Personal Finance

How Can I Reach My Financial Goals?

There are so many financial tools available to us between IRAs, 401ks, brokerage accounts, loans, mortgages. The list goes on and on. The question remains, are these tools moving us towards our financial goals or keeping us further away from our financial goals? This question needs to be answered frequently. It’s not a one size fits all or one decision fits your entire life type situation.

Think of it this way. The products, the 401k, the IRA, the mortgage, are the tools. The strategy is what the tool is doing for you. How are you using that tool? Very often when we’re meeting with clients and prospects, we ask the question, Is this strategy bringing you closer to or further away from your goals?

And a lot of times the people will look at us and say, “What do you mean?” The choices we’re making with the financial tool, we don’t even think about it. We just do it because it sounds good or everybody else is doing it. That’s not good enough. If you have stated goals and stated objectives that you’re trying to meet.

Let’s take the 401k for an example. Most employers, if they offer a 401k, also offer automatic enrollment. By not making a decision. You’re making the decision to enroll in this 401k plan. How is this moving you towards your financial goals and is it going to help you achieve your short term and long term financial goals?

In most cases, it will help you achieve retirement or help supplement it at least. But what about your other financial goals, like sending your kids to college or buying a new house or going on a vacation? All of these goals need to be addressed and the 401k is not the tool that will help you get there. But when people use this automatic enrollment and are only saving in their 401k, what happens is their money is not accessible when they want to achieve these other financial goals. And if you access that money before age 59 and a half, if you’re able to, you’re going to pay a penalty and that money is going to be fully taxable as income.

The other option may be to take a 401k loan, but that has other rules associated with it, like the five year repayment schedule and the fact that your money can’t grow while you have it withdrawn through that loan feature.

In addition to that, you’re now paying taxes twice on the same money. You might be asking, how could that be? Very simply, when you pay back a 401k loan, you pay it back with after tax dollars. So you already paid tax on that money. Then you put it towards your 401k loan and now when you go to retire and you take the money out of the 401k, you’re going to pay tax again. You’re literally paying tax twice on the same dollar. Is that your goal and objective?

What you want to do when you’re doing financial planning is making sure your plan is flexible enough to achieve each and every single one of your financial goals, even if they change. Instead of putting money in different buckets for retirement, for paying for college, for paying for your vacation, for putting a down payment on your house. You want your money to be flexible so you’re able to achieve all of these goals throughout your life and you’re not stuck with tax consequences for each one.

Several years ago, we met with a family who had the goals of having a great retirement with a brand new mountain home, and they also wanted to send their children to college. After looking at their financial situation, it became apparent that what they were doing wasn’t exactly in line with what they wanted to achieve, and it certainly wasn’t the most efficient method.

But with some simple shifts in their cash flow, we were able to help them save for retirement, fully fund their children’s private college educations and build their mountain home so they didn’t have to wait until retirement. They were able to achieve that goal 12 years sooner than they anticipated.

But here’s the best part. By helping them to obtain the mountain home 12 years sooner or not having to wait till retirement in order to build it, the husband had an opportunity to work with his father every weekend to build that mountain home. He and his dad literally hammered every single nail into that cabin.

Unfortunately, several years later, the father died. He had cancer and died at a very young age. The husband came to me and said, “Hey, I want to thank you for everything you did to help us to build that mountain home.” And I said, “Well, you know, you put the money away.” He goes, “No, you don’t get it. I will never be able to get that time back. And if I waited until I retired in order to build that cabin, I never would have had that opportunity. So thank you for showing us how to get to our goal much, much sooner.”

You see, these are the things that money can’t buy. And this is why it’s so important to have the flexibility within your financial plan to achieve your goals all along the way.

Because life doesn’t wait and it’s not about saving for retirement or saving for college. It’s about those moments in your everyday life that you can never get back.

 

This couple didn’t change their outflows by one penny, but they were able to build the home 12 years sooner than when they were on track or when they thought they could do it. All because we looked at things through a lens that showed them free up their cash flow and do it in a way where they can achieve all of their goals and objectives.

If you’d like to see exactly how we put this process to work for our clients, check out our website. We have a free webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom, where we do a deep dive on how we put this process to work.

Also, if you’re ready to get started with our process or have some specific questions, feel free to visit our website at Tier1Capital.com to schedule your free strategy session today.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Can My Money Be More Efficient?

