101: IBC 101 - Ten Things You Should Know to Get Started

101 IBC 101

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. I'm John Montoya, and I'm John Perrings. We're authorized Infinite Banking Practitioners and hosts of the Strategic Whole Life Podcast.

John Montoya: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Strategic Whole Life. today's episode, 101, we thought it would be a good idea to do a primer because we often get asked, where's the best place to start? And I had this idea for this particular episode, about 10 things that you should know, because, everyone wants to know what's IBC at a high level.

And I put together this PDF well over 10 years ago about the 10 things that people should know about infinite banking and whole life in general. And what's great is that it's still apropos to today. 2024 or whenever you may be listening. That's in fact, one of the incredible things about whole life policies that have been around for close to 200 years [00:01:00] is that there's very little change that these are tried and true products.

So the things that we're talking about today, they're going to still be relevant next year, 10 years from now, even a hundred years from now, because, it's a guaranteed contract backed by full reserves and. Math. John, let's jump into it. I'm going to start with number one. the cash value in your contract is protected and guaranteed to increase every year for the rest of your life, no matter what happens in the stock or real estate markets in general.

let's, let's dive into that.

John Perrings: I, that could be the number one thing, it's, so many people have all their assets tied up in, some type of risk based format. And, we talk about it all the time, like definitely do those things, but at least have at least a part of your financial [00:02:00] life that has guarantees associated with it.

John Montoya: Yeah, a hundred percent. And where else are you going to park money where you actually get a blueprint? think about when you become an adult and you start working and you're being told, put money in a 401k and in 30 to 40 years, it'll be this amount. maybe that might be the case for you.

but for most people, there is no, There is no blueprint as far as how it's going to grow every single year. It's really a hope and pray strategy. And here, hiding in plain sight, you do have this place where you literally receive a, it's an illustration. But it has a guaranteed ledger that shows you no matter what's happening in the economy, whoever you vote for, it, it does not matter that this is a financial [00:03:00] bunker that is guaranteed to perform every single year.

And there's no, nowhere that you can get the same level of guarantees as you can with a whole life. So it's number one for me, I think it's also a mindset shift that. And establishing a foundation for everything that you're going to do financially. And all the decades that you'll live from when you get started, that this is the only place where you get that blueprint and that rock solid, peace of mind and security knowing that, this portion of my overall financial portfolio is going to grow no matter what I do.

No luck, skill or guesswork. So number two, The, IBC strategy is, even though there's a death benefit involved, what we're trying to do is solve for your, source of banking, your, need for financing, [00:04:00] in your life. And in order to do we, while we want to be mindful of the death benefit, we want to, maximize the cash value to the point where you are starting to build equity.

In the early years. And when it comes to whole life policies, there's nothing wrong with a traditional whole life policy that's structured for, predominantly the death benefit on day one, the trade off is that you're not going to have, much cash value in the early years. And again, there's nothing wrong with that.

that's the way that these whole life policies were designed, from the very beginning. but. when you're solving for the banking need in your life, you do want to have a portion of your premium going towards maximizing, or at least creating, the cash value in the early years.

when it comes [00:05:00] to structure, one word that we, Try to stay away from is a correctly designed contract. but what you want to do is have a contract for infinite banking purposes. That is going to start to build equity, in the early years. what's your thoughts on that, John?

John Perrings: Yeah. in, in becoming your own banker, Nelson Nash talks about how, statistically speaking, your need for financing through your life will be greater than your need for a death benefit. That being said, we never ignore the death benefit, and we never ignore the need to have that in place.

And human life value, from a death benefit perspective is certainly, part of the equation, especially the way, Montoya and I work with our clients, but there's no question that your need for financing is there. And [00:06:00] we want to try to structure policies in a way that, creates the, like John's saying, the equity, which is the cash value of a whole life insurance policy.

We want to have, A reasonable and significant and reasonable portion of the equity available as soon as possible so that you can start, building the foundation, of control, liquidity and use of your capital. As soon as possible.

