817: Bank on Yourself: Grow Wealth and Take Control of Your Financial Life with Sarry Ibrahim

Robert Plank 0:02 Welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're here with Siri, Abraham. And he is from Finn asset protection.com, where they are all about growing your money safely, predictably and guaranteed. Oh, Siri is a financial planner. He is a member of the bank on your self organization. He helps real estate investors, business owners, and full time employees grow safe and predictable wealth, regardless of market conditions. Using a financial strategy that has been around for 160 years, we will find out all about real estate and investing growing your business money, everything that comes along with that glad to be talking to your friend.

Unknown Speaker 0:40 Robert, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Robert Plank 0:42 I appreciate you. And so what has been your passion in the last year? So as far as there's so many subjects to talk about with money and investing and things like that, but what has you personally fired up? Yeah,

Speaker 2 0:54 um, what hasn't been personally fired up is just knowing kind of how to grow wealth kind of predictably, not having to take unnecessary risks. Because I feel like a lot of people think that you have to have risks to grow your money. And based on what we've been doing lately, along with the bank on yourself concept we've been, we've been able to help clients grow wealth, you know, predictably and not have to worry about those uncertain conditions.

Robert Plank 1:20 Will fantastic and and, and I can see how maybe it it goes against a lot of our nature to a free will want to take shortcuts, right? They want to do things fast, they want they want risks. And so growing wealth, predictably risky sounds like something that maybe we need to turn down, but the emotional part and turn up the logical part of our brains. And so you say that there's this bank on your self concept that makes it possible. So what the heck is that? And what are you know about it?

Speaker 2 1:48 Yeah, definitely. So, the bank on yourself concept is really based off of something called the Infinite Banking concept, they're very similar. Both are concepts for their trademarks, and brand names. bank on yourself was invented by family, Ellen. And what it is, is, it's a way to kind of take back control of your financial life, a way to replace your banker. And really, the concept comes from a couple of problems. So one problem that a lot of entrepreneurs have is the amount of interest they pay to lenders. Another problem that that entrepreneurs have is market conditions. And then the third could be taxes. So we're taking really the concept, and we're addressing all of these problems with one concept. So bank on yourself could help you recoup the interest you would otherwise pay to lenders, help you mitigate against market risks, and then also help you mitigate your tax liability in the long term. And what it really is like the technical parts of it, are you taking pretty much out of all the four, there's about 450 Financial vehicles out there, and we want to take one of those vehicles, at least one of those vehicles that would help us address those three problems, the interest, the taxes, and the market risks, and of those 450 Financial vehicles, there's actually the only one that could do all of those things. And that is dividend paying whole life insurance. So people are like, you know, I didn't you know, people think that when it comes to whole life insurance, it's only just life insurance. And there is obviously a life insurance component, but there's also a cash value component, and the cash value component and is really how an entrepreneur could mitigate your taxes, mitigate market risks and, and take back the interest that would otherwise pay to lenders. So I'll kind of pull over for now but that's pretty much what it is bank on yourself is using dividend paying whole life insurance for you to become your own source of financing and for you to grow your your business internally using your own dividend paying whole life insurance policy.

Robert Plank 3:39 Okay, so dividend paying whole life insurance policy. So So what does that look like? Like when we sign up for that? Like, like, where do we go? And like, what kind of like rough numbers are involved? Because that kind of like you alluded to there, like with like the whole life insurance and all that you picture, maybe like paying in, you know, month after month, and then like decades later it cashes out but if there's a dividend to be paid, that's a little bit interesting. Yeah,