Are you thinking about taking the leap and expanding your business but feel hesitant in doing so? Well, one reason may be that your cash and your cash flow aren’t working as efficiently as possible.

Today, we’re going to talk about how making your money more efficient could help you take on those risks with more confidence.

First, let’s take a look at what happens when your money isn’t working at peak efficiency. Basically, what happens when your money’s not working at peak efficiency, you have less cash flow. And when you have less cash flow, you’re less likely to take risks or expand your business because you’re always thinking of, “Okay, if I take this money and put it towards expanding the business, then I won’t have the money available for operating the business”.

And this could be the case even if you have a pile of cash sitting in the bank, it’s all about cash flow because cash flow is the lifeblood of any family or business.

Furthermore, when your money isn’t working at peak efficiency, it leaves you susceptible to the past decisions that you’ve made and the success or failure of those decisions. Because think of it, if those decisions don’t work out, that puts a further pinch on your cash flow and again, makes you more hesitant to take the risk, a risk that most business owners are willing to take the risk, because it’s usually a risk that they can control.

So what happens is once your cash flow gets pinched, it makes it harder and harder to make that jump in expanding your business because once you’re stuck, you tend to stay stuck because you’re not taking on those risks for expansion and growth.

So the key is to make your cash and your cash flow as efficient as possible so that you’re able to take on these opportunities for growth and expansion with a safety net.

 

Here’s how we do it. We look at four key areas of business wealth transfer taxes, how you’re funding the retirement, how you’re making major capital purchases, and how you’re handling your debt. And when you look at those four areas, it’s really clear as to where your inefficiencies are. That’s where we’re trained and that’s how we can help you.

Our unique process helps businesses make their money and their cash flow more efficient by using specially designed whole life insurance policies designed for cash accumulation that will give you full liquidity use and control of your money while still able to access it to grow your business and earn uninterrupted compound interest on that money.

In addition to that, we’re able to answer key questions like business exit strategy, business continuation, taking care of key employees, and more importantly, what happens to the business when a key employee dies?

Each and every one of these issues could make or break a business, and it’s important to address these issues while you have the cash flow flowing through your business and the wherewithal to make these decisions. What do you want to happen? Even if you’re not here to see it happen?

If you’d like to get started with a free cash flow analysis to see where you are giving up control of your business cash flow, be sure to visit our website at Tier1Capital.com to schedule your free strategy session today. We’d be happy to help.

Remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Are You Feeling Financially Frustrated?

Cash and cash flow, the lifeblood to any small business or family. We all have experienced the feeling of being stuck and frustrated for not having access to cash when we really need it.

Traditional financial planning tends to give away control of our cash flow, whether it’s funding your retirement account, paying off your mortgage as soon as possible, or being in a race to pay off your consumer debt. All of these actions leave us in less and less control of our cash flow each and every single month. But the need for liquid cash to achieve our financial goals has never been greater. With inflation at an all time high and the market fluctuating every single day.

Not to mention that if you own a small business, the uncertainty and the possible turmoil that’s coming down the road, we need to prepare to make sure that we’re able to weather that storm so that we can get through it and be in a better position than we were going in.

 

But the question is, how do you achieve that goal, especially with interest rates rising each and every single month?

So keep in mind, because interest rates are rising, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a bad thing if you’re borrowing, and that’s your method of accessing capital in the markets. However, if you’re a saver and interest rates rise, doesn’t that mean that you’ll be earning more interest on your savings?

This is the reason why we help our clients focus on building capital, building liquid cash so that they have access to that money. They don’t have to beg, borrow and steal in order to move forward and to grow their business. They can do it by accessing their own money on their own terms. No questions asked, whenever they want.

There are several reasons why a small business owner would want and need access to capital.

Number one, to run their operation so that they can turn a profit.

Number two, to stay competitive, maybe reinvest in equipment or a plant.

Number three, to hire a new or a key employee to grow their business.

And number four, in general, just to create a higher rate of return on their capital.

In general, having access to capital allows businesses to invest in their business and run it as efficiently as possible. Keep in mind that businesses that have access to their own capital have a much higher success rate than those who don’t have access to their own capital and have to therefore pay for access to somebody else’s capital.

