like five or six or seven years ago. I wrote an article about the 15 to 30 year mortgage discussion, and I don’t know what the hang up was, but we just could never get that thing out there the way it belonged. And so over time, we realized that what needed to also be available to our readers is information about all kinds of things with interest, not just mortgage interest, but car loan interest, savings account interest, investment interest, how banks actually calculate interest, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So as time went on, we added to the draft of this book with some of those other items.

[01:45] And then I realized that this was going to be a horribly boring book because it was super heavy on the math. It was super heavy on financial concepts. And so it came to me to create a fictional story of a kid in high school that listens to a prosperity economics presentation. And then he goes about his life growing up and dealing with all of the things that affect him as it relates to interest. So literally when he starts to save money, when he starts to look at furniture loans, mortgages, of course, looking at storing his cash in life insurance as opposed to a savings account, and then looking at investment real estate and also looking at other alternative investments. And so we created a story that goes along with all this heavy math.

[02:39] Of course, there’s lots of truth concepts, calculators in it that are very, very helpful. So for you, the listener, if you’re a client, this will be a great review of some of the concepts that we’ve talked about. If you’re an advisor, it will be a great way to really learn how to use all of the truth concepts calculators that this particular book addresses. So those of you that have read some of our other books, you’ve seen the truth concepts calculators around the qualified plan and the busting and retirement lies. Of course, in the live your life insurance book, there is the distribution calculator. Well in this busting the interest rate lies book is the loan analysis calculator to look at the mortgages, a bunch of the financial calculators that look at the various

[03:29] interest rates around cars. There’s an automobile purchases calculator that we go through. There’s of course the real estate investment calculator, and then there is also an internal rate of return calculator that we use to calculate the return on life settlements. So there’s actually pictures in the book of all the calculators. So that makes it a little bit more interesting. And then in the very back is a picture of Emma Dogg, our great Dane, hanging out on the patio of the office in her usual spot where she can survey everything. So how’s that for some content? Super. I just want to clean up a couple little facts here. A lot of times when you’re saying we this may be some of our listeners first time in

[04:15] here, Kim Butler is actually married to Todd Langford. And this is Todd Strobel, a different Todd. And Todd Langford is the creator of the Truth Concepts Calculator. And you can check those out at www.truthconcepts.com. There’s actually a 10 day free trial on there for advisors. If you’re an investor, whatever, just go in there and check that site out. And, you know, Todd is really into not assuming anything. I have never seen such an emotional conversation is what most people have around this concept of interest. And this is not an emotional conversation. And Todd has done a wonderful job of separating the emotion from the math and just showing you the math. And once you understand the math, it’s a totally different conversation than what we

[05:07] are typically having, isn’t it? Absolutely. It is amazing how something like a car can cause such incorrect decision making. I mean, we’ve had clients that literally would take a zero percent interest offer. Now, I put that zero percent in quotes from the car financing company opposed to what was true five percent interest at the bank, even though the bank’s payment was less because they were so caught up in thinking that they got a zero percent car loan when all that happened was the car financing company added interest to the price of the car like a thirty five thousand dollar car. They made forty thousand dollars and then said that that was zero percent interest. It blows my mind that they can still get away with that.

[06:03] But this is one of the interest rate lies that we bust in this book. And as you look on the book at Amazon, there is, of course, some sample material that you can dig into. If you haven’t seen any of the other Busting series books, you might take a look at them as well, because Busting the Retirement Lies is also helpful. Of course, Busting Financial Planning Lies. But I really have to admit, I’m most proud of this book, and it it truly is one that we should have come out with on the beginning side of the series. But nevertheless, it’s there and we work through the interest rate lies, as you said, very unemotionally and yet with a story tied to it that actually has a little bit of drama and emotion.

[06:49] So I’m actually quite pleased to have this book out there. I’m super grateful to the people that have already made review comments on Amazon. Thank you very, very much for that. I want our listeners to know that we do not make any special effort to try to get our book on the bus seller list right away or any fancy thing like that. We just put our books out there to be helpful so that our listeners can turn to something to read. Now, for those of you that really like to listen, there is an audio version coming. It’s probably another week or two away. We don’t have control over that. Amazon seems to take their time releasing the audio version. But it will be there for you. And if you prefer to listen, then have at it.

[07:34] But I do want to caution you that this book has a lot of pictures of the calculators. And so I think you’re going to want to actually get the physical book so that you can actually take a look at those calculators. I did the best that I could in describing them on the audio version. But the book itself is really about 140 pages long. And as I said, there’s quite a few pages of pictures in there. So it’s a decent read, not one that’s going to take you forever to get through. I would invite all of our listeners to please hit the link on the blog post, go over to Amazon, purchase the book and do take that extra few minutes to go back into Amazon and post those comments because they are all read and appreciated.

[08:20] Absolutely. Very, very much so. We’re super grateful to be able to put these out there. And this one in particular, I would love to have shared with high school and college students. If you’ve got a student that age or a grandchild or niece or nephew, and you know that their school is doing any kind of work, there are slowly starting to become some personal finance classes in schools. Unfortunately, a lot of the information that’s presented is a little scary. But if you chose to get this out there, it would be helpful to them. If you’ve got, you know, just your own family that you want to share it with, I just encourage that immensely because kids need to be learning this stuff. They’re not taught it properly at all.