John Montoya: Yeah, absolutely. So that takes us into number three, which is if you're going to request a whole life policy designed for IBC, there needs to be. One particular rider, which is the Paid Up Additions Rider. So we're talking about guarantees. Number one. number two, solving for, your banking need, solving for financing your life number three with an IBD, IBC designed whole life [00:07:00] policy.

we, to include that Paid Up Additions Rider because that's really where the overfunding is going to take place to start to build that equity in the death benefit. And, to explain that a little bit further, the death benefit is what makes everything possible. And, earmark money towards the Paid Up Additions Rider, you're buying paid up additional.

Permanent death benefit. And the interesting thing about a whole life policy is that the cash value is the present value of that future death benefit. So the, more you're able to put into that PUA Rider every single year, the more future death benefit you're going to have. but in the present.

You're going to be creating equity, cash value that you can then collateralize, for banking purposes, but you need to have that PUA Rider included in your whole life contract [00:08:00] if you are interested in setting up an IBC designed whole life policy.

John Perrings: Yeah, it's super crucial, to have this piece of it. especially in the early years, that Paid Up Additions Rider because there's no future premium due on that paid up life insurance. That's what does all the heavy lifting, especially in the early years of a whole life insurance policy to help create cash value that's accessible to you in the early years.

something that's important to note is, A lot of times people, sometimes people get a little too focused on the PUA Rider, because they think that's the only thing that generates cash value. And I would say in year one, that's probably true. it's not necessarily true, but, pretty close to it.

But as the policy matures, the PUA Rider, becomes less and less important. The base [00:09:00] premium that you pay in a policy will start generating significant cash value, as that policy matures. And so we want to, of course, keep that PUA Rider on there for as long as possible. But the reason I'm bringing this up is to encourage you not to get too caught up in, the PUA Rider, where It creates significant trade offs later on down the line in the policy.

So we 100 percent want to have that on, but because of the MEC limits, which are the IRS, Modified Endowment Contract rules, we also have to be wary of the big picture that the PUA Rider has on there. Agreeing a hundred percent with Montoya and just trying to also, just caution everyone that if you go too hard with the PUA Rider early on, you might have some trade offs that you don't like later on down the line in the policy, including maybe not even [00:10:00] having a policy anymore.

John Montoya: Yeah, as Nelson would say, don't major in the minors. And. What we're trying to do is solve for a lifetime of financing, so don't get caught up on having the most upfront cash value in year one, you're completely missing the bigger picture. you're solving for a lifetime of financing needs, and you're not going to accomplish that by.

having a policy that is so tilted towards the PUA that it's going to flip upside down in later years. That's the opposite of what you want to have happen. And that's part of the reason why Nielsen would say, think three generations ahead. You got to think for the long term. And if you're only thinking year one, you're,

number four, getting back to the guaranteed nature of this contract, something that you should know is that the increases you receive in your contract, they're based on a [00:11:00] worst case scenario projected out by the life insurance company, all the way out to age 121, and when a life insurance company performs better than their worst case projected income and expenses scenario.

They will pay out a dividend. A dividend is declared and it's paid out to all the policyholders of a mutual based whole life company. And so you get to participate in, the profitability of this life insurance company, but That dividend, it's not guaranteed, though, once it is declared and paid out to your contract, it can never be taken from you.

going back to number one, you have this guaranteed ledger, and now we're starting to add, sprinkles on top, alright? we got the dividends, and everyone loves that because that's just going to help your policy grow and thrive. Even better for the future.

John Perrings: Yep. [00:12:00] That worst case scenario is really, where we're, focused, it almost gets back to number one with the guarantees. but if you look at a guaranteed ledger of a life insurance policy, A lot of people will look at that and they'll say, man, this, the growth on this guaranteed side is really not too impressive.

and. It is or it isn't. It just depends on what interest rates are and what you can get at a regular bank. I would say that over the last 10 years, they've looked really good compared to a typical bank. But now it may not look as good as like a CD or something from the guaranteed side. But Montoya mentioned something that's super critical.