We use specially designed whole life insurance policies designed for cash accumulation to help our clients meet their financial goals, like growing their business without taking on more risk. We do this in creative ways that allow us to integrate key person insurance as well as business succession planning.

If you’d like to get started with the business succession plan, key person insurance or building cash for your business to help it grow and expand, especially in economic turmoil. Visit our website at Tier1Capital.com and feel free to schedule your free strategy session.

Also, if you want to see exactly how we put this process to work for our clients, check out our webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

How Risky is Your Financial Plan?

Traditional financial planning centers on taking various levels of risk. We’re told the higher the risk, the higher the reward. But have you ever taken on a great deal of risk and not received a very hefty reward? Or taken on a small degree of risk and lost a lot of money?

And furthermore, where is it written that in order to make money, you need to lose 40, 50, 60 or even 70% of your wealth? This is exactly why we focus with our planning on avoiding the losses and making your money as efficient as possible.

When it comes to financial planning, we like to think of it more like an art than a science. There’s more than one right way to build and maintain wealth in your family. Not everyone needs to take on a ton of risk to become financially successful. In fact, a lot of people don’t even want to take risk.

That’s why we focus on avoiding the losses instead of picking the winners. And when we say avoiding the losses, it means more than just avoiding the market losses. We’re talking about losing opportunity costs, losing money to taxes, losing money to interest. It’s all of those things, but more importantly, losing control of your cash flow. And we always say whoever controls your cash flow controls your life.

Imagine you had a leaky bucket, a bucket with a ton of holes in it, and you had your income streaming in as the water. Wouldn’t it make more sense to plug the holes in the leaky bucket before turning up the income?

Think about this. Does it make sense to take a lot of risk on a small amount of money to hopefully get a high rate of return on that small amount of money? Or does it make more sense to make your money more efficient, so even if you’re earning a smaller rate of return, you’re guaranteed to earn that rate of return, and it’s on a larger pool of money.

 

And by getting a small rate of return on a large pool of money, you actually make your money more efficient because, number one, you’re avoiding the losses. And number two, you’re not taking risk.

Our process uses specially designed whole life insurance policies to help make your cash flow more efficient. We build up a pool of cash in these policies to help achieve your financial goals and make your money more efficient. We always talk about control, because controlling your cash flow and controlling your money and having liquidity use and control of that money is invaluable. And when you have control of your money and you have control over your cash flow, you literally have control over your life. And the feeling of freedom and independence can never be measured.

If you’d like to get started with a specially designed, whole life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation and mitigating risk, be sure to check out our website at Tier1Capital.com to schedule your free strategy session today.

Or if you’d like to learn more about exactly how we put this process to work for our clients, check out our webinar, The Four Steps of Financial Freedom.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Subscription Mode Savings

We’ve all heard that you should pay yourself first. But how do you do that? I don’t know about you, but every time my income goes up, it seems as if my spending goes up right along with it without even thinking about it. Today, we’re going to talk about how to put your savings on subscription mode so you don’t have to make a conscious decision every single month.

As a young professional, for me at least, it’s hard to think about goals like sending my children to college or saving for retirement when I don’t necessarily see those things in my near future. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be saving for goals no matter what they are, down the line regardless of not having them defined.

The idea that as your income rises, your expenses also rise. That was what Nelson Nash, my mentor, used to refer to as Parkinson’s Law, expenses rise to meet income.

 

If we could give you an equation on how much you should be saving each and every single month, you should be saving 20% of your income. But how do you do that? Is it best in your retirement account or a savings account? Or especially designed whole life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation?

For me, it’s the whole life policy. When I graduated from college, I got my first whole life policy and it met my income needs at that time. And as the years went on, I added more and more policies to accommodate more and more of my income. So now I’m sitting right about 20%. But the best part about this solution is I don’t have to make the decision of how much I’m saving every month. It comes automatically out of my bank account. So all I have to do is budget for it.

Not to mention, I’ve borrowed against the cash value to buy a car, to pay off student loans, and many, many other things that will be coming up or have come up in the past that I’ll be borrowing against the policy to pay back and to make the purchase that I want to make.

You see, just because I don’t have financial goals defined at this time, I know that down the line and throughout my life I’m going to have major capital purchases. And I also know that if I leave that money accessible, easily accessible in my checking or savings account where I could access it with a click of a button, I’m going to do that.