Speaker 2 4:05 exactly. So the first step is you'd want to work with an advisor who really understands dividend paying whole life insurance, who does that most as most of their work, not just an insurance agent who could sell you whole life insurance you want to work with, like a bank on yourself professional, for example, that's what I am, I'm big on yourself professional, I went through an eight week training program on how to structure a specially designed whole life policy so that way, that you could actually use them for their function, not just the title of it, but actually the function of it, where you could use it to become your own source of financing. You could grow wealth significantly over time. And you could use it in many different ways. There's so many different ways you can use it. For example, entrepreneurs use it all the time for hire with hiring employees for employee benefits, or you could use it as a Buy Sell agreement between two people. There's, you know, there's an infinite way of using infinite banking or bank on yourself. But really, it comes down to the adviser the person you're working with, so you don't want to go out there and do this on your own. You want to work with an actual adviser who knows how to do this. And then obviously, you want to address your concerns and your objectives. What is it that you want to accomplish? What is that you want to, you want to do to kind of talk a little bit about life insurance, there's really three types of life insurance, there's Term, Whole Life and universal term is pretty much the way it sounds, it's a set period of time, usually 10 years, 20 years or 30 years. It has a start date, it has an end date, and it's just life insurance only. So somebody, for example, 40 years old, does a term 10 year term life policy, that's all going to cover them for it's just life insurance for 10 years, whole life is the opposite, it's for your whole life, there's a start date, not really an end date. And then there's also cash value involved. So there's equity involved in the life insurance policy. And as you're paying into it, a portion of your premiums you're paying into are going towards the cash value, and then a portion are going towards the life insurance. And over time, as you're building up the policy, you have cash value, and that cash value is going to earn interest and dividends from the insurance company. Although dividends are not guaranteed, they grow. We only work with insurance companies who have a proven track record of paying dividends for over 100 years. So that's how the cash is going to grow. And then universal, there's a third type of life insurance and in essence, it's a combination of term and whole life

Robert Plank 6:15 are fantastic. Well, that's a lot of information, but it's good to know. And, and, and with a lot of this, I don't know a lot of this money. So sometimes it's easy to get a little bit bored with it right? And to say like, oh, well, thinking about, you know, death or thinking about money that will pay out like decades from now, sometimes there's like a little bit of like, of a mental game involved with these numbers. And so do you ever find yourself having to, like, re motivate or re energize yourself to get excited about some of this stuff? Or is it naturally get you fired up?

Speaker 2 6:46 Yeah, so this is more of a way of it's not so much of a product that one would just buy, it's a way of living, it's a way of changing certain things. And then yeah, definitely, like, it takes time to for for us as the advisor as well as with clients, it takes time to kind of adapt to this. But once once clients, you know, watch our podcast, you know, we have a podcast called thinking like a bank, once they watch their podcasts, they listen to our material, they read some of our blogs and things like that our book, then it kind of becomes a way of living where they understand the language. And the same is true with us if we implement this in our in our business in our personal lives. So it becomes a way of living really. And I think that's that's what you really need in order to be successful with this concept. It's a way of living, it's a concept, not just so much of something that you would just buy one time, and that's it. There's, it's an ongoing process, you know, with all our all of our clients, we have like a six month review. So every six months, we're getting together usually over zoom, because we work with clients in all 50 states. So a lot of is going to be virtual, well, every six months, we get together on Zoom, and we really look over their cash values and their life insurance policies. We look at their real estate portfolios, we're looking at their debt, their overall debt. And we're kind of seeing like, is everything we're doing? Are we heading in the right direction, but are we truly providing value in every area, we're not just you know, life insurance, salespeople only focus on life insurance sales, we're also looking into, we're more of looking into their financial portfolio and being really their money coaches or financial coaches, and helping them mitigate the problems they're having, while also increasing the opportunities they look for, for example, the amount of wealth they have, the amount of dividends, they're earning, the amount of real estate they own, we're looking at all those positive numbers and also trying to improve them and increase them over time.

Robert Plank 8:30 And that's really interesting, think about there that like you have kind of your main tool or your main idea. But then there was other other problems to be solved in addition to that, and that's I think that's just a good idea in general, right? Like if you if you sell a product in your business, don't limit yourself to just being that thing. Also look at what other kinds of problems you can solve. And so you mentioned there that you like, for example, meet with real estate investors, and you do this every six month thing. And you look at the whole picture. And so can you tell us about some of the the advice or the strategies you give to real estate investors to help them build their wealth? Yeah,