Once a dividend is paid and applied to the policy, that now becomes part of the guaranteed ledger. And so I'm just, I want to reiterate that point that the guaranteed ledger, the longer your policy goes, and it doesn't even matter what the dividend is, because if we talk about guarantees, [00:13:00] the longer the policy's inforce, The more mature it gets and the more dividends that get applied to it, that guaranteed ledger changes every year because now the guaranteed, now has that higher value from the dividend applied to it.

And so it becomes just this amazing, guaranteed asset as it goes through time that, even the guarantees are amazing if you just let the policy mature.

John Montoya: Yeah, absolutely. And again, when looking at the overall bigger picture. You should have a cash asset that provides liquidity, and then you get the added bonus of protection for your family too. in our last episode, 100, had one of my clients on, Brant Shifler, and he was talking about the Swiss Army knife.

And, that's exactly what you get with a whole life policy. You get all these additional benefits just for parking your wealth. In one spot. [00:14:00] So keep that in mind that the dividend just adds a frosting to the cake, if you will, and it makes everything better. And if you're new to IBC and whole life, you may be wondering about the dividends and how often they're paid out.

Cause you think it's like a stock dividend where they get paid out. typically, once a quarter for stocks, this is not like a stock dividend, this is an annual dividend that's paid out once a year on your anniversary date, and we always set them automatically to get reinvested. That way it automatically increases your cash value while also simultaneously increasing the death benefit.

So there's nothing, for you to do on your end. It's on autopilot. And those dividends come in once declared, just more frosting, more good stuff on top of the cake.

John Perrings: and I would say also in Episode 100, Brandt also mentioned and so [00:15:00] did our other guest, Declan, how, the guarantees and liquidity of their whole life insurance policy, quote unquote, saved their bacon multiple times, and so having that Guaranteed liquidity available to you instead of focusing on rate of return, what's the rate of return on being able to stay in business?

You know what I mean? So that, that's a huge component to what we're talking about.

John Montoya: Yeah, absolutely. So we've been talking about the guarantees, solving for the banking function. and, Dividends. Now for me, the number five is probably one of my favorites. this is where I coined, whole life as a financial unicorn, because it comes back to.

compounding interest in, Einstein, I believe is attributed to saying that, [00:16:00] compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. And I think someone later put in, compounding interest as the eighth wonder of the world. but with whole life, you actually have the ability to have uninterrupted.

Compounding interest, and so I think of it as the ninth wonder of the world, because while compounding interest by itself is incredible, it's, it's a indestructible force once that snowflake builds, but what happens when you actually need access To those funds, to that money, you're constantly interrupting, the growth.

And if you think about the money that you put into a traditional account, whether that be a bank account or you're putting money into 401k and you need access to it for whatever reason, when you take a distribution, you're going to interrupt The compounding effect of that money. [00:17:00] that doesn't happen with a whole life policy because you get to collateralize that cash value in the form of a policy loan.

And what happens is you get uninterrupted asset growth. And that's what makes it, for me, a financial unicorn. It's, the ninth wonder of the world, uninterrupted compounding growth.

John Perrings: I don't think I can add anything to that. it's just, the fact that we have this ability to, never interrupt our compounding is crucial. And, I guess maybe I will add one thing. If you look at The way truly wealthy people use their money, they don't, spend their money.

Typically, they don't want to, liquidate assets, pay the tax on it, and interrupt the growth of those assets. And so when you can just listen to any YouTube or even TikTok and you, listen [00:18:00] to some of these, investors, they're not paying cash for a lot of stuff.

And, I'm not trying to. I don't know. I get a little annoyed by the, people that get on and tell you what wealthy people do. but it's true that they don't really spend money. They use their wealth to, generate money that, They can then pay back using lines of credit and things like that.

