Breaking Boundaries in Financial Literacy w/ Christine & Beth

And one of the things I loved was being around a bunch of really smart people all the time and learning true osmosis. Could I see this through a different lens? Could I believe that anything I desire is available to me? And it starts with believing that, because if I have a fear around money or I have a block around money, then I'm going to find the evidence that lines up with that block, not the evidence that it's already there. Really doing the reading, so the knowledge work and then the somatic work, like to feel safe in my body and that my worth is not tied to my wealth.

The journey to wealth is a long walk and some may walk quicker than others, but what good is sprinting to the finish line if you pass out when you cross it? On Walk to Wealth, we enlighten and empower young adults to build wealthy, abundant lives. They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and your first step starts right now. This is Walk to Wealth with your host, John Mendez.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Walk to Wealth podcast. If you're tuning in on YouTube or any of the podcast directories, we just want you to do yourself one little favor Make sure to give us a follow and subscribe so that you don't miss out on any of the amazing guests that I'm bringing on this year. I would hate for you to have FOMO, so make sure to hit that follow subscribe button Without further ado. We're going to get right into this one Today. I actually have two guests, so we're doing a little special today. We have a party going on, moments going on one, but Christine and Beth. For anyone who hasn't had the opportunity to get to know you ladies yet, tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

We're Christine and Beth. We founded a company called the Abundant Investor. We are focused on helping people, particularly women, live their rich life. So we do this through mindset, helping people to get into the right mindset growth mindset, feeling abundant and then we also give them the tools to manifest the rich life that they want. So we get into real estate investing. We talk about high cash value whole life insurance, which we also provide, and we give people the tangibles in addition to all of the mindset and intangibles.

Right. So sort of marrying the manifestation with the practicality. So how do I do this? How do I do this? The aligned action I take.

Yeah, that's amazing, kind of makes him the best of both worlds. So I guess to ask you both individually, you know? First, let's start off by asking you know, take us back in a time machine, both of you guys, and tell us where does your journey begin, what was it like growing up? And then, after that, once you guys both share your stories, talk about, you know, what was it like when you guys came together and finally started working together on what you have going on.

So, christine or Beth, you're the one I grew up just outside of Boston, always was an athlete, went to Boston College, played lacrosse there and then afterwards I got into financial services. I actually got my real estate license when I was 22 and sort of just held on to it but went to work in financial services for fidelity investments and worked there very happily for 12 years, started a family and they relocated out of Boston. So the commute from where I live just outside of Boston down to Rhode Island was challenging with a young family. So that's when I put my real estate license to work and I got into real estate and for 15 years I started off as an agent, but within a year I started managing some large offices. So for 15 years I managed over almost a thousand different agents in the greater Boston area in real estate and a couple of years ago I was like you know what? I'm ready to make a change. I want a new course. Real estate served me really, really well and that allowed me to live and work in the same community and meet some amazing people and just really learning ins and out of real estate and personally make some great investments myself. So I hired Christine as my coach and she was incredible and through the series of coaching she helped me manifest really a great opportunity to go back into financial services, working with a previous mentor of mine who had started his own business in the world of life insurance. So here I am, doing this very happily and enjoying how life insurance and real estate can really come together to help people build significant and generational wealth.

Awesome. Where does your story take place now? Take us back in a time machine, to how it all started and how it all came about.