So by putting the money in the whole life policy, I still have access to it. But I’m not leaving it so easily accessible in my checking or savings account that just because it’s there, I’m spending it each and every single month.

But the real key here is the fact that although I’m using the money, borrowing against the cash value, I’m also being responsible by putting the money back.

People always say, “Do I need to pay that policy alone back?” In short, no, you don’t. But by paying it back, you’re saving yourself loan interest. And when another purchase comes up in the future, you have access to that money again, with just a signature.

And that’s really the key. The need for cash or to access capital for the rest of my life is never going away. In fact, it’s going to get larger and larger as time goes by. Cars are going to be more expensive. Vacations are going to be more expensive. And then you have this thing called retirement.

The best part about saving in this way is that I don’t have to make a decision every single month to put money away. It’s automatically deducted towards the premium. And as the policy matures, over time, that policy grows more and more each and every single year, to the point where when I put a dollar of premium in now the cash value increase is higher than what I put in.

So in essence, saving is on subscription mode. Think of all the companies that are in our checkbook each and every single month, from Netflix, to our utilities, to our rent, everything is automatically deducted from our checking account. So why wouldn’t you pay yourself first right from your checking account? And the ease of this process makes it so more accommodating to fit our lives.

If you’d like to learn more about how to put your savings on subscription mode, visit our website at Tier1Capital.com to schedule your free strategy session today. We’d be happy to talk more about your specific situation and how we could help you meet your needs.

Or if you’d like to learn more about how we put this process to work for ourselves and our clients, check out our webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom. It’s right on our website.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep that really matters.

How Does the Debt Cycle Affect Me?

Do you realize that every single purchase we make is financed? Whether we financed traditionally or pay cash, we’re either paying interest or giving it up. How do we make our money as efficient as possible and put the debt cycle to work for us?

You’ve heard me say it before and I’ll be sure to say it again.

Whoever controls your cash flow, controls your life.

So how do you regain control of your cash flow and regain more and more of your financial freedom?

Well, the first step is to understand where your money is flowing to or, more importantly, what’s the beginning of the debt cycle. So here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a business owner. Probably when you started your business, you did not have a lot of cash or access to a lot of capital. So you want to be in this business and what do you do? You go and borrow some money. Well, the next step is you take that money and you use it to capitalize your business. You’re actually deploying that money to grow your business.

The third step is now that the money is deployed, you utilize it to generate a profit. And now with those profits, you go to the fourth step and you use those profits to pay back the loan. Here’s the problem, because all of your cash flow was going towards the loan. Now, when that loans paid off and you want to expand your business, now you’ve got to go back and borrow again. And this process continues. And that’s why we call it the debt cycle.

Because the beginning and the end are the same. It’s so hard to get out of this debt cycle. It becomes a perpetual cycle that happens with business owners because they never take the time to capitalize their own assets so they could finally break the cycle. There’s only one way out.

What if there was a way to take a portion of the money that’s going towards debt to build your own asset and capitalize your own asset so you could finally break that cycle without impacting your cash flow. Would you want to know about that process?

Well, the fact of the matter is the process does exist and it’s been around for over 200 years. Conventional wisdom teaches us that debt is bad. And so it’s often that we see business owners trying to repay their debt as soon as possible. But what happens when you do that is you’re giving up control of all of your cash flow to the bank. And then when it’s time to expand your business again in the future, you’re forced to go back and borrow because you didn’t take the extra step of building your own asset instead of building the banks.

We’re going to share with you a practical example. Several years ago, we met with a business owner who had started a business about 15 years prior, and they had no money. So they borrowed everything to capitalize their business. But as time went by, they became more and more successful and they paid off that 20 year loan in about ten years.

The problem was they were taking all of their cashflow to pay that debt off as quickly as possible. So when it came time to expand their business, they didn’t have any access to additional capital. So they had to borrow again. And my question to them was very simple. When you went back to the bank to open up your second store, whose money did they give you? And all we heard was silence in the boardroom.

Eventually, the president of the company said, “Oh my gosh, they gave us our own money back.” And the CFO said, “Yeah, and they charged us interest and fees in order to get our own money.” That is clearly the debt cycle and we can break you from that just by becoming aware of where your money is flowing and how to set up a pool of money that you own and control so that you could access that money to expand your business.

