Imagine discovering a financial strategy that transforms your wealth planning and has you rethinking everything you thought you knew about investing.
To watch the episode, click here or listen instead.
Welcome back to “Inspired To Invest”. This week Darren Mitchell and Christina Wyatt are joining us and this is the journey that both of them have embarked on, both successful real estate investors and infinite banking experts.
They transitioned from traditional financial planning to a more strategic, unconventional approach that has given them financial control and success. Darren shares how the 2008 crash changed his perspective on investing, while Christina talks about her unlikely entrance into real estate at the age of 21.
Fasten your seat belts as Darren and Christina take us on their real estate investing journey, filled with unforgettable experiences, from surprising bank valuations to an unexpected fish tank left by a former tenant. They advocate the significance of mentors and a like-minded community. They also delve into the vital role of property managers and the importance of pre-qualifying tenants. Then, the conversation shifts to infinite banking, a concept that offers a unique approach to financial control and compound wealth.
As we wrap up, Darren and Christina enlighten us on the potential of infinite banking, especially for business owners and individuals seeking passive income. They share how they’ve harnessed this concept, traditionally used by the wealthy, to achieve financial freedom.
Their favorite motivational quotes offer a glimpse into their drive towards success. And for those intrigued by infinite banking, they provide a link to connect with wealth coaches who can illuminate this path further.
Join us as we rewrite the rules of financial planning and investing, offering you the tools to take control of your financial destiny.
To connect with Darren and Christina directly, find them on YouTube, online at https://controlandcompound.com and on social @controlandcompound.
To connect with our host, Serena Holmes, go to https://www.linktr.ee/serenaholmesrealtor.
To buy a copy of The Accidental Entrepreneur, go to https://www.linktr.ee/serenaholmesauthor.
And, for everything related to real estate and real estate investing, please make sure you’ve subscribed to @serenaholmesrealtor on YouTube & other platforms. We also have a page dedicated to this podcast on Instagram and Facebook @inspiredtoinvestpodcast where we preview guests each week, highlight their episodes, top takeaways, tips, quotes and more.
Are you a full-time real estate investor with an inspiring story to share? Apply now!
Thank you again to our sponsor, Control and Compound for bringing us this month’s episodes from Sept. 6-27.
Tune back in on Wed., Sept. 13 for a guest who is focused on educating and empowering women to invest in real estate to take charge of their financial future.
Thank you for your support – and remember, “when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit!”
Real Estate Investing Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1
00:01
Welcome to the Inspired to Invest podcast, where we’re sharing stories from real estate investors and how investing has changed their lives. This episode of Inspired to Invest has been brought to you by Control and Compound Financial. Hi everybody, welcome to the Inspired to Invest podcast. I have two wonderful guests here joining us. I’ve got Darren Mitchell and Christina Wyatt, and before we dive in and get to know them and their path as real estate investors and also infinite banking experts, here’s a little bit of information on them. They are working with a team of wealth coaches from coast to coast all across Canada, teaching real estate investors and business owners how they can integrate infinite banking or high value cash insurance into their lives. So welcome. So much to the podcast today. It’s wonderful to have you both here.
Speaker 2
00:53
Thank you.
Speaker 3
00:54
Yes, thanks for having us, serena, I’m excited to be here.
Speaker 1
00:57
Yeah, I’m so excited to have you as well. Now, obviously, I mentioned in your bio that you guys are infinite banking experts and we’re going to get to that. But before we get into all of those fun things and why it’s so important to real estate investors and business owners, what I really want to know is what you guys were doing before you discovered this concept and before you became real estate investors, so maybe you can shed a bit of light on that.
Speaker 2
01:19
Sure, sure. So I’ll start. So I was a traditional financial planner. You know mutual funds, RSPs, all the regular stuff. You know disability right across the board. And it was really 2008 that changed my life. When I’m old enough to be around 2008 and have a bunch of clients, money, my own money, that just felt totally out of control. Yeah, and and that’s really when I started studying what wealthy people do and traveled across North America and I said, all right, wealthy people aren’t doing the same things as the middle class on the lower income people, so what are they doing differently? And that was really my journey into finding more about infinite banking. And then the last 10, 15 years have been solely infinite banking for business owners.
Speaker 1
02:01
What are they keeping from us? Yeah, so what about you, christina?
