← The Stacking Benjamins Show
The Stacking Benjamins Show
Unpacking Two Big Ideas: Infinite Banking and Saving For Young Children (SB1729)
01:17:25
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- [00:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Tapping into your home's equity shouldn't come at a high price. That's why we offer our home equity loan options. We cover 100% of closing costs, which could save you hundreds. And with our fixed equity loans, you can consolidate debt and lower your monthly payments. Plus, we have no application origination fees. So if you want to get more out of your home base, learn more@navy federal.org Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Did you know that driving under the influence of marijuana is illegal? Driving high will get you a dui?
- [00:37]
Tony Stewart
And if you're wondering if law enforcement can tell you're driving high, well, everyone else can.
- [00:42]
Chuck Jaffe
Friends, I can tell you drove high.
- [00:45]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Parents, I can tell when you drive high.
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Tony Stewart
Relatives, I can tell you drove here high, didn't you?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
So what makes you think law enforcement can't. I can tell if you feel different, you drive different.
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Tony Stewart
Drive high. Get a dui.
- [00:59]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Paid for by nhtsa. It is Labor Day, and you guys both showed up for work. What's going on?
- [01:07]
Doug
Free food.
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OG
I was tricked.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, whenever mom brings donuts, all of a sudden we get. Oh, we just got a podcast for a little bit. But I'll tell you what we're going to do, guys. You and I, we're going to keep it really easy because we got two great guests today. So all we got to do right now is raise our mug. Raise your mugs. Because we do on Labor Day the same thing we do every other day. Look at that Mickey Mouse Stacky Benjamins.
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Doug
What am I looking at on yours? Is that a knee joint?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
This is a beautiful waterfall near Portland, Oregon, where I'll be next week. So on behalf of the men and women making podcasts in Mom's basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union who serve our troops, thanks to those troops for keeping us safe this beautiful holiday weekend. Let's all go Stacks and Benjamins together now, shall we?
- [01:54]
Doug
Thanks, everybody. Who's with me?
- [02:02]
Chuck Jaffe
All right, let's do this, people.
- [02:09]
Doug
Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's a special Labor Day episode of the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and today's the day when you relax and our special guests do all the work here to entertain that little money nerd in your brain. We welcome two pros with tips to help you get ahead. First, have you ever wondered about this idea called infinite banking or velocity banking? While people selling it tout the virtues, should you Be worried. We'll talk permanent insurance, banking and more with life insurance pro Tony Stewart. And in the second half of this special episode, if you've met journalist and host of the Money Life show, Chuck Jaffe, you know he always has a plan to help his family and friends grow their money. Well, Chuck's about to be a grandfather. And we'll hear what he's planning to help the newest member of the Jaffee clan get a financial head start. It's another great strategy you can use from the guy who's famous for overthinking Halloween. And while we're at it, you know what? I'll stick around to share some Labor Day licious trivia. Okay, that's pretty good. I like that one. And now two guys who are laboring to get out of bed to be here with you. It's Joe. Oh, and. Oh, jj Ju. I like that. Labor Daylicious.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Hey there there, stackers. Welcome to the Labor Daylicious episode of the Stacking Benjamin Show. I am Josie High and hope if you're in America, you're having a fantastic holiday weekend. If you're elsewhere, Happy Monday to you. Even though you kind of stucks to be you. Yeah. You just have to experience it. What is that?
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OG
Through our vicariously.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Through our vicariously. Thank you. Word's not coming on a holiday. But I'll tell you what we do have. We got the guy across the card table who's helping me form words. Mr. OG is here. How are you, man?
- [04:22]
OG
So happy to be here. As soon as we get done with this, I can go play around a golf. You know, we have this fun little golf thing that we do on holidays at our local golf course. When you play, every person gets a flag, right? Like a little American flag. And you play until you've reached your handicap, your handicap shot. So if your handicap is a 20 and on your 90 second shot, you plant the flag, obviously you. You're in the contest to win. If you come back with your flag means you shot under your handicap. But it's always fun to see where the flags start appearing and you're like, whoa, 11, someone is having a bad day. You know, they can jail around holes. 16, 17, 18, you know, there's a bunch of, you know, American flags in the fairway, in the rough and, you know, on the sand and this kind of fun stuff. But so that's fun. That's what we're looking forward to today.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
I was about to explain to non golfers, if it's on 11, there are 18 holes. Non golfer.
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OG
Everybody know there. Even non golfers know there's 18 holes of golf, for God's sake.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Think so. I always hope there'd be like 12.