Sure. So I grew up outside of Hartford, connecticut, and I also went to Boston College. We weren't at VC together. We both were athletes there, though I was a rower, beth was a lacrosse player, and so we both have that in common. I had this, you know. I think my dad dabbled a little bit in personal development when I was a teenager, so I got a little bit of a taste of it and then really got into real estate. I decided I wanted to. Whatever instinct, wherever this instinct came from, I decided I wanted to buy a condo instead of rent in my 20s, after I graduated from college. So that got me interested and excited about buying property and I went into career working at tech startups. So I was always in these venture backed, you know, wear a lot of hats, move quickly, build things, create things, fail fast environments where I learned a lot and helped to be part of some big companies building some big things, like one of the first mobile marketing companies working with big brands. So it was really exciting and it got some great exposure. And I was always an entrepreneur and when I started to have kids, I wanted more independence and freedom around my schedule. So I went out on my own and was working as a marketing consultant, and then, several years ago, I just decided I wanted to change. I wanted something more that was more inspiring to me and I realized I wanted to be coaching other people. So I became a leadership coach. That's when Beth and I worked together in that client coach capacity and then we started talking about something. I was investing in whole life insurance and my personal life as a way to invest in real estate, because I was. I was also investing in real estate because I had this vision that I wanted to buy this beach house, and it became the first domino in my real estate investing Realized. I could do that. And then I learned about properly structured whole life insurance with high cash value that I could use as a tool. So that, combined with the mindset, got me investing in real estate. And here Beth is my client and she's now talking about how she's working with the same insurance product. And we put our heads together and we said more people have to know about this, more women have to be investing in real estate. We help women and they're good men, we say, and so that's how we ended up where we're at and we have so much that is on the horizon, that we're excited to share with people, and from everything from coaching and mindset work to selling insurance products, beth being a licensed agent. So there's a lot we can do.

Yeah, that's amazing and just for anyone listening right now, a lot of this financial stuff can be applied to virtually everyone. Man, or most my audience is young men. It's like this could be applied to anyone, a lot of this financial stuff. So it's like don't let it go over your head and to kind of get into. Before we get into today's really main topic conversation, I want to ask you, because there's not too many times, at least nowadays, that I have people who are from Connecticut as well, because I'm born and raised in Stanford, so I'm a little down at 995. This is like what was it like growing up outside of Hartford, growing up in Connecticut? And then I kind of wanted to touch on the venture-backed startup businesses afterwards.

Sure, it was all I ever knew. I grew up in Weathersfield, before that Rocky Hill for a little bit, and it was great. I had a very traditional middle class, upper middle class childhood and I would say maybe we got bored. And now that I live outside of Boston my kids might say the same thing sometimes. I remember coming to Boston when I was 11 or 12 years old and being standing in Fandall Hall and saying oh my gosh, I have to live here someday. And just knowing there was more for me, it was this expansiveness that I continued to practice. And, yes, here I am. I wasn't sure I'd actually end up here, but, yeah, it was a great place to grow up for me, though, definitely.

And then I want to ask you to follow up about that, about the tech startups or the startup business that you were working with. I feel like a lot of times there's like two main sides. I feel like to entrepreneurship. There's like the kind of DIY bootstraps watch a couple of YouTube videos, go file your LLC or whatever and start a business way to do it. And then there's like the more, I guess, traditional way of getting into a startup company and working there. Both are entrepreneurship, just two very different routes. So I'm more of the YouTube, a lot of this stuff to figure it out. What was it like for you? Actually working in startup companies and getting a feel behind the scenes is like what actually goes on, what takes place.

Yeah, I loved it. I would say it was super fun. It was it moved really fast, which suited me well, and being around, I think one of the big differences because now I'm more in the second camp, like you, john, one of the biggest differences in one of the things I loved was being around a bunch of really smart people all the time and learning through osmosis, right. So learning how to sell, learning how to to think about the market like the big market for whatever we were developing, working closely with engineers, there's a lot of collaboration and a lot of just having an opportunity to work with different people and see things on a bit of a bigger scale, Like, right, you walk into an organization that's venture backed and you've got some money to play with. So and it's usually not, it's not haphazard. It was never haphazard, and I was fortunate to work with some really smart people and then, at the same time as I grew up in those organizations and was starting to present at board meetings, you've got the investors right that you have to answer to. So you're, you're walking this tightrope of doing the things you want to do and then trying to make the investors happy. So that's one of the things that we don't have now. There's another level of freedom. I'm so grateful that I had that experience, though.

Yeah, that's amazing. So kind of segue now a little bit. So I know you guys talk a lot about the mindset side of things to manifesting and a lot of the times the things that we need to work internally are like kind of swept under the rug and we've either A been just looking away for quite some time or B may not even know that there's stuff affecting us that could have a play over our lives. So it's like from what you guys have seen from all your experiences, like what are some of the main like mental blocks getting out of the way of people you know being okay with money and money and just having wealth?