Speaker 3
02:06
So my story is kind of similar. So I’ve always been a financial planner, been in the business about 13 years. My first bit in real estate I actually fell into. Some of my first rental that I had was back when I was 21 years old and I ended up having a bit of a longer term rental. Yeah, more strategic about real estate investing now, so I am kind of getting into short term rentals and stuff. So my journey has progressed on that side, which I think happens with a lot of real estate investors. On the infinite banking side, though, I was lucky to start working with Darren early on in the business and have a mentor to kind of guide into that infinite banking side and I go right into it and kind of have specialized in it more. So over the last five, six years I’ve been more focused on the infinite banking.
Speaker 1
02:52
Now, what would you say was a catalyst to getting it started as a real estate investor? Like, I think, for some people, they look at this as something really elusive and almost unattainable. But for both of you, like, what was it that really attracted you to the concept of real estate investing?
Speaker 2
03:06
Yeah, for me. You know, I started dealing with more and more real estate investors and business owners and I was a business owner and I was like, all right, they must be on to something. So you know, being an education first based advisor, I went right away and I said, all right, how do I learn more about this? So I started joining some groups and I actually went to and joined a large national real estate community. You know, invested in myself, spent some money and went to the three day course and stuff and joined and that was really the eye opener, because you hear people talk about real estate and you think, oh, they’re crazy, like that’ll never work. But then once you’re around those like minded people, when you’re you’re in the same group as other real estate investors, you have mentors then your eyes just kind of open and it’s the same as everyone else with, whether it’s real estate or infinite banking. It’s like why didn’t I start this 20 years ago?
Speaker 1
03:57
Yeah, I think that’s what most people say, like their biggest regret about real estate is just not doing real estate sooner.
Speaker 3
04:04
Exactly, we’ve got the same on the infinite banking side. So and it was again similar journey getting into real estate all about learning. Like I find you surround yourself with individuals that are doing the same things, finding those groups, working with other individuals. I love my job because I literally talked to real estate investors every day and I hear the stories and the ideas that they’re doing and the strategies that they’re putting in place and it’s pretty hard to continue listening to them and not wanting to take that next step.
04:32
I think I could try that right like why you’re doing it. I can do it too, and in the real estate community people are very quick to open up and share what they’re doing, which makes it that much easier because people are happy to share and we know that it works. Historically we’ve seen it work, so it was easy transition to kind of learn more and get more involved.
Speaker 1
04:52
Yeah, and obviously you guys aren’t working as real estate investors full time because you’re in the insurance business as well. Do you think you’ll ever make that jump, or do you think you always going to kind of like straddle both sides of the fence?
Speaker 2
05:04
Yeah, we well, I love, I love infinite banking and I love pairing it with real estate and I think my biggest contribution can be helping other real estate investors. I want to grow my real estate portfolio. I’m a little more hands off investor than Christina. Christina has some, some projects she’s hands on. I like the passive aspect. Now, at this point in my career, if I can invest in real estate without handling toilets, tenants and termites, I’ll be happy.
Speaker 1
05:32
What do you mean that’s the fun stuff? Sorry, go ahead, christina.
Speaker 3
05:38
Oh, I was just going to kind of jump in on my side of things. I love the business aspect of it. So as a business owner, we’ve also got a construction company and stuff and that’s how we do the bills. I like the business side of real estate investing so I am a little bit more hands on the Darren. But I will never jump like I like working in the business that I am with infinite. I like growing businesses. So that’s my favorite side and real estate does fit very hand in hand. But I couldn’t see myself just becoming a passive real estate investor because that’s not what I enjoy doing. I like working a business and you know.
Speaker 1
06:12
Yeah, but I think that’s where there’s kind of that perfect marriage, like there’s a lot of real estate investors who are active, but in a lot of instances they wouldn’t be able to be active without the passive money partners, right. So I think that’s where all those investors are so important. I know, even in my group, like I’m more on the passive side and have been for the last little while and eventually maybe I’ll get more active again, but I mean that’s where everything kind of comes together. So now your journey as a real estate investor what would you define as your biggest success like? Is there something you’d be like? All that was? You know I made the most money doing that or enjoyed that the most.
Speaker 2
06:44
Christina.
Speaker 3
06:46
Oh, my biggest success was my biggest success was we just finished a build, my first self-build from top to bottom.