So we really are doing something that the wealthy have been doing for a long time. They may or may not be using life insurance to do it. They may be using other assets. but the principle is the same. And I think, it's important to understand, why that's being done.

John Montoya: there is a method called the Rockefeller method that wealthy families have been utilizing for generations, and that's buying life insurance on, the next generation as they're born and that's for, transfer of wealth from one generation to the next, but [00:19:00] to your point, I think I've, heard this called the billionaire blueprint or millionaire blueprint.

you're exactly right. wealthy people, they accumulate assets. And as much as they can, they would prefer to never sell those assets because when you sell an asset, what happens? Uncle Sam's going to come knocking at your door and they're going to ask for a portion of, of flesh, right? In the form of capital gains tax.

what do you have here? A whole life policy that you can collateralize. And just as you mentioned, the wealthy will accumulate all types of assets, and then what do they do with those assets? They go to a traditional bank, collateralize it, take a loan, and they're able to take these tax free loans.

So that segues real nicely into number six, things that you should know. Number six is there [00:20:00] are three ways to access money from a whole life policy. And my favorite way to explain it is there's the sad way, the dumb way and the smart way, because it makes it real simple for everyone to remember, when it comes to a whole life policy, the sad way, when you pass away, the death benefit minus any policy loans will go out to your beneficiary.

Income tax free. So we want to obviously avoid that for as long as possible, but that's the sad way. The dumb way to access money is to physically remove the money from your policy to take a withdrawal. When you do that, you're going to interrupt The compounding growth, what I just mentioned before, number five.

So as much as possible, you want to avoid that. Not only that, you're going to reach a point in your contract where there's more cash value than premium paid into it. So what happens when you physically remove that money, you take a withdrawal, you're going to have to pay capital gains [00:21:00] tax on that gain, that pound of flesh.

government's going to want their piece of it. So the smart way. To access money is to take a policy loan. Policy loans are tax free. They're secured by your available cash value as collateral. And since your money is never removed from the contract, it's going to continue to compound uninterrupted, that financial unicorn.

John Perrings: I love the way you do this Montoya, the sad way, dumb way, smart way. It's a good way to. Really in part, the different ways to do it. I will say the, on the sad way with a death benefit, just going back to, some principles of the importance of the death benefit. No one who's, no beneficiary who's received a death benefit check has ever asked about the rate of return on the cash value.

And so you'll notice that John calls the first way the sad way. It's not the [00:22:00] dumb way. And it is of course sad, but it, helps beneficiaries in, some of the worst time of their life. And no one's really concerned about the rate of return on the cash value and number one. And so that's a, completely legitimate way to do it.

And the dumb way, To Montoya's point, where you interrupt the compounding and maybe pay the tax, this is exactly what we're trying to avoid, using IBC, where we can get that uninterrupted compounding. now, there may be a couple of occasions where this could make sense, like in retirement, but in general, as we're capitalizing and we're, strategically using that capital during, our working years and accumulation phase of our life.

that really is, the dumb way to do it because it, it also has some other ramifications where it's a [00:23:00] permanent decision. You're actually doing a partial surrender of your policy that you had to qualify for in the first place. And so you can never put it back in there without requalifying at your then current age.

So it's a potentially dumb for many reasons.

John Montoya: Yeah. And if you're stuck on which option to choose between the dumb way and a smart way, that's why we're here. Reach out to us, let us know where you're stuck and we can help address those concerns that you have on which way might be the best way to go. That's what we do. yeah, don't get stuck.

Just reach out and let us know how we can help and we'll guide you towards what's best for your situation depending on what stage in life you're at. But the great thing is that you have options. So let's, Lead into now, I actually, the smart way talking about the smart way that helps us get to number seven and [00:24:00] understanding that all loans that you take are guaranteed against the cash value.

And the absolutely incredible thing about this, getting access to guaranteed policy loans is that it takes you away from the traditional banking system where. You have to have your credit check. you have to verify your income, your assets, you're completely tied in to relying on the permission from a bank to lend you money.