Yeah, I think the topic we speak of often, I think I think there's a couple of things. The first thing is just the willingness to talk about it. It's sort of this taboo right. Nobody wants to talk about money or how much money they make or where their money is or how they're investing their money. It's like it's been culturally, I think, like just something you don't talk about, and we want to change that. We want to make it fun to talk about money. Okay, to talk about money, you know, understanding how much money people make and where money is coming from. So I think that's one thing is just talking about it. The other one is, you know, sort of the awareness that we live in an abundant world. We live, there's abundance all around us, and how do we tap into that is the question. Not necessarily does it exist or not. It exists, it's there, it's all around us, and so how do we create our awareness and our mindset that we know that it's just a matter of changing our frequency to tap into it 100%.

Yeah, and I would just add to that I think we have. You know, we grow up conditioned, where I think of all of us humans were walking around like a piece of hardware that's got a bunch of programming. And that programming all happened when we were really young and I think every all of our caretakers did the best job that they could with what they had and what they knew, and we probably picked up some programming along the way. That doesn't serve us now and most people walk into their adult lives with a set of beliefs that they never think about or question. And if we sit in question, well, why do I believe this around? Why do I believe this about anything but, to your point, money? Why do I believe that money? You know money is hard to come by. Well, because my dad used to say money doesn't grow on trees and those are expensive and no, you can't have that right as opposed to. Could I see this through a different lens? Could I believe that anything I desire is available to me? And it starts with believing that? Because if I have a fear around money or I have a block around money, then I'm going to find the evidence that lines up with that block, not the evidence that it's already there.

No, no, definitely. And it's funny that you mentioned that, because I was actually on IG the other day and I was scrolling through and I've seen some of this one video and it was talking about how there's a group of monkeys in a cage or in some like space or whatever, and there was a ladder and at the top of the ladder was a banana, and every time a monkey would try to climb the ladder, they would pour water on the monkeys, or cold water and I guess monkeys don't like cold water, or whatever, but that would get them to stop climbing and then, after a certain point in time, all the monkeys in a group would just stop. Eventually they just stopped trying to get the banana. They all just stopped because they knew they were going to get splashed with cold water. And then they would, one by one, take out the old monkeys and put in new monkeys, and every time the new monkeys come in well, they haven't been conditioned they would try to go up the ladder to get the banana, and the other monkeys would then beat up the new monkey to get them to stop. And so then the new monkeys now they stopped trying to climb the ladder to get the bananas, but not because the water splashing, because all the old monkeys pretty much beat them up and told them to pretty much you can't do that. Eventually all the old monkeys were just reswapped with new ones. And then none of the new monkeys, despite not being around for the original conditioning. They not one tried to grab the banana because they all knew for whatever reason you don't go get the banana. But none of them knew why.

Mmm, that's such a powerful story. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just. It's the same as what we grow up with, right Like it's. It's the conditioning that we receive that creates our beliefs, and a lot of times those beliefs are limited. I mean, I there's. I came to realize at one point about five years ago that I had a fear of making too much money, which sounds crazy, but it's. It's a common thing. If you felt that it wasn't safe to want money or to like money when you are a child, because your parents maybe put down people that had a lot of money or, you know, talked poorly of them or said they were greedy or whatever it was, then you might think it's not safe to want money.