06:55
My soon-to-be husband. He did it over the last year, pretty much built it like himself. Like it’s crazy, what he’s able to accomplish and I think that’s going to definitely be our biggest success to date is kind of seeing a piece of land covered in trees turned into a beautiful property that we’ve now got listed on Airbnb and you start seeing that rental, that income come in. For me, the ground to build was yeah, that’s got to be the mine for sure, yeah, that’s huge Congratulations, oh, thanks.
Speaker 2
07:27
Yeah, so I had a couple of different ones. I just I’m just, you know, one of those things you put your money in and it’s supposed to come back in a couple of years and then you know, are you really going to get it back? So, like that was my first private lend too. It was like everyone’s like oh, how’s the private lending going? I’m like, well, I gave the guy a hundred grand. It’s good so far, but I didn’t get anything back.
07:47
You know you get the money back and it all works. But I don’t know which would be the most successful, but I got an EAT one. I put $200,000. I was a GP LP situation.
07:57
So I was a limited partner and I bought 8% of a 39-unit building and the goal was, in two years to get our money back, and that one I know it’s real estate, it doesn’t happen very often, it’s ahead of schedule. So after about a year and a bit, we’re going to get 75% of the money back this fall and the rest in the spring. So that’s kind of neat where I still own the 8% of the property.
08:22
I put money in. I was able to they refinanced after they fixed it up get all my money back, and it was like all that really cost me was the use of that money for two years, and then I have all my money back and for me, I didn’t need my money.
Speaker 1
08:36
You can build your portfolio and keep repurposing that capital right.
Speaker 2
08:39
Yeah, and I actually borrowed from my infinite banking policy for it, so I didn’t actually use my money. So really the only expense I have on that owning 8% of that apartment building was I paid interest on 200,000 for two years, so 10, 12 grand a year. I wrote that off as a tax deduction, so it cost me half of that, and now I’ve got this 8% of a 39-unit building for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1
09:04
Yeah, no, that’s amazing. I love that concept and how you’re using it right. I think that’s such a great example. Now I guess, in terms of the other side of the coin, what have been some of the biggest lessons that you’ve faced so far in real estate investing?
Speaker 2
09:19
Sorry, the biggest lessons investing in the biggest lessons that you’ve had Like.
Speaker 1
09:22
is there anything that hasn’t gone quite so smoothly for either of you?
Speaker 3
09:26
Yes, yes, the first property that I had was a long-term rental, not short-term, and not picking up the right tenants, I guess we’ve all had that where you don’t have the right tenants, and that was hard and it turned me off real estate for a few years and I didn’t really want to get back into it afterwards and that was definitely a struggle, finding the having, you know, getting over that, you know just the stress of it and being able to want to get back in Now didn’t change the strategy going back into it.
Speaker 1
10:02
Yeah.
Speaker 3
10:03
I don’t think I want to go back to the I don’t know, but it was tough. Picking the right tenants is not fun.
Speaker 1
10:09
You think is there anything going back to that situation that you would have done differently, now that you kind of know what you know, like is there a way you would have pre-qualified them differently? Or like how could you have avoided ending up with tenants like that?
Speaker 3
10:22
Absolutely Following all the advice on having, you know, doing the Qualificate. Actually, you know exactly what I would do. I would have a property manager and that would be it, I wouldn’t deal with them at all. Yeah, that would be it. It’s 100%. Because there are people that do it very well. Why not utilize their skills? They’re very good at what they do.
Speaker 2
10:42
Yeah, no, I hear you on that, the one that I still kick myself. Now I have two, but I bought a fourplex a couple of years ago and it was two duplexes on one piece of property and I didn’t realize the financing challenges. And my bank didn’t realize the financing challenges until the week before when they said, oh yeah, which property do you want us to mortgage? And I was like what? We can only do one building. But it was so. They literally said we can only value one building. After we had already done the assessment and been approved for mortgage.
11:14
They changed their mind. But, being part of a real estate group, I went and I was like any ideas here? And I had a mentor that actually came back and said, well, get them to value it as one building with an outbuilding. And they ended up appraising it even higher than the original time when they did that. So it all worked out.