Speaker 2 9:03 absolutely. Yeah. So the first step is we would want to identify like what they're currently doing in their lives, like, for example, their W two employees and real estate investors, are they full time real estate investors, we want to understand all the moving parts in their financial lives, we want to get we want to get a good financial picture, then we also want to get to know where they want to go. So what are their five year 10 Year 20 year goals for them their business, and then after we gathered all this information in the financial analysis, the next step is to kind of put together a solution. Like for example, one client that I was working with, he's like, He's seven years old. He one of his goals was to keep doing real estate, but he also wanted to plan for long term care. And rather than he wouldn't be he wouldn't have been able to do a long term care insurance policy because typically they they stop it, they stopped writing those policies after the age of 55 after one is the age of 55. So we needed to kind of come up with a creative solution to keep him doing real estate while also planning for long term care. So we started a single pre miam whole life insurance policy, that's a one time whole life policy, he put in, he sold one of his properties for $400,000 in cash, put all of it into a one time whole life policy, that means it doesn't require any more payments, put it into the policy. And immediately he had about $575,000 in death benefit or life insurance. And then that life insurance amount was actually he could use the entire 575 for long term care if needed if he got to that point. And then he had about $350,000 in cash value in year one of the policy. Now every year, this policy would keep growing, both the life insurance and the cash value would keep growing even without any more premiums going into the policy. And that's how he was able to leverage that cash value, he was able to borrow against it use for more Real Estate without hindering the growth of the cash value or the life insurance. That's what kind of the cool thing is that you can collateralize it, meaning that you can borrow against it. It's not really an either or situation, it's not do I do whole life insurance, or I do real estate or I do you know, something else, it's a way of both. And you can do whole life insurance, fund the policy and then borrow against that. And then use for real estate use for other air for your business for other areas. So that way you have you're kind of duplicating your money and recycling it and duplicating it and able to do more than one thing with it.

Robert Plank 11:16 And then that's super cool that but you kind of are aware of some of the strategies where you can put the money in a vase and then use it for multiple things. And so that way, you don't have to split your money or like you said, you don't have to do it as an either I do this, or I do that. And so at school, that you're kind of you have these kind of creative outside the box solutions for some of these specific people's custom needs. And so it's kind of kind of along those lines, you know, we have have a list of questions to ask you for this podcast. And one of them is Do you Do you prefer to invest in a business or save cash? What's kind of the solution there?

Speaker 2 11:54 Yeah, good question. So yeah, definitely, I think both of them have pros and cons, right saving is you want to definitely save like, you want to be able to see your profits and actually grow it over time. You know, but the downside to saving cash is that if you have it just sitting in a bank account not doing anything, you lose the opportunity costs you could have earned had you invested that money somewhere else, you also lose to inflation. If we're assuming inflation is 3%, your value of your money is going down in value every year just sitting in the bank, not not growing for you, you're also making the banks richer, because the bank isn't taking your money. And then they're investing in different places, they're actually able to borrow like 10 times your money. So if you put $1,000 in the bank, they can lift up their balance sheets, and then go and leverage their their account and borrow, you know, 10 times more than that, to invest in real estate and do all these other things that you could have done with that money. So I think that you know, to answer your question, Robert, it's definitely a way to do to do, I think it's hard to say one over the other, I think that you need to have like in a solution that's connected and can do both at the same time, like what if, for example, every, all your profits that he took 5% of all your profits, you put it into account, that's going to earn you four to 6% compound interest every year. And then from that account, you're able to leverage that borrow at like 1.9% APR from that account, and then flip and then roll that back into your business, and then grow your business and then even get tax deductions for borrowing your own money and having grow tax deferred. I think that's where, you know, it's, there's more to the financial picture. And this is what Infinite Banking and bank on yourself could do is that you could do these kinds of things. You know, I don't want to give tax advice. But you know, when you when you work with us, we also work with your CPA, we show you ways that you could reduce your tax liability, while also increasing your wealth and kind of not either or, but both and receiving cash for the future for retirement and then able to kind of recycle that money back into our business. And really do both save money and growth at the same time.

Robert Plank 13:55 That's really cool to think about, and I'm getting from, from a few of these examples we're talking about, I'm seeing the value in this and, and not just going in alone and actually figuring out this money stuff by yourself. But going to someone who is trained in this such as you who can, who is seen all kinds of different scenarios and can kind of say, well, here's this box, and here's that box and kind of combine different strategies at the same time. It's really cool. And it's interesting to think about and so and it's one thing to talk about, you know, success stories and talk about the things that you've accomplished but one thing that I'm curious about are your own personal failures or maybe missteps so you have you had anything that you feel like sharing as far as like their like a business or or like a personal issue where you kind of got stuck a little bit and had to think your way out of it has anything come to mind?