And it's one of those things I find out within myself. Like I was telling someone before I got on the phone on this interview with you guys. They were asking me like hey, john, you're not focused on real estate, no more. And I told him, no, it was like I'm focused on other things now and I remember I'm teaching social media and marketing and AI for real service pretty much. And I still remember my second webinar that I ever did. I had like a little over like 400 people signed up. I was like 180 people live and at the end of the webinar I always allow like 10 space, you know 10 minutes or so. It's like one hour webinar. I was allowed like 10 minutes or so for Q&A and at that during the Q&A portion, one of my realtor's friends she's in Maryland, she's like a millionaire real estate agent she was like John, never do another one of these again without charging. And she told me like put my cash app or my Venmo in the in the comments so like people could pay because I did the class for free. And I kind of just like awkwardly smiled and I didn't put my Venmo or anything in the chat, but like I was trying to get down to the root of it and I realized that I didn't feel okay receiving money which is weird because like you know, I would have gladly done the classes for free and kept on doing the classes for free forever had she not ever told me to pay. And one of my coaches at that time she told me, like John, before I ever taught my first one, like John, you need to charge for this stuff. And, like it's funny, I reached out to her this year I was like, hey, I'm finally charging, Not for the webinars himself, but in another way, so it's like I can do a free webinar but then at the end of cell, that way, the people want the free value, get the free value. I don't feel weird or guilty of like selling people, because it's like the people who wanted to move forward, you know they would gladly do so because they got value and they want more. People who didn't want to move forward, Well, they still got, you know, tons of value from the free stuff. And then I got, was able to get paid, and so it's like that's how it ended up coming about. But it took me a lot of work to realize, like why I didn't feel okay asking for money or receiving money, Because I wasn't even asking. They were offering it. I was still saying no, which is weird because most people usually say yeah when people throw money at you, and so I was like man, it was hard to come over. And since we're on a topic of money, I kind of want to circle back to something you mentioned earlier about. It was that we don't talk about money because it's taboo. So I wanted to ask you guys, because I know for me culturally it's like it's like oh, we can start talking about money, Like it's easier said than done. I can't naturally go to my family and be like, hey, let's talk about money now, Right, Because culturally and some cultures mine included it's like money wasn't talked about ever. So how did you ladies get comfortable speaking on money? Was it something that happened in your household? When do you ladies become comfortable speaking about money and what were the steps that led up to it?

I would say it's a process, yeah, yeah, Like I'm still becoming comfortable about it, and the thing that helped me the most was to surround myself with people that I could safely talk about money with. So surrounding myself with other entrepreneurs and coaches sounds like you've had a similar experience, John who are talking about it and who are working through it and then reading a lot about it too right, and understanding that really doing the reading, so the knowledge work and then the somatic work like to feel safe in my body and that my worth is not tied to my wealth per se, my financial situation.

Yeah, and I mean I remember us going for walks and like having these conversations and how great it felt. And something that is a little bit motivating to me is that I look at the pay inequity in our country, specifically for women, but across a lot of classes. And why do we have these inequities? Part of it is because we're not speaking about it, and so I'm a mo. That's like a motivating factor to me too to say we're not going to fix this or change this culture until we put ourselves out there and talk about it and make it a safe space to talk about, answer questions. You know, be educational. There is no dumb question. There is no. You know, in the in the United States there's only, I think, 18 states that make financial literacy part of a required curriculum in high school, so the majority of us don't get any education on this, and then it's in our culture not to speak about it, and then we're expected to go out and live this abundant life and you have all this. You know all these feelings and what have you of in aggregate inadequacies that you have to unpack. And we want to change that. We really want to, and I think part of it is the first step is just talking about it and then making access to education available and easy and super fine concepts that maybe have been over complicated, that don't need to be so complicated yeah and you mentioned school and it's one of those things.