11:32
The one that kills me is when I was 24 years old I bought a condo downtown Halifax in the nice area. It was $51,000. And I thought I was a rock star when I sold that a couple of years later for $69,000. And I look back now and I’m like why did I sell it? It’s just because I didn’t have the knowledge and the expertise. And it sold last year for $278,000. And it would be a phenomenal Airbnb. That would be a nice $50,000 pension coming in for the rest of my life. But I didn’t know any better back then. I wanted to put an even bigger down payment on the next home, so therefore I sold that when I didn’t really need to. So every time I drive by that place I’m like, oh, I wish I had that Now you guys have shared a couple of examples of successes and lessons.
Speaker 1
12:21
Now is there anything that comes to mind when you think of the craziest thing that you’ve ever experienced as a real estate investor and maybe, if nothing comes to mind, even maybe among your clients, like maybe there’s something that you would want to share pertaining to them?
Speaker 2
12:35
I had an extra neighbor. He’s a real estate investor, a friend of mine. He had some bad tenants and they did the midnight move. But when he found out and he went to the place, they had taken the kitchen cupboards, oh gosh. So I’ve heard a lot of places destroyed. But he goes, I walk in and I’m like something’s off and they had literally unscrewed and taken the kitchen cupboards as well as all kinds of other stuff and the damage. But yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what you do with that situation.
Speaker 1
13:07
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if that’s the worst thing that happens, I guess like could be worse.
Speaker 2
13:12
Well, we had someone on our podcast there recently. They thought they had a rat problem in their building because neighbors were complaining about the smell, but it was a tenant who passed away a couple days before.
Speaker 1
13:26
Yeah, yeah, it’s part of life. How about you, christina?
Speaker 3
13:33
I think the worst one I had was a fish tank being left for me, a very large fish tank with all of the fish that were no longer living, so that one was bad enough for me. I can’t even imagine dealing with a rat and that other issue, but like that one. But I can’t off the top of my head. That would have been the worst. The walking back into that was not fun.
Speaker 1
13:52
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with you on that.
Speaker 3
13:54
I agree with, like this big one too, not like a little fish. No, I agree on that. Well, thank you for sharing those stories.
Speaker 1
14:01
We’re going to take a really quick break for a word from you guys, since you’re our sponsor this month, and we’ll be right back.
Speaker 3
14:08
Hey Christina Wyatt here from Control and Compound. You might have heard the term infinite banking recently. It’s getting more and more popular in the real estate community. Well, I’ve got Darren Mitchell here, the infinite banking guru, to tell you about it in 60 seconds.
Speaker 2
14:21
So how does infinite banking work? Well, an infinite banking type policy is gonna be high cash value. What that means is we’re gonna grow our cash value inside this insurance policy as fast as we can. This money is gonna stay in compound tax-free for the rest of your life. But because you have that, you can leverage other money. The insurance company will loan you 90% of your cash value, but they’ll loan you their money.
14:43
Your money stays in the policy. Their money is automatically loaned to you. You put that money in real estate. You do some great real estate deals. You pay the loan back. You rinse and repeat. The whole time you’re doing this, your money’s growing completely tax-free. Plus you’re multiplying the money. Plus you have a death benefit when you hit retirement. What do you do Now? You start taking tax-free loans from the policy to top up your retirement income An extra $500,000 a year. That money. You don’t pay that money back till death. Then there’s a massive death benefit. The death benefit pays off the policy loans and there’s lots left over tax-free death benefit to your family. That’s infinite banking and at Control and Compound, we are the experts at infinite banking for real estate investors. To learn more, go to controlandcompoundcom.
Speaker 1
15:26
Thanks again for following along with this episode of Inspired to Invest. In addition to real estate investing and running my own brand experience agency for 18 years, I also published a book called the Accidental Entrepreneur in October of 2021. This is my story and it chronicles how I turned tragedy into triumph to embrace my destiny in entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in picking up a copy, you can find the link at serenahomesrealtorcom and you can also find my link tree with all of the retailers in the details below. Thanks again for your support. Hi everybody, welcome back to the Inspired to Invest podcast. I have Darren Mitchell and Christina Wyatt here with me. From Control and Compound. You just got to hear all about the infinite banking concept in 60 seconds, but now Darren’s also gonna go into a little bit more detail and basically talk about why infinite banking is actually some of the best advice that he’s literally ever had as a real estate investor and something that he now helps other real estate investors and business owners implement within their own companies.