Now that you’re aware of the debt cycle, the next step is to learn how to put this process to work for you and interrupt it, so that you could be in more control of your cash flow and make your cash flow even more efficient. You’re building that asset for yourself so you’re less dependent on banks and credit companies.

If you’re looking to get started with this process, be sure to visit our website at Tier1Capital.com and feel free to schedule your free strategy session today.

If you’d like to learn more about exactly how we use this process, check out our free webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom right on our home page.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Making Money Work For You

Have you noticed that when you follow the conventional wisdom, when it comes to finance, it could leave you feeling stuck financially? Paying off your credit cards, maxing out your 401k’s, paying off your mortgage as soon as possible, all of these things leave you more and more out of control of your cash flow.

But what happens when you need to access cash for a major capital expenditure? Whether it’s a major capital purchase, a medical or financial emergency, the bottom line is when you follow conventional wisdom, your money is inaccessible when you need it most.

Conventional wisdom teaches us that we shouldn’t be working for our money, but we should be putting our money to work for us. Whether it’s real estate, a brokerage account or a retirement account, all of these places are leaving our money inaccessible, even though they’re “working for us.”

Even worse, you put your money in the bank earning 0.0, and you’re not even keeping up with inflation. You want to put your money to work for you, your family, and your business. The problem is, when you follow conventional wisdom, your money is inaccessible and you’re literally paying somebody to oversee that money. They’re making profits off of that money, and you’re taking all the risk. And, when you need the money the most, you can’t get it.

When you follow conventional wisdom strategies, you may make money or you may lose money, but there are two things for certain: you will pay fees and you will pay taxes.

By following conventional wisdom, we’re parking our money in these accounts and it’s inaccessible when we need it the most. The money stops flowing. But how do we allow ourselves to still earn interest on our money and still earn continuous compounding of that interest and make the purchases that all of us need to make throughout our lives?

That’s why we develop the process that keeps your money flowing and more importantly, keeps your money flowing towards you so that you could be in a financial situation where you could make the purchases and still earn interest on your money.

We use specially designed whole life insurance policies designed for cash accumulation to help put our clients back in control of their cash flow. So whether it’s earning interest on your money or paying off debt or making major capital purchases, your money is always working for you.

If you don’t have a policy yet and you’re looking to get started with our process, check out our website at Tier1Capital.com today. Feel free to schedule your free strategy session or if you’d like to learn more about how this process works, check out our free webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom, right on our homepage.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

How Long Do I Pay Premiums for with My Policy?

Traditional whole life insurance policies are paid for your whole life, whether that’s age 85, 100 or 121. But sometimes people want to stop paying the premiums at one point and they’re wondering what options they have to maintain some of the benefits of the policy without surrendering.

When a whole life insurance policy is issued, the insurance company is making you two promises. Number one is to pay the death benefit when the insured dies anywhere along the line, as long as that policy is in-force. And the second promise is that at the age of maturity, usually age 100 or 121, there’ll be a cash value equal to the face amount or death benefit of the policy available for the policy owner.

So in order for the insurance company to fulfill that second promise, they have to allow cash to build up. And it’s that cash that builds up that helps them to fulfill the second promise and more importantly, provide some other additional benefits that you can get by accessing that money.

Now, the cash surrender value isn’t just some number that’s pulled out of the air. Actuaries work with the insurance company to determine what the cash surrender value needs to be at minimum, every single year, throughout the contracts life.

Think of the cash surrender value as literally what the life insurance company is willing to pay you to walk away from the death benefit and all the other benefits.

Because of the whole life insurance policy design. These policies get better and better every single year.

In the beginning, there’s not a lot of cash accumulation because there’s a lot of costs that come with getting these policies issued. But as the policy matures, the cash value is going to grow more and more every single year. By building up that cash value within the policy, it gives the policyholders some options and they’re called non-forfeiture options.

Traditionally, there are three non-forfeiture options in most life insurance policies.

First is cash surrender. Again, what the insurance company is willing to pay you to walk away from the policy.

Second is extended term. And what does that mean? Basically, if you take the original face amount of the policy, the extended term would take that original death benefit for the face amount and extend it for as long as the cash value will buy that amount of term insurance.

For example, if you had a $125,000 death benefit, you might have, let’s say, in the ninth year, an extended term value for nine years and seven months. What that means is you don’t have to make another payment on the policy. And for the next nine years and seven months, you’ll have a $125,000 death benefit without having to make another payment.