I was actually on someone else's podcast and he's a teacher and I talked about a broader but similar topic and he had a really good point. Actually is like we can't expect teachers to teach us about financial literacy and most of them are broken in debt. Most teachers don't know anything about money, right, and it's like we can't expect to learn from someone who hasn't been to where we want to be, and most of the people that are successful business owners are busy running their successful business, and I think we're now. Now the excuse of school is like starting to become kind of dead just because, like, but YouTube, now the accessibility, it's like if you have a phone, if you're listening to this, you have no excuse, right, that's that's one was like what you do now on the Internet's, like the information is out there and the people are out there, and I think a lot of people. I think one of the issues that doesn't get talked about is that a lot of people just don't I don't want to say that they don't have them in have it in them, because I believe that as children, we're all born limitless and it's through societal construction, programming and experiences in our environment, etc. Etc. That we put glass ceilings over ourselves. I came through the realization. Yeah, I came to the realization, I was like that every glass ceiling that we have to break through was also secretly built by our own hands. And I feel like once we realize that, then we learn that there's not something out there that's holding us back or that doesn't want us to win. It's been ourselves the whole time. And once we can get out of our own way, I feel like we could really start, you know, stepping into our stride. And for me it's like one of those things like all the conversations I had about money where that made me start being more comfortable with it. It's weird, because I had an alumni tournament literally this past Saturday. From the day we're recording and a lot of people are there, you know we're playing football, we're doing seven on sevens and not everyone there is an entrepreneur. Most of the events I go to, everyone there is an entrepreneur and it was just kind of weird, just like having these different, like, I guess, regular conversations not to say that they're a bad thing, just not the way of life that I'm on track of life that I'm in right now. So having these regular conversations is like oh, so not everyone's trying to run like a super crazy business. I've been so immersed almost in this world of entrepreneurship and wealth building and surrounding myself with people that talked about it and that I forget that not everyone's doing so and I'm kind of on a little bit of a tangent here, so like to kind of like bring it back to where we were talking about with, like money. It's like where do you see the gap is in terms of information to and getting it to majority of people? I mean, your school is one thing, but then it's like, also we're going to we can't lead someone to where you've never been. So it's like, do we want a whole bunch of financially literate teachers teaching a curriculum not knowing whether it's actually practical or not? It's like you know, how can we kind of get over that gap from the people who know and the people who don't?

You know it's so funny we just were talking about that and we look at it in the in the she's two kind of buckets. You have the status quo that people just fall into right. They go to work, they're nine to five job, they sign up for their 401k, they mindlessly sort of do what's been told for them to do without really questioning it. You know saving in a 529 account, saving in a 401k saving. You know going into the stock market without questioning it, and I think what you're talking about and what we're talking about is really more like creating this rich life that you're much more purposeful about, and you're choosing to be around people that are thinking about things a little bit differently, that aren't just following the path of the status quo that are putting themselves, you know, surrounded by other people that are like-minded and wanting to do things different, looking at wage. They can do this through a new lens. That's not just what everybody else is doing or questioning the status quo, and really, you know engaging that mindset. I don't know. We just were speaking about this today?

Yeah, I mean, I think it is-you've either got to be exposed to alternative paths early on or be curious enough, right? Like, having curiosity is, like, probably, the skill I want my kids to have the most, right. It's like I want people to be curious, to question things and want to know more and, you know, find these alternate ways, because now, like you said, all the information is available and out there. Right, like my kids, like to your point about the teachers teaching financial literacy, they're going to question their teachers, probably. And are you qualified to be teaching me on this? Because I've learned this and I saw this on YouTube and right, so I think that's really good. I think what we need to teach kids in school today is it's a slightly different set of qualities than things, because, I mean, the way people used to be taught in schools was to fit into a different type of world, and our world is changing. Entrepreneurship is taking off, it's become more common, so I think we're seeing it. I think your generation, I think the younger generations they're more adept and willing, because the earlier you are exposed to this, the easier it is to take on. So I think we feel like we've always had this bone in our body and have been curious and exposed to things, whether it's our parents or our work that have been done a little bit differently, and I think it's you know. I think there's a lot of fear around this for people who haven't been exposed to it.