And not only that, lend it to you on their terms with a Payment that, they, will determine. but the main thing here with number seven is that the life insurance company is really going to only ask you two questions. How much of your available cash value would you like? And where should we send it?

That's it. Your loans are guaranteed against your collateral, which is the cash [00:25:00] value and ultimately the death benefit.

John Perrings: Yeah, and, getting back to my comment earlier about what wealthy people do, and when I mentioned that they may not always do it with life insurance, guess what they have to do if they don't have life insurance? Just to Montoya's point, they have to go ask permission, even though they're wealthy, they have to go ask permission from a financial institution to get access to capital based on the assets that they have.

So even though they have collateral. I talk to people all the time and they're like, wait a minute, you're telling me all I have to do is call the insurance company and they'll just send me the money. I don't have to fill out a form and send my financials and talk to a banker and convince them that I'm, worthy to lend money to. this gets back to the, even the wealthy can make improvements on, how they access financing. And so this is just a huge advantage to using policy loans, having that ability [00:26:00] to, access capital, no questions asked.

John Montoya: And I'll add, it's really, in my opinion, the best form of collateral because it's uncorrelated to. Any and all markets, this going back to number one, it's a guaranteed contract. It's guaranteed to increase every single year. So you have no risk of a margin call. You have no risk of property values going down and.

the bank calling in your loan or saying, your line of credits frozen for whatever reason, or we're exiting the business and we're going to remove this product from our offerings, that can't ever happen. With your whole life contract ever.

John Perrings: Yeah, and check out episode number 96, where we talk about this in depth, talking about policy loans versus margin loans. So you can get some more information on that on episode 96.[00:27:00]

John Montoya: All right. Let's, talk about number eight, the loan repayment schedule. It's completely unstructured and it's decided by you. how great is that? you always ideally want to be in charge of your cashflow. You want to control, your cashflow.

And. For a lot of people, especially business owners, right? That's tough to manage on a monthly base, a basis, or even a quarterly basis, because, you may have a business that's cyclical or even, if you're a wage earner, just having more control of your cashflow, because life does happen when you have a policy loan, you basically get to determine How much of a loan repayment?

You're going to make over what time frequency, or, if you need to take a month off, two months, three months, whatever the case may be, you are the banker. [00:28:00] You get to decide, and that level of control over your cashflow really doesn't exist anywhere else.

John Perrings: Yeah, we talk about, what's the rate of return on, Saving your business. What's the rate of return on creating peace of mind for your family? What's the going interest rate on a loan with no payback terms? And so when you think of accessing capital or lines of credit in that fashion, people, a lot of times start, getting into the comparing rates and all that stuff, but.

You've got to compare equivalent rates and go try to get a line of credit with no payback terms at all, and the underlying collaterals guaranteed by the lender. And, I think when you start looking at how we can do things in this way, it starts to change the game in terms of moving away from worrying too much about interest [00:29:00] rates and focusing more on control.

And, that's really what we're trying to do is get control over our financial lives, in a way that allows us to still move forward and create the growth we want.

John Montoya: And if you're trying to understand why the life insurance company doesn't care, if you make a loan repayment, it's, you have to remember what is the collateral. It's the cash value that you've already acquired by making the premium payments, but it's also because of that guaranteed death benefit. So when you pass away with a loan outstanding, it's very simple accounting for the life insurance company to just subtract the outstanding loan, plus any interest for that year from the overall death benefit, and the remainder is going to go to your beneficiaries.

Income tax free. So very simple accounting and it's logical that it's the way it should be. It should be easy to understand. so in talking about total control of your cashflow and [00:30:00] money, let's. Hit on number nine of the 10 things that you should know. and this is really important for me because, you learn this the hard way, unfortunately, with 401ks and IRAs, and that money really is not yours.

it's held in custody for you. And if you. It's held in custody with the government. So they set the rules. And one of the rules, I think it's a harsh rule, is that surrender penalty. and it's 10 percent of whatever you take out, not including the liability. Federal taxes, not including state taxes, wherever you may live, this is just harsh.