And the third option is what’s referred to as a reduced paid-up. If we use the example of a $125,000 original policy death benefit, the reduced paid-up anywhere along the way might be $73,250. And what that means is you stop paying the premiums. The policy is paid up, but it’s not 125,000. It’s 70-some thousand. And as that policy grows and matures and more and more cash value builds up, that reduced paid-up amount will increase.

What these options allow the policyholder to do is to walk away from the commitment of paying that premium. And in the case of extended term or reduced paid-up, they’re able to maintain parts of that coverage for an extended period of time. The point is there are options and they will vary between policy to policy.

If you’d like to get started with learning more about the options or start a whole life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation, be sure to visit our website at Tier1Capital.com to get started today. Feel free to schedule your free strategy session today to get started.

if you’re ready to get started or if you’d like to learn more about how our process works, check out our webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Using My Life Insurance to get Financially Ahead

A lot of times when we’re designing a whole life policy designed for cash accumulations, people will get hung up on the break even point, the time where the cash value is greater than the premiums paid.

But today, we’re going to talk about how you could use your policy before that break even point so you could get financially ahead, even before you break even.

You’ve heard us say it before and you’ll hear us say it again.

It’s not all about the internal rate of return of your policy. It’s how you can put this policy to work for you to achieve your financial goals.

And putting the policy to work for you is critical in helping you to achieve financial independence. And the reason why is really simple.

Every time you take a loan from the insurance company, you are creating financial freedom in your life. Those loans are unstructured. What does that mean? It means you don’t get a coupon booklet, you don’t get a monthly invoice. You actually are in charge of structuring the loan repayment process, and that is complete control.

So what are some ways you can put this policy to work for you before the break even point within those first ten policy years? Well, initially, any small debts that you have, whether it’s credit cards or the you know, the last remaining year or two on a car payment, you can borrow against your cash value, pay off that loan. And instead of having that payment going away from you, you now have that money, that payment, flowing back towards you, into your policy.

You’re going to make the same payment you were making to Ford Motor Credit, back to your policy. The only difference is this you don’t own Ford Motor Credit, you own your policy. So when you make the monthly payment back to the policy, you can use that money again somewhere down the line.

That’s right. You’re going to be rebuilding that cash value by repaying your loan and you’re going to be building that cash value from within by paying that monthly or annual premium.

So now you have two payments per month working for you. You have the loan repayment, which you can access again through the loan feature, and you have your premium which is building and growing your cash value.

You see every single purchase we make and this life is financed, whether we finance traditional through a bank and pay interest to them, or we pay cash and give up the earning potential or growth potential on that money. This is simple finance 101. We’re either going to pay up, by financing, or give up, by paying cash. There are no exceptions.

So the question becomes, how do we put this law of nature to work for us? And the answer is with a specially designed, whole life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation. Why? Because we have guaranteed access to that money, and it doesn’t interrupt the continuous compound of interest within that policy. As long as you place it with the right company.

So keep this in mind. Even though you’re using the money to pay off some debt or to make a purchase, your money is still earning interest for you. Uninterrupted compound interest is working for you.

A lot of times we meet with people who didn’t buy life insurance policies for cash accumulation. They weren’t designed for the infinite banking process, but they have a policy that might be ten, 12, 15, 20 years old, even, and they have a lot of cash in there and they can access that cash through the loan feature. They never considered it because they were never told that they can do it.

The point is they have access to money that they can get on their terms and they can utilize that money to make the rest of their money more efficient and make their cash flow more efficient, where they can borrow against their policy, pay off an outside debt, and have that monthly payment now coming back to them by redirecting the payment back to their policy.

Now, if you have a whole life insurance policy, you have a policy loan provision and if you’ve had that policy for a long time, chances are there are some cash value built up within that policy. Not as much as it would have been with a specially designed life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation. But because of the second promise that insurance company makes to have the cash value equal to the death benefit at the age of maturity, there has to be cash accumulation within that policy. And this is key to this whole process.

You could access that cash through a collateralized loan. So your money is still in your policy. You get a separate loan from the insurance company. The insurance company puts a lean against the cash value. And now you can utilize this money that you get through the loan to pay off outside debts or to make purchases. It’s almost as if your money is in two places at once because, quite literally, it is. It’s always in your policy working and you can access that equity through a loan feature.