Yeah, I think, from what I found as talking to so many people like you guys, it's, I think people fit into three buckets. It's the first bucket. It's people who were born with it and because they were brought up in environments that pretty much cultivated it, they just kind of just stuck it with it. Then you know forever, almost essentially you know they were born entrepreneurs and their family or the people around them kind of just, you know, praise that, so they kept on doing it and whatever, and then that lets it in. Then there's people which I think is the vast majority of people in this space is they were born with it, along the way they lost it and then somehow they've re-picked it back up later in their life, like for me. I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, and I was like, oh my goodness, and it's like then I kind of just went down the rabbit hole, right. Usually everyone, at least from most people, kind of fit into that category. And then I feel like there's the last category of people who were born with it, lost it and never picked it back up. And like those people, I think, it's like I think that's the majority of people in the status quo. I think, for the most part, like we all strive to be entrepreneurial, not start showing business, but in a sense like entrepreneurs at least the entrepreneurs that I know it's like they're going to conferences, they're investing in themselves, you know, they're doing personal development, they're trying to build themselves up, they're trying to get better, they're trying to refine, they're trying to provide value, they're trying to do all these different things to better themselves. Like you could be a pivotal piece of someone else's entrepreneurship. You know entrepreneurial business by being an entrepreneur. I think that's something that I still think hasn't really caught mainstream yet. You know everyone's talking about entrepreneurship but no one's talking about really entrepreneurship at all. You don't have to go start your own business to become wealthy or to become. You know a lot of these. I know this guy, alex Ramosy. He's a big entrepreneur guy that I follow. He talks about if, like the people in his companies that run him, like he'll take you know he'll give them equity stakes in the company and it's like now you don't have a salary, whatever the company grows to, you'll be apart and you don't have to worry about starting your own business and you could be some a piece of someone else's. You know business and so I think it's one of those things where it's like, as we continue progressing, I think that it's one of those things like the excuse to continue to be status quo and be okay with just being average. It's like the excuses are going to be continue to finish because it's going to be so accessible for everyone and the people who want it will go after and the people who don't, and so hopefully they'll find someone and absorb it by at least osmosis. And I kind of want to ask you, because you mentioned curiosity and that's what helped me out it also can be viewed as one of the most annoying traits because you're always asking questions. It's like, how do you kind of get around that? How do you kind of become okay with you know being curious, especially after this pandemic, where it's like if you question anything, you're a conspiracy theorist or you were some sort of you know, super woke person, whatever. It's like it's kind of almost frowned upon now to question anything. It's like how do we can cultivate curiosity and people all over again?

so I I like that question, I think. First of all, I think you know anyone could pick up a laptop or a phone and google is your best friend. You can put any question in there, nobody has to know um yeah like so yeah all the ai tools you know and use, um, but here's the thing like we've got, like we can't work in bubbles, we have to work together, and that is where so much of the fulfillment comes from. It's where so much goodness comes from collaboration. We can go so much farther together. So we have to be willing to cultivate that type of environment where we can be curious together and we have to ask questions. And so you know what? What is that about? Like, what is this? You know, fear of asking questions? It's around judgment, I think, and and so we've got to drop the judgment like we're all one, we're all the same. Um, there's something you know, there's a bigger power here. We're all the same. If we're feeling judged, we have to question ourselves, because there's something in our own psyche, in our own experience, that is causing us to feel that way, and it starts from within. And you know, caring about what other people think is it's one of the biggest things that holds us back. It's one of the biggest things that holds people back from entrepreneurship. As a coach who works with entrepreneurs and executives, um, that is one of the top things that we work through is getting rid of caring. It's a co-dependence, right? Um, because being curious is so powerful, the the whole reason I found out about whole life insurance, which Beth and I now work in with a lot of clients, is because I asked questions of a friend of mine who had two seven figure businesses. It was obviously crushing it and I walked into a mastermind. I hardly knew her, um, and I just started asking questions. I didn't really care what was thought of me I mean, I probably did at the time anyways but I was willing to be courageous. I was willing to be courageous and ask the question what do I have to loot like? What do you have to lose, right, but so much to gain yeah, no 100, and it's one of those things like.