Speaker 2 14:43 Yeah, definitely entrepreneurship. You know, since we're talking about entrepreneurship, definitely one of my biggest failures and also my biggest successes to you know, come from entrepreneurship. And I really I got into entrepreneurship at the age of 26. So kind of just kind of young and odd. My first year I failed as an entrepreneur, because looking back, now I can connect the dots going backwards, I got distracted by a lot of different opportunities. So I would start something and then put it on hold, and then try to do something else, like a different type of financial service or insurance. And that was kind of my biggest, my biggest mistake that I did or misstep is that I didn't focus on one thing and stick to it, I kept bouncing around. And then eventually, I had to put my entrepreneurship on the side, my business on the side and then go get a W two job. And then eventually I came back to write this is what I do. Now I'm full time self employed, I do nothing else, but my company. And it was obviously a learning learn from the mistakes I learned. Now, if I come across different opportunities I evaluated I measured the amount of time and money it's going to cost me if it's going to be greater than my budget and greater timewise. And money, it's going to pull me away from my business, I'll probably decline it, I ended up declining, declining more things. Now because I have like a system of of prioritizing the top things that I need to do for my business to grow it to move the needle in the right direction. And if things are going to hinder that, or slow that down that I just completely like exit Oh, it's almost like an algorithm like, if this will help you improve your business then proceed. If not, then decline. No. So that's how my mind is thinking now. And it's not from, you know, it's not so much of just being lucky. But it's really of learning from mistakes. So, you know, when you see, it's easy to learn from mistakes, because you have a second chance at doing it. And that's kind of how I look at failure, I look at failure as almost as an opportunity to learn from it, it's almost like a good thing to fail, because it's also it's like a wake up call, to improve and to pivot in a different direction moving forward.

Robert Plank 16:41 I like that a lot. And you mentioned a few minutes ago about a whole idea of like connecting the dots, which you can only do looking backwards. And then yeah, and then the way you put it, which is like, well, when you fail, and then you come up with a similar scenario later on, it's like you kind of have two choices, either you can learn from the failure and try to do something a little better, a little different, or ignore the past failure. And then you might end up in the same exact boat that you found yourself in to begin with. And then also like, you know, you mentioned there about, like, sort of that that algorithm way of thinking when it conjures up for me is whenever I've had to make like a difficult decision or a life decision or say yes to this or say no to that. It's really easy to just say like, or it's tempting to say, well, here's like just my, my single dimension, like thing to do. But even while you're describing your thought process, like there's always like a number of factors, right? And so if you can kind of look at and sometimes it's only two or three factors, like time or money, sometimes that might be like focus or like teacher opportunity, or does this distract me from something else. And what it made me think of is, you know, I was in the same position as you at one point where I was like, trying to just the business and then try and like the job plus the business. And then and then at one point I do I think over a decade ago, I took the leap and been a full time as well. So we're both visiting the same club. But in order to make that decision, I kind of had to like emotionally Think of what are the five or six criteria, and then and then logically assign some maybe numerical values, and then look at, okay, based on these, like five criteria, making decision a, here's the score and decision B, there's a score, and just kind of making a light bulb go off in my head that that was the way to combine the the emotion and the logic, because if you're, if you're purely logic, you don't know if you're using like the right, the right numbers, but if you're purely emotion, then you're almost guaranteed to make an incorrect decision because you're just being impulsive. So it's got even just like kind of hearing you about that that kind of algorithm thinking makes you think, well, they're like, the best decisions we make are if we maybe have the foundation be the emotion and then the logic is finally like sort of what pulls the trigger for

Speaker 2 18:48 us. 100% I couldn't agree more with you. Exactly. And this is how I think like, even like when when like, like consumers alike, we elect the majority of decisions based off of emotion, it starts with emotion, but then we justify it logically. And I think the same exact thing is true with like entrepreneurship is that you need I think, like it's kind of like a little bit of both in their own lanes in their own way. It's like entrepreneurship, for the most part, when you start entrepreneurship, it's kind of stupid, like you're gonna lose money, you're gonna have to invest your own money, you're gonna have to take a downturn, like a lot of people might look at that as a, that's not a smart thing to do. And then obviously, when you start making more money it becomes it becomes apparent that it was a smart thing to do. But really, you need the logic to back that up. So I think it's both you need that jump that almost like that, something that that that's going to take you out of your conventional shoes and kind of like get the get things moving. And then you also need to be able to logically back up your decisions, you know, from the math to the budgets to the time it's going to take you to do certain things and you know, the return on investment return on time. All these factors have to be like logically considered. I