[09:04] And as I said, the personal finance classes that I am starting to finally, slowly see why that hasn’t been absolute mandatory in high school and college before now, I don’t know, but the ones that I am starting to see don’t always present the best information. So I would encourage you to share this book with anybody that’s of the high school or college age. And of course, all of those that are in our 30s, 40s and 50s, we didn’t learn this stuff in high school and college either. So we need to have it just as much. You know, I sit and listen to Todd Langford, every truth training that he gives and I, you know, I’m able to add my two cents all the time and do the calculators and whatnot, but I still am learning.

[09:50] I’m still amazed sometimes by the way that interest rates affect things in a way that I wouldn’t have thought that Todd is, as you were able to say, Todd Langford is able to unemotionally, although he does it with emotion, but disconnected from the facts, explain what’s going on. We had last truth training. We had a gentleman that has been in the personal finance space for 40 years say, you know, I have never looked at interest rates that way. Thank you. That was so helpful. I’m going to go share that with all of my clients. So kind of a neat introspective comment that he made on his own learning that has happened in every day. Super. Well, again, we invite everybody to go to www.partners, the number four, prosperity.com.

[10:43] There’s more resources like this available there. Got a nice blog post and some emails that you can have sent to you. Invite everybody to take advantage of the free resources as well as buying the book. One of the things I just want to kind of point out is we also discussed the ability to calculate the interest rate on a potential real estate deal. And I found this fascinating. Yeah, that one is a fun one. Now, this is an investment real estate deal. And for those of you that are interested in that arena, the real estate calculator is sold by itself on truth concepts dot com. So it’s sold along with a loan analysis calculator, actually. But you can buy just those two for two or three hundred dollars.

[11:30] I don’t remember the exact price. That’s on truth concepts dot com. And the fun thing about the real estate sample that is looked at is the information is used by borrowing against whole life to make the down payment on a particular real estate deal. And then that one is calculated that way so that it is something that you can really look at the real estate deal without the whole life cash value as the down payment and then look at the real estate deal with whole life as the down payment and get the calculation, the internal rate of return on that individual real estate deal done either way and see which way is better. So we won’t tell the answer here on the podcast today. We’ll let people go look up the answer.

[12:23] So that’s a fun question. Which do you think earns you a better rate of return on your real estate deal if you make the down payment with your own money or somebody else’s? Interestingly enough, or I guess disappointingly enough, a lot of people write books as a sales piece of sales material. And we’ve mentioned truth concepts a lot. I just want to clarify that this book is whole and complete in and of itself. You do not need to purchase anything. It’s when you want to see how this would impact your personal economy and customize those calculations to yourself. There’s the additional option of going to truth concepts.com. So I don’t want to make it sound like we’re this was written as a sales piece for that because it’s absolutely perfect just in and of itself.

[13:16] Very well said. And if you’re a client of ours, send us whatever you want us to calculate and we’ll do the truth concepts calculations for you, including the real estate one. In fact, we have a template for the real estate calculator. So if you are interested in that, I don’t want to confuse people with too many things to go do or get. We really just want you to get the book. But if you are a client of ours and you want us to calculate a real estate deal for you, let us know and we’ll do that. Super. Well, what else about this book, Kim, before we wrap up? Well, I’m just super excited to say the subtitle because it’s just as good. So this is busting the interest rate lies, discover the whole truth

[13:57] about money and how you can keep control of years by Kim Butler with Mona Coljurgis, who’s been super helpful, especially in the storyline. And then there’s a fun comment on the back that I’ll share from who’s the co-owner of strategic coach along with Dan Sullivan. And she says great practical strategies. Anyone who wants to know how interest rates really work should read this book. Awesome. And again, I would say maybe two, three hour read, not super long. One of those ones you just want to keep reading and you know, what’s nice about it is is that you now have a resource guide so that, you know, if some months down the road, you’re looking at making that rental property purchase or whatever, it might just spark something

[14:44] in the back of your head or maybe you’re sitting at that car dealership and you’re trying to decide whether to go with the zero interest rate loan, pay cash or finance it with your bank. This will be a great resource for you to be able to turn back to and say, Wow, I’ve heard that conversation before and it didn’t sound the same as what the salesperson is telling me. That’s right. Get the whole truth all the time. Super. Well, again, thanks so much for Kim Butler to continue to turn out these books and things to make us question our thinking and expand our thoughts. This is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel for the Prosperity Podcast. And we will see you all again soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast.

[15:24] To take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partnersforprosperity.com If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review. For me, the best part of Shopify is the possibility of managing the business even without technical knowledge. We managed to manage everything from backend to frontend and make online sales without complications. If Shopify was a cycling equipment, I would say it would be the bike itself. It’s what allows us to get where we want. It is in Shopify that we manage our business. Start your free evaluation at Shopify.com.