I love the fact that you use the word courageous, not fearless, because courage is feeling the fear and doing the anyways. I don't think it's really a cure to being fearless. I don't think that's really possible. It's like there's people who just do it despite being there, and it's none. Of those things are like being in masterminds, being able to ask questions. It's one of those things which is like you can take that and literally just run wild by asking questions and you'll get somewhere, like I don't know where, but you'll get somewhere pretty good just by being able to ask questions, because so many people don't ask like for me. It's like culturally again, it's like one of those things like we're taught not to ask for help for anything. So it's like if you ask people, it's like you'll be able to get further faster, because like ignorance is one of the biggest things that stop people from being successful, and not ignorance like in the bad way to everyone sees that, just ignorance you don't know, and right. And if you don't know, how are you ever supposed to grow? And since, like asking those questions kind of helps stop that. And so I know we talked a lot about the mindset portion, which I think is super important because money follows up right after. So it's kind of transition a little bit, you know, especially for someone being younger, probably doesn't have access to much money or anything. It's like what would you suggest? Or from your own personal experiences and working with your clients, like where do you suggest people start when it comes to the topic of money?

yeah, I mean I think that it's getting organized and starting to think about what money do you have and how can you most appropriately save that money. So we like to talk about these three buckets. You have your taxable buckets, so that would be things like your checking account, saving account, maybe a small investment account. Then you have this tax deferred bucket and I talked earlier about this, with status quo, or people that maybe they have a nine to five job and they're trying to get to become an entrepreneur or move to another line and they're just tucking money away and they're 401k, not thinking about the fact that someday they're going to have to pay taxes on that. So that tax deferred bucket is one that is worth looking at and questioning a little bit, because the third bucket is what we're calling the tax free bucket, so that would be things like a Roth IRA. So it's money that you may have already paid taxes on. You already have paid taxes on now, but you're putting it into an account that's going to grow tax deferred and then when you, when you pull it out, tax free. So the Roth IRA is the most commonly known about, but there's also whole life insurance or and it's also it's called high cash value life insurance, where you start a policy by putting money in. That's after tax money and it's growing in this bucket, tax free and, unlike the Roth IRA, you have access to it your whole life before you, before you're 59, to use for anything. So it's a great place to store your savings because it grows with what's called uninterrupted compound interest and you can borrow against it and do say something like invest in real estate and then pay yourself back, and when you're taking the money out to make that investment in real estate or bitcoin or whatever you want to invest in, the underlying account is continuing to grow with uninterrupted compound interest. So you're not taking your own money out, you're actually borrowing from your future debt benefit, and so it's a really great structure to establish early on in your life as a place to store your money, and the concept is called becoming your own banks. It's called becoming your own bank. Banks do this. It's called BOLI. You can google it BOLI bank on life insurance. It's what the banks do with your money when you put the money in the bank, and so this concept is, instead of making the bank rich, make yourself rich. You start your own bank, use that to borrow from over the years to make these investments, and it's a great sort of conduit to make that, or a bridge from maybe your nine to five job to being able to start a business or invest in real estate or or something like that yeah, so uh, before we even talk about like using its investment real estate, you got super high level super quickly for most people.

We've had two guests so far. Come on, talk about like BYOB and being your own bank, etc. Etc. And like the life insurance stuff. It's like break it down. You know what really is life insurance. Like how does it really work? As I said, most people know about it, everyone thinks it's a scam, most people think they don't need it. So, like, what is life insurance really and how does it even work?

Sure. So if you think about insurance in general, like you know, you buy home insurance, you buy car insurance. You're buying insurance for the day that something bad happens. And when people think of life insurance, there's really two kinds. There's something called term insurance and then there's something called permanent insurance. So term insurance is what most people think of when they think of life insurance. But term insurance is only can only be used, obviously, if you die. So you're buying the insurance for a period of time at term so say, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years and if you die during that term, your, your family, gets whatever death benefit you paid for. Okay, so it's like renting insurance. It's like your car insurance. You hope that you never need your car insurance, right? Because if you need your car insurance, that means you got into a car accident. It's bad news, right? So term insurance is only paid out less than 2% of the time.

So that's term insurance.