Robert Plank 19:54 like that a lot, but it's like it's a nuanced kind of situation and also the kind of Have a recurring theme whenever I talk to money people like yourself is how important it is to make that plan. So that way on those those times when you have like the super excited days or the bad days, and you're really tempted to sell this or buy this or do that, yeah, how does that relate to the plan, which I made, which that can change, but like have having that plan, it just seems like so important based on what you're saying here. Exactly.

Speaker 2 20:24 This is what we do to when we're coaching clients, we figure out ways like, like, this even happened in my life, you know, like, I had trouble saving money. And then I realized after like, you know, so many years and getting into financial services, I realized that the reason why I was having trouble saving, and this is why a lot of people also have trouble saving is because their money is too accessible, it's too easy to get to, like you have a debit card or credit card, you have like, you know, quick pay, you have all these different ways of coming across, you're getting into your money, what if you can add a couple of obstacles between you and your money, like what if you what if, for example, every time he wanted to spend your money, you had to like drive to a bank, and you know, sign a form that said you wanted your money, then that would slow things down, your money would still be liquid, so it would still be accessible. But it would just be a few more obstacles to get to. And this is exactly what we do with clients. Now we create these savings vehicles that are liquid, but not too liquid, you know, you can't just swipe your debit card to access them, you have to sign a form, you have to submit it to the insurance company wait like three to five business days to get your funds out, it's liquid. But having these few obstacles in the way, like increase the chances of you saving by like something ridiculous, it was like, You're five times more likely to save this way, just by having a few obstacles to your money. And then kind of a whole bunch of light bulbs went off is like this is exactly what you need to do. You need to you need to take away your human nature from certain things and then add intentionally add in certain obstacles like look at think of, for example, like when you work at a large company, right, then you can work for a company that has, you know, $20 billion in cash reserves. And let's say for example, they say that you can get that you can go on a trip, and you have to you can you can, they would pay for your dinner, you just have to show them the receipt. And this is how you know how a lot of companies do this where you pay on your credit card array. And then afterwards, you submit to the finance department or whatever, whichever department, you would take a picture of the receipt and then send it in. And then it would go through like maybe three or four people like your boss, the finance department, maybe even the CFO might see the reports later on. And then they would approve the transaction to reimburse you they have all these obstacles in the way. So that way employees don't just spend all their money, there's there are rules to spending the company's money, even though they have enough money to pay for everybody's dinner, you know, every single day for like, you know, next 30 years. They're not going to they have obstacles in the way and I think that people need to people need to think like a bank think like an insurance company in the way of creating these obstacles between you and your money.

Robert Plank 22:49 That's really powerful to think about. And almost counterintuitive, right? Because you would like to think that, well, if I have more freedom and more choices, then I would just have all this power. But you're so right that that it's sometimes we need to fire human nature. And then there's that whole aspect of like, money itself is a beast and it even like sneaks up on you. And you're reminded me of like, so many years ago, I had a girlfriend once who had never gambled and she didn't understand it. She said, why do people get so crazy gambling, and I took her to one casino. And she pulled one slot machine and she won the first poll. And then all the numbers were taken away. And there's all kinds of noises and sirens and bells. And so she almost went crazy like and suddenly just all this. All this flood of emotion happened. But we I think we've all been there where like money can sometimes really mess with us. So it's good to have some of the strategies in place that you're talking about. And I'm seeing the value that you delivered to your coaching clients. So can you tell us a little bit about that about if someone says, Okay, I know that I need help with my money. I know that there are things that I haven't even thought about that could help. So what do I do? Where do I get educated? And what's the next step to take?