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OG
Absolutely. There used to be, actually. That was what it used to be.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
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Doug
And there are a number of courses in Scotland, super old ones, where they'll be odd, like weird numbers of holes.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Wow.
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Doug
You know, seven or 13 or whatever. It wasn't always.
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OG
Still charge you full price.
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Doug
They do, yeah.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
And then somebody went, you know what? We need this boring thing to be longer.
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Doug
Allegedly it was how long you could make a bottle of scotch last. So that's how. I mean, allegedly, that's how they got to 18. I mean, the ones where they were. There were 11 holes. That was a good town to hang out in because those people were lit up.
- [06:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, history. History Day with Doug has begun. We've got two fantastic topics. We're going to get into the first one right here in just a second. OG you and I back this spring, we got lots of questions about velocity.
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OG
Banking, backdoor velocity, infinite banking.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
And we had people ask us, how does that work? How does that work?
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OG
How do I get in on that?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Lots of questions. How do I get some of that? Well, Tony Stewart is one of my favorite people and is a guy who is not only a clu, what is CLU is certified or chartered life under charter life underwriter La Cpffe. He's got all the letters when it comes to life insurance. He gets hired by companies to sort through their different insurances to make sure everybody knows what they have. Tony's going to make sure that. Well, you, you understand how these programs work. So Velocity Banking and Infinite Banking, you've heard about them on Tik Tok, on Instagram. What are they? Tony Stewart's going to help us here in the first half of today's show. But before we get to that, we got a couple sponsors to make sure that we can keep on keeping on. And you don't pay a dime for any of this goodness. So we're going to hear from them. And then our conversation with Tony Stewart. And I'm super happy he's coming down to Mom's basement. Tony Stewart's here. How are you, man?
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Tony Stewart
I'm doing great, Joe. Great to be here in the basement. Thanks for having me.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, thank you so much for helping us through insurance because as you and I talked about when we were kind of plotting how this segment would go. Insurance is so frustrating, Tony. Everybody's trying to use a shortcut. People really don't Understand especially permanent life insurance.
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Tony Stewart
Yeah. Permanent life insurance is probably one of the most misunderstood and complex financial products out there. And it's gotten so far away from its original intent of being a product that protects you against risk. For some reason, the insurance industry has convinced everybody that they need to build a cash value with their policy. When you look at other coverage, like, let's say auto insurance, and you're perfectly happy at the end of the year, if you don't have an auto accident, you don't expect any cash back. But with life insurance, people are like, hey, I want cash back, but there's no real reason for it beyond good marketing.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
That is interesting, isn't it? I'm like, wait a minute, I don't get a cash value with this. What a ripoff.
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Tony Stewart
Exactly. It doesn't make any sense because you're should be pretty happy you didn't die. I mean, that's a good goal to.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Be high five every time you have a birthday. I made it another trip around the sun. When we think about permanent life insurance, this is what you and I are going to dive into. A way that people use permanent life insurance that we don't like. But let's start off with where you think it really works. When does permanent life insurance actually fill a really good need?
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Tony Stewart
Well, it fills a really good need when you use a product that has guarantees. Because we're talking about insurance, and the point of insurance is that you're protecting against risk. So you want a policy that's going to pay off. So that's usually whole life insurance, which has a guaranteed premium, guaranteed death benefit, because if something happens, you want a death benefit. So where it makes sense is if you have a child with special needs who will always be financially dependent upon you, you might need it for estate planning, because that's a need that's not going to go away. And in certain other circumstances, but generally most people are going to have savings that offset their need for insurance at all. Or hopefully their kids are going to move out and they won't have to support their kids at some point.
- [09:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, I like that discussion. Because really, I think where people get in trouble is they listen to the insurance industry, which is always like, you need this instead of thinking about what's my risk. And to your point, I think people have a risk of not having enough assets early in life. But hopefully I get into my 60s and I don't need the insurance anymore.
- [10:08]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. And that's the whole thing is that I wrote a paper a long time ago with a Fellow Lawrence Kotlikoff, who's a economist who you may know. And the whole theory is that as you, your assets grow, your need for life insurance actually goes down every single year. But that's really the theory that we should be operating under is that as your other assets grow, you don't have the need for life insurance or you have a reduced need for life insurance.
- [10:35]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Let's dive into the request that some stackers had that we cover this concept that a lot of our stackers have heard of that they might have seen videos on. That there's always seems to be. I feel like it's the thing that won't go away. About every two months I have somebody who's pitching me about using insurance as this self banking mechanism. I've heard it called velocity banking. I