Speaker 2
16:31
Yeah. So for me, it’s when I really started studying what the wealthy people do. I kind of nailed it down to three things right, Wealthy people do three things. If you think of every wealthy person we have our wealth coaches do this Think of everybody you know is wealthy and think how they became wealthy. And I promise you, if not 100%, 99.5% of those people will have done one of three things. They invested in themselves, they got a mentor, they learned something, they advanced degree that meant something, they started a business or they invested in real estate. And that’s really where true wealth is made. And if you accept that, that’s where you’re gonna make the money.
17:06
We believe the foundation or the base of your financial plan has gotta be a position of control, Because if you’re gonna invest in you, your business, in real estate, and you’re in the stock market and it drops 40%, are you really gonna cash out down 40% to take advantage of that opportunity?
17:24
And typically the opportunities come when everything is crashing real estate you know 2008 is the prime example. So that was kinda the approach. It was like, okay, if we need to save our money in a strong, stable spot, where’s the best place to do it? And that’s really what this infinite banking concept came along and the particular product we use. When you save money into there every month or every year, it’s guaranteed to go up, guaranteed not to go down, guaranteed to go up and it grows tax free. You can access tax free loans and multiply your money and it’s tax free at death. So literally, Christina can talk more about how you multiply money, but for me that was it. It was. The starting point was, if you wanna be rich, do what rich people do, and then you’ve gotta be in control of your money to take advantage of those opportunities and deal with those emergencies.
Speaker 1
18:12
So I guess just a couple of questions coming out of that. So for anyone that’s unfamiliar with infinite banking, how are they able to guarantee that that cash value is always gonna continue going up and really preserving your wealth that way?
Speaker 2
18:25
Yeah, so it’s right in the contract. So contractually they guarantee that once you have, once you receive a dividend, in 150 years they’ve paid a dividend each and every single year. They’ve never missed. Once you receive that dividend, it’s considered yours. So it’s not like the stock market where you get a hundred this year, 120 next year and 80 the next year. If you have a hundred and you go to 105 or 110, that’s your new floor contractually and they have a built in guarantee there. But we talk about it but it’s never actually come into play, because the guarantee would actually only kick in if they didn’t pay a dividend. And since 1867, there’s been dividends paid every single year in Canada. So that’s that’s really put it.
Speaker 1
19:07
Yeah, now I know you mentioned talking about like overfunding the policy and then taking out the policy loans. So how does that work? In the sunset you know you put into it, you’re taking that out. Is there that obligation to ever put that money back in? Like, if you overfund, say 50,000, then take that right back out to invest in a property? Like how does that really work within the policy?
Speaker 2
19:28
Chris, do you?
Speaker 3
19:29
Yeah, so I’ll take that one. So when you’re taking out these, so you’re funding the policies high, you know overfunding them, so you’ve got a lot of cash built up in there.
19:38
And you go find that opportunity and you want to invest in that piece of real estate. You can take a loan up to 90% of your cash value. So contractually you can take 90% out. These loans are very, very unique because they’re what we call unstructured loans. So you pay them back when you want, how you want and if you want to, which is a lot of flexibility for a real estate investor, right, Because we actually get to create the terms of the repayment for this loan based on the project that we’re doing.
20:07
So, dependent on the project, you might want to pay it back with the refinance, you might want to pay it back with the cash flow In the early years. We do want you repaying the loans and that’s because for the long term strategy to work, when we get into the retirement side, we want that compounding. That compounding has been happening all of those years and we want to be repaying those loans. We’re always works very well for real estate investors because typically, what you’re investing in is going to make that. It’s going to make that return for you. It’s going to repay the loan and then you’re going to pocket that return as the difference. So lots of flexibility there with the loans, in making your own terms.
Speaker 1
20:42
That’s amazing. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to mention? When it comes to infinite banking, before we move along to other fun questions, yeah.
Speaker 2
20:50
So the neat thing about the loan too, is it not only is it unstructured, but it’s not considered a loan for borrowing capacity. So when I bought a four plex for $375 grand, I borrowed $80 grand from the insurance company and I called them up and asked for it. They said sure, they didn’t ask me what it was for when I was paying it back, what I was doing with it. They just said, yes, contractually, here’s your money. And then when I went to the bank and I said hey, I need a mortgage, they said where’d you get the down payment? And I said I bought against my cash value and they’re like, great, we don’t consider that a loan. So that’s kind of cool. And for me as a business owner and a real estate investor, I found I was really putting my money in one of two places short term bank account, because it might be needed long term in an RRSP. That was effectively we call it in jail or in prison, where you know, oh, in 30 years down the road baby.