Now we’ve seen our clients use their policy loans for all sorts of things because, quite frankly, there’s no limits. There’s no qualifications for obtaining these loans as long as there’s cash value in the policy, you have access to the loan. You can make major capital purchases like a wedding, cars, vacation. You could pay off debt, you could send your kids to college using these policies.

The only limitations are in your imagination on how you want to put this policy to work for you.

There are many examples of famous people who have access to cash value in their life insurance to start their now famous business. One great example is Walt Disney. No bank would loan him money to buy swampland in Central Florida, but he had a vision. He also had a sizable life insurance policy that he was able to borrow against the cash value to start purchasing land in central Florida. And we all know how that ended up. He created the happiest place on earth, Disney World.

If you’d like to get started with a specially designed, whole life insurance policy designed for cash accumulation and some ideas on how to put the policy to work for you, even before it breaks even. Check out our website at Tier1Capital.com to get started with a free strategy session today.

Or if you’d like to learn more about how we put this process to work for our clients, check out our free webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make. It’s how much money you keep that really matters.

Stop Giving Up Control of your Cash flow

In every household and business the main key to finances is cash flow. The difference between feeling financially free and financially stuck all comes down to that one thing, cash flow. But here’s the problem. How do you manage your cash flow to amplify the feeling of financial freedom?

We have cash flow and then we make decisions to save our money. But we save it in places that literally stops the flow of money. We put it in retirement accounts, we put it in home equity. We pay off debts sooner. We put money in 529 plans. We pay cash for major capital purchases. All of these things stop the flow of money. More importantly, it stops the flow of money towards us and starts the flow of money away from us.

Now, it’s not enough just to have cash flow. We have cash flowing in every month from either income or our business. But how do we use that money once it’s in our control to move us forward financially so we could achieve our financial goals without giving up control of that money? And again, keeping in mind that we want the money to flow, but it should be preferably flowing towards us, not away from us.

The next question becomes, “how do I use my money to achieve my financial goals, like sending my kids to college or expanding my business, or buying a new car without stopping the flow of money?” Well, it’s real simple when you look at the choices, you have to save your money.

Are those choices stopping the flow of money or are they allowing your money to continuously flow towards you? Whenever we’re looking at a financial situation we’re looking at those decisions from an aspect of control. Is this decision going to leave me in more control of my money or less control of my money?

There’s an old adage in the accounting industry and it goes like this:

“Follow the flow of money.”

Wherever money stops. That’s where you have an opportunity to make that money flow towards you.

You see, conventional wisdom teaches us to give our money away. It’s by design. Pay off your mortgage as soon as possible. Get rid of all this debt. But what these decisions are doing is leaving us out of control of our cash flow and we’re unable to get our hands on money when we really need it.

We’ve been trained to do things with our money that we would never do with the things that our money buys. We would never buy a loaf of bread and put it away for 40 years and not eat it. Yet, that’s what we’re trained to do with our money when we put it in a retirement account. Same thing with home equity. We would never buy something and forget about it for 30 years, but that’s what we do when we put extra money on our mortgage. We’re literally saying, Hey, I’m going to put this money in the house. It’s not going to earn any interest. The dollars I take out in the future are going to have less buying power than the dollars I put in. We would never do that with the things that money buys, but that’s what we’re doing with our money.

Now, we’re not saying you shouldn’t save for retirement or you should be in debt with your mortgage. But what we’re saying is you should save your money in a place where you have complete liquidity use and control so you can access that money to achieve your goals along the way. Without asking permission and without subjecting yourself to penalties and fees.

This is not a new revelation. We are following the rules of nature. In nature, things have to flow. Water has to flow. You would never want to drink stagnant water. And it’s the same thing with our money. We need to keep our money flowing and preferably flowing towards us. The problem we see too often is that money is flowing. It’s just not flowing towards you. It’s flowing away from you.

If you’d like to get started with our process using specially designed whole life insurance policies to regain control of your money and finally experience more of that financial freedom we’re all looking for. Be sure to visit our website at Tier1Capital.com.

Feel free to schedule your free strategy session or check out our free financial planning webinar, The Four Steps to Financial Freedom to see exactly how we put this process to work for our clients.

And remember, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep that really matters.