Speaker 2 23:57 Yeah, so definitely, there's a lot of education out there, obviously, you know, like, there's podcasts. You know, we're talking right now, YouTube, you know, you could check out our show thinking like a bank, it's on YouTube, as well as all the major platforms. There's also a couple books I recommend. So one book I recommend is becoming your own banker by Nelson Nash. And the second book is the bank on yourself Revolution by Pamela Yellen. If listeners reach out to us for a free 15 minute consultation, I'll send them both books. I'll send them the big undersell Revolution by Pamela Yellen through Kindle as well as becoming your own banker. So those two books talk about those two books are kind of the foundations of everything we're talking about. Now, this whole concept of becoming your own banker are mentioned in both of those books. So if listeners reach out for a free 15 minute call, I'll send them both of those books. And then obviously to you know, this is all about the people that professionals you work with not so much about the company's not so much about the tools or the software, it's about the people. You want to make sure that you're working with it either a bank on yourself professional or an infinite banking professional. And let's see, and then also to the There's a big difference between coaching and consulting. Right? So consulting is hey, you know, which option should I do? You know, should I do option one or option two or option three, you know, coaching is, let's look at everything. And what do you think is the best decision for yourself, you know yourself better than you. So it's a way of kind of internalizing, and coming up from coming up with decisions that you come up with your own decisions, when you're being coached, you just have somebody helping you reach that instead of consultant, we're more of coaches, you know, so you want to work with people who are going to coach you into the right direction. And you also want to work with people that are going to be unbiased to all financial products out there. So this is one major problem and financial services is that when you go to, for example, your local banker, a local insurance agent, or a local financial advisor, 90% of 90% of the time, they're going to be locked into certain captive contracts. So they can only sell certain products. And if you go to them, for example, this happens all the time with financial advisors and real estate. So if you go to your financial advisor, and you're like, hey, you know, you helped me do this mutual fund, we have $100,000, in mutual fund, it's been good, it's been doing, okay, I want to take some of this money out and put it into real estate, since that financial advisor is not going to make money out of real estate, and out of the fees associated with real estate investing, they cannot help you do that. So they're gonna want to convince you otherwise, to do that. Again, I'm not saying the financial advisors out there are shady, or the they have, you know, but I am saying that there are a lot of captive contracts and agreements, to the way that financial advisors operate you. But there are, there's that 10% that are completely biased and could help you in any direction you need to go into. So if you know, in our situation, for example, if somebody does want to get into passive real estate investing, we could help them if they wanted to get into active real estate investing, we can coach them that way. If they wanted to do stocks, bonds, whatever mutual funds, we can also help them that way. So we're completely unbiased, into any direction they go towards.

Robert Plank 26:45 So I love that you give us all the information you give us all the choices, a lot of things to think about. And as you're explaining all that what comes to mind is like, how many how much of our lives are governed by money, how much our lives in, you know, earning money, spending money, doing things with money, thinking about money, or lack of it. I mean, this thing's this is something that we all need to be educated about. They say what you focus on grows. So yes, focus on your money, you won't have anybody if you're more money minded than what you can avoid so many of those things. And we've all made these mistakes, right? All the mistakes of not making enough money or not managing our money correctly, or things like that. So things need to change, people willing to take this action. So if you're listening to this podcast right here, right now, which you are, because you're hearing our voices, you need to be claiming this 15 minute call that way, Sarah and his team can be sending you these two books in the mail. So here's the place to go. What's the website? Where do we sign up? Where do we take the next step?

Speaker 2 27:43 Yes, that's a fin asset protection.com It's FYI, n asset, a SS e t protection.com. And then when you go there, there's a link is a schedule now, you could schedule the appointment. And there's also a way to connect with me on LinkedIn through the website, as well as our YouTube channel as well as our podcast. So yeah, if you want to do a 15 minute free consultation, it's Finn asset protection.com And then schedule the free 15 minute call. And then yeah, it's we do we work with clients in all 50 states. So it can be done either over the phone or over

Robert Plank 28:14 zoom. Fantastic fin asset protection.com. It's just 15 minutes. I mean, in 15 minutes, what can you do? You could either watch part of a TV program or you can take these necessary steps to change your life fin asset protection is the place to go. And do you have any final parting words of advice? It's like a sentence or two to put a cap on our conversation here and send us on our way and make us feel good. And you think my mind yes,

Speaker 2 28:39 think think like a bank. You know, remember to think like a bank. Don't just think of a consumer. Think like a bank. Think like a large corporation in the way that you handle your money and the financial decisions you make in your life.