21:42
So that was kind of. And now with this infinite banking it’s kind of short term and long term because I’m saving it in there to use it in the short term for real estate. But when I use that, when I borrow against that money, it doesn’t reduce my cash value. So I’m still. If I had a hundred grand in there and I borrowed 50 grand, I still have a hundred thousand in my policy because I’m not borrowing my money, I’m using the insurance companies. So now I actually multiplied money. So it’s in the policy and it’s in the real estate and it’s providing a death benefit. And then down the road you’re going to have a wonderful tax free retirement because we can take loans in retirement and just use these as lifestyle pop-ups. So an extra 50, a hundred grand a year completely tax free in retirement. So it kind of solves short term and long term planning.
Speaker 1
22:26
Yeah, Now would you find that the majority of business owners or investors are setting up these policies within their business or within their personal names.
Speaker 3
22:34
So we’re going to see incorporated. If they’re incorporated, they are setting them up in their corporation because it’s highly tax efficient for a business owner, we do get to use corporate dollars to fund these.
22:46
So the majority of the time if we’ve gotten incorporated business owner, they’re going to want to set these up corporately for that tax efficiency. Because really from a corporate standpoint this product is one of the last we have that is as tax efficient as it is as a business owner. Because inside we tend to want to invest in our businesses because why not If we can use those $88, we’re going to. But we run into a lot of issues with taxes when we do that because we’re going to have full tax on growth, Like there’s no TFSA in there for us. We’ve got very high taxes on our growth Also create some passive income problems for business owners. That can impact your small business tax deduction. We don’t love that.
23:27
You’ve also got tax on death when you die, that’s getting taxed. When you go to pull it out in retirement, it’s getting taxed. When we use this strategy, we can actually eliminate some of those taxes for business owners because we don’t have tax on that growth. We have a death benefit that gets paid out tax-free to the corporation, which can then flow through their capital dividend account. Then we also have some strategies in retirement for us to be able to set up personal lines of credit backed by corporate assets and stuff. We’ve got a lot of different strategies and techniques to be able to use that and get that out tax-efficiently as well. From a business owner perspective, it’s huge when it comes to the tax savings.
Speaker 1
24:05
How does that work with your beneficiaries? If you have the policy being held within the company and then you eventually pass away and you’ve got your beneficiaries, is that paid out then to the corporation and then taxed at that point when it’s dissolved and sent down? What are the tax implications at that point in time?
Speaker 2
24:22
Yes, I’ll use me in this example. I own corporate to corporate insurance policy, my holding company. Ideally you want it in your holding company. From a creditor perspective, my company is the owner of the policy, my company is the payer and my company is the beneficiary and I happen to be the life insured. Let’s assume if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, my wife’s going to inherit my shares. If I died and it was a $2 million death benefit, the corporation would receive that money completely tax-free and somewhere between $95 and 100% of that $2 million, depending upon when I die usually upwards of 100% of what we’re seeing that $2 million can flow completely tax-free to whoever the new shareholder is. Assuming your new shareholder at my death would be my spouse, we’ve effectively used tax-efficient company money to grow our money tax-free, access it tax-free, it died and then flows through to your family completely tax-free or near tax-free depending upon when they die. It flows it through the company just to save that huge amount of tax.
Speaker 1
25:28
Okay, understood. I just wanted to see exactly how that works, because obviously there’s the one side of it where you’re leveraging it to be active and to do different things, but then at the end of the day, it’s still life insurance. I just wanted to see how that works, especially for someone that is very unfamiliar with this concept, and how they can integrate it. Absolutely great question.
Speaker 2
25:46
Yeah, I was going to say even the death benefit’s really cool. Most people aren’t interested in the death benefit early on or their 30s or 40s. But all of a sudden you get to your 60s down the road and you have a few million dollars of death benefit. That’s permanent insurance. All of a sudden it opens up avenues to say you know what, why don’t I refinance some of my income properties and if I die with a big mortgage, who cares if there’s millions of dollars of death benefit or refinance my house, big line of credit and retirement against your home. You wouldn’t normally do that. But if you had two or three million dollars of death benefit, it kind of gives you that permission slip to say, yeah, I can access money in my real estate tax-free and then have that death benefit pay it off.
Speaker 1
26:26
Yeah, well, I know that’s just from talking to other investors. Some of the concern they have is, as they build these big portfolios is how do they pass that down in a tax-efficient way? And in some instances people will do a family trust. It seems like now they’ve incorporated some rules around those where there’s every 21 years, I guess, it has to be updated, so that may not be as efficient as it once was. So I think that’s something on everyone’s mind, because you don’t want to build this portfolio worth like 50 million dollars and then you leave it to your family and you know they can’t even keep it or they have to sell the whole thing, right. So I think that’s something that you just always want to be very cognizant of when you’re putting your portfolio together.
Speaker 2
27:02
So yeah, insurance arrives at the best possible time when the tax bill is payable. Right, that’s when the death benefit is paid is when the tax bill is payable. So, yeah, to be able to keep the properties in the family is huge.
Speaker 3
27:17
Yeah, I will mention too, with the estate planning. I work with a lot of individuals, business owners and what real estate investors on the estate planning side. The sooner you start doing it, the better. So a lot of people will wait until they’re in their you know, 60, 70s. Okay, it’s time to start talking about it. No, if you can start, you know, I work with individuals in their 20s and you set them up now they’re really set up for success because we’ve thought about it the whole way through, right.
Speaker 1
27:44
Now do you find a lot of business owners are also getting these policies set up on their own children. Yes, yeah for sure yeah.
Speaker 3
27:52
Yeah, now we can’t.
27:55
we can’t set up corporate own policies for children because they’re not really key person, key people in the business, but from a saving strategy for a child, these are. They’re like it. When you look at the time they have of the compounding inside of these policies, it almost it’s crazy. Like you look at the numbers when they’re 65, and it can’t be true, like right, you almost have to do a double take because you know, putting a couple hundred dollars from age zero all the way to 65, you can just imagine the compounding of that money inside the policies. So they’re setting up these children, children’s policies for their children, though. So we’re always going to recommend that you set up yours for your real estate, investing your savings. You want generational wealth transfer, something that’s going to go to your kids and your grandkids and, if you teach them right, your great grandkids. That’s when we start looking at these family banking policies is what they’re called sometimes, but growing out that generational wealth transfer through the policies on each, each family member.
Speaker 1
28:55
Yeah, interesting, awesome. So I guess, talking about money and finance, I like to always ask real estate investors what their financial freedom number is. Is that something that you guys have thought about, whether it’s a particular value of your portfolio or, you know, amount of monthly cash flow or something like that?
Speaker 2
29:13
Well, great question. First of all, I’m not a big fan of retirement. I think that’s do something different. You know I’ve worked with so many business owners and real estate investors that you know you talked to them 20 years ago and oh, I’m going to be retired at 50 and 60 and you talk to them now and it’s like I’m having fun.
Speaker 1
29:31
You still need something to do, though. You still need a sense of purpose, so I don’t want to. I know, confuse that with retirement. I mean more just in the sense that you’ll feel like you’re financially to free to literally do whatever you want.
Speaker 2
29:42
So my definition is pretty simple. I believe the true definition of financial freedom is passive investment is greater than monthly expenses. So I want to reach a point where my passive income is greater than the monthly expenses. That number is going to be different for everybody. Some people could be five grand a month, other people could be 20 grand a month or 30. But whatever that number is, my goal is to build that passive income up through a lot of it through real estate, to get to a point where great I know, no matter what happens, I’m going to have that income for the rest of my life. So that’s my goal.
Speaker 3
30:14
Awesome. Yeah, I would say I’m on that similar path. I’m not big on that one number or that certain amount of asset, that net worth. It really comes down to passive income. The more money I have coming in passively each month, the better it’s going to be. I again don’t think that I’ll retire at any point because I think I’ll just keep going as we see many, but just creating as much passive income as possible. I don’t even have an exact number, because the more you have, the better you’re going to be. My goal is to just get as many things. I want to make money while I’m sleeping, that is. Another goal is to be making money while I’m sleeping and just having growing that passive income number as big as it can possibly be.
Speaker 1
30:53
Yeah, I mean it’s music to my ears. I’ve been doing private lending for the last five years, but I’ve been living off it almost exclusively for the last three and a half to four years, and it happened by accident because of COVID. But I don’t have just one stream of income Now, I have like 20. It is something that I think is important for people to be aware of and it’s like life changing. I think it’s important for people to consider just how risky it really is to just have your source of employment and one stream of income, because if you have a health issue or if something goes wrong in the economy, then what? So I think that’s so important. So I guess, just in terms of motivation and inspiration obviously the name of this podcast is Inspire to Invest I always like to ask my guests what quotes motivate them the most.
Speaker 2
31:44
What quotes motivate you?
Speaker 1
31:46
Yeah, like you have a favorite quote that you feel like really resonates with you or gets you going.
Speaker 2
31:53
I’ve got all kinds, but one I shared recently. So the Ask Warren Buffett ad is at the last Bershaw Hathaway meeting and again I’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time when you should be investing your money. And Warren Buffett, someone asked him, where should you invest during a recession? And Warren Buffett said well, without question, the where you should invest during a recession is the same any year. You ask me that question. Your number one investment is when you invest in yourself. So I don’t know if Warren’s read my book or if he just heard about me, or?
32:26
it doesn’t matter who said it first, really, but it’s just that affirmation that okay, we are on the right track. If Warren Buffett says that, I’m like that’s pretty cool, but it was, it was neat. I literally have said that one million times and here Warren say it. I’m sure he said it first, but I thought that was cool.
Speaker 1
32:45
Awesome.
Speaker 3
32:47
Yeah, I got off the top of my head. I just have two that always that kind of come to mind for me. It’s one the question that I always like to ask people to keep it in the back of your mind Like why did the deal of a lifetime happen? It was because somebody needed money. And that really brings me back to the thought of having control of my money and making sure that I can take advantage of opportunities as they pop up and stuff. So that would be one.
33:11
And then there’s one that I heard a long, long time ago and it’s there’s not a lot of traffic on that extra mile and it makes me it just you know. I think that doing that extra, you know working a bit harder, making sure that you put in that extra, and life and everything that you do, you’re going to stand out at the end of the day, and that one’s always stuck with me for life is, just, you know, putting that extra in and taking that extra step, working that bit harder, a bit harder, you’re always going to stand out in the crowd.
Speaker 1
33:38
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that and all of your insights. I’ll obviously include it in the show notes below, but for anyone that’s watching or listening, what’s the easiest way for people to get in touch with you?
Speaker 3
33:50
So we do have a. We got a landing page set up just for your listeners because we want to make sure that they can fast track to the front of the line and get a meeting with one of our wealth coaches if they want to learn more about infinite banking. So it is going to be controlandcompoundcom slash inspired to invest, so we’ll put that link in the show notes. That’s going to be your easiest way into to chat with one of our wealth coaches. But if you want to learn more, you know we’re all about education, financial education. You’re going to want to check out our Instagram and our TikTok and our podcasts at control and compound.
34:26
And there’s going to be a lot. So if you’re not quite ready to take that, next step to me with the wealth coach, definitely head over. If you want to learn more about infinite banking, there’s a slew of information over there for you to really, you know, learn more and then again reach out whenever you’re ready, and you can bypass that line by using your link, for sure.
Speaker 1
34:42
Yeah, and there’s you two pages as well, right With lots of page, and I also have a couple of books.
Speaker 2
34:47
I have two Amazon bestselling books, so first one was called Be the Bank how the wealthy control and compound their money, and the second one was called Infinite Banking for Real Estate Investors. So those are available on Amazon. And, yeah, the YouTube page is doing extremely well as well. Shorts, it’s a big thing. Shorts is huge now.
Speaker 1
35:07
Yeah, no, it’s huge, but thanks again for being here today. For anyone watching, please make sure that if you like what you’ve seen, connect with Darren and Christina, like and subscribe Again. Their information is below. And remember, when you invest in yourself, the sky’s the limit. Thanks again to our sponsor, Control and Compound Financial, for bringing you this episode of Inspired to Invest. The views represented on this podcast are for general information only and does not constitute investment or other professional advice or an offering of securities. The hosting guests featured on Inspired to Invest make no representations as to the performance of any particular investment. Should you decide to make an investment, you are responsible for conducting your own review and analysis. It is recommended that you obtain independent legal accounting and tax advice from licensed professionals.