We're talking about a whole nother concept, the permanent insurance. Because with permanent insurance you have two things. You have that term insurance, you have that death benefit, I should say, but you also have something called cash value, and so when you put money into your policy, a piece of it goes to buy that death benefit and if it's structured properly, the majority of the money is going into cash value. The reason why it gets a bad rap is that it can be structured improperly. Where the agent is making more money because they're making it a higher death benefit and a lower cash value, what we do is turn that right on its head. We actually set up each policy with the least amount of death benefit as possible to keep the IRS happy that it's life insurance because of the fact that it grows tax free and comes out tax free with the highest amount available to put your cash into, and then that cash becomes available to borrow against time and time again and pay yourself back. So it can be structured improperly if you're not working with the right agent.

Why would you recommend someone younger to get into this now? Like, what's the big deal about getting it into it now?

Compound interest. Compound interest is your friend and so we can. Even I just ran a policy on a baby that ensured their life at one year old. Because one. When you're younger, the cost of insurance is going to be lower because the insurance company is basically looking at you and your health and saying, okay, there's a, there's not my chance of having to pay out a death benefit on this person who's young and healthy is very low compared to somebody who's older and maybe unhealthy. So that's that's. A big part of it is that the younger you are and once you get permanent insurance, it's permanent. You never have to re qualify for that ever again, right, so that's a big benefit. And the other one is that you're starting to just like any other investment, starting to when you start young, you have compound interest which grows over time, and I just would add to that you can because you can compare this as a vehicle compared to like 401k, let's say, or 529, if you're saving for college and you have young kids.

As this type of policy, the funds are growing, tax free and it's a private account and, unlike a 401k that you can't access until you're quote unquote retired or a lot older. You can access this money if you want to invest in something like real estate, as Beth said, and recycle the money so you can pay yourself back. You borrow, take a loan for $25,000, use it, invest in real estate, make a return on that real estate, either by selling it or getting the equity out on it a cash equity and then pay yourself back, put the money back into that life insurance account and use it again. You could just can continue to recycle it and it's compounding and growing over time. I like it so much better than a 401k because you can. You can, you know, in the entrepreneurial spirit, instead of being passive and letting someone else manage that money. You can access that money. So I think it's perfect for entrepreneurs, real estate investors, people, coaches, people that want to be proactive about their living, their rich life.

So we talked about money. We talked about you know where to start winning games and finances. Where could people find that? You as well, both of you at? Pretty sure it's almost the same spot, well, but where could we find you at so that if someone wants to learn more about this stuff because it gets super high levels super quickly and we'd probably have to be here for another hour and a half talk about this stuff, really break it down so where could we find you after we want to learn more about what you guys have going on?

Well, thanks for asking. We have a website called the AbundantInvestHercom and, yes, men can come too. We welcome you to come. And then we're on social media on IG, tiktok and Facebook at the Abundant Investor.

All right.

And then the things that you'll see is we strongly encourage people shining up for a one-on-one class with us. You know you can do that right in our Instagram profile or on our website, because this is it can get complicated quickly and it really is a solution that needs to be customized to you and what's important to you.

So we are glad to do that All right, and so time for our famous five questions. We're going to do this rapid fire round because there's two of you as today. So question number one what is the most impactful lesson you've learned in life?

To overcome your fears, I'd say to not take myself too seriously.

What is the most admirable trait a person can have?

Kindness. I would have to agree with Beth on that one.

If you had to change someone's life and you only had one book, which book would you?

recommend Rich Dodd-Pordot.

I'm going to say a happy pocket full of money.

What is the legacy that you're trying to leave behind?

That anyone can lead an abundant life. It's so much more than money, Actually. I think if you're truly in it, you realize it's not about the money.

Yeah, I would say that you know, I think that we're placed on this earth to enjoy life, and that's what we're meant to do, and so I think that anybody, that that's what we should try to do is enjoy life by being kind, by tapping into that abundance. I think that's our purpose. I think that's what we're intended to do.

If someone wanted to embark on their walk to wealth today, what is the first step you recommend they take?

Open their mind to the possibility that wealth is available to them.

Know where they stand and get curious.

You've now finished taking the first step. Now let us help you take the next one. Subscribe to our newsletter at WalkToWealthcom. That's Walk the Number Two Wealthcom, so we can keep you moving on your journey. We'll see you on the next episode of Walk to Wealth with John Mendes.