And you think about what people are taught to do with their money, max out 401ks and, and your tax person likely wants you to contribute to an IRA to get that, tax postponement that they call a deduction. [00:31:00] in, in the current year, you're making trade offs, and you're giving up the liquidity of your money.

It's your money. And while I don't want to poo 401ks and IRAs too much, because, they're better than taxable accounts, by itself. But, you want to have a portion of your money. Where you're not going to have to face surrender penalties, that 10 percent penalty just for accessing your own money.

so with a whole life policy, there, there are no surrender penalties. ever. And to further, separate it from the other quote unquote type of permanent policy that exists out there in the marketplace from life insurance companies called universal policies. And there's different variations of them. They all have surrender penalties, just like your 401k and IRA.

So a whole life policy does not

John Perrings: Yeah, we try [00:32:00] not to get into the whole, quote unquote, correctly designed whole life policy, thing, because at the end of the day, a whole life policy is going to be great pretty much no matter how it's designed. But what we are adamant about is it being a whole life policy. John just mentioned universal type policies. those do have, surrender charges often. Annuities sometimes have surrender charges. there are other types of life insurance that just aren't, they don't work the way that whole life insurance does and there's really just no downside to whole life insurance other than that initial capitalization phase.

there's no getting around, there's no free lunch, so there's no getting around the fact that you're buying life insurance and the people that try to make it less like life insurance, introduce trade offs that. Make it act like not life insurance where you start losing some of the guarantees.

You start losing some of the [00:33:00] control. You start creating surrender charges, all these things. whole life insurance is the way to go, especially for IBC. It's the only way to go. And, and that's the way, that's the way Montoya and I do it.

John Montoya: Yeah, and Nelson even has his own thoughts on universal life insurance. You can read about it in his book, Becoming Your Own Banker, which we highly recommend.

Okay. So we're going to wrap up with number 10 of the 10 things that you should know. And number 10 is in regards to, funding capacity. we were just talking about number nine, the, kind of the differences between, these private contracts, whole life contracts and 401ks IRAs. And, the government will not only have surrender penalties for accessing your money as discussed in number nine, but there's.

Funding limits to how much you can put into, those accounts [00:34:00] per year. Now with whole life policies, it is different. the government is not going to say, it's, 8, 000 this year as a contribution limit, with a whole life policy, if you have high. Earning power, you're going to be able to put.

Not just five digits of premium, worth into a policy each year, but let's say six figures, or more. And not only that, you can have multiple policies that you're contributing to at the same time, a portfolio of IBC policies. That's something that you can't do with, qualified retirement accounts because the government is going to limit.

How much you put in across all qualified accounts for that year, not so with a whole life policy. So you don't have the same restrictions, that you do with, with government [00:35:00] retirement accounts. And I think that's really important to, to highlight because, people often ask, how do we get started?

And, they'll have in the back of their mind that, with a 401k, I'm familiar with how much I can max out. Per year. Or even with a Roth IRA, in terms of, I make too much money. I can't contribute. here's a private contract where, you know, depending on what your earning capacity is, you're not going to be hamstrung in the same way, which is phenomenal.

John Perrings: I don't think I could say it any better than that, Montoya. And if any of these ideas were resonating with you and you'd like to learn more about how IBC could work in your life specifically, head over to strategicwholelife. com. You can reach out to us right there. You can schedule a free 30 minute consultation. And if you're. One of the types of people like I was that just likes to keep learning before talking to anyone. We have an online [00:36:00] course called IBC Mastery just for You you can get it right at the top of strategicwholelife. com. John, this was a good one. Thanks for sharing all this info that you put together over 10 years ago. And it's still, look at that. It still applies. So this has been a great one.

John Montoya: Yeah. Thank you, John. thank you everyone for listening and we'll catch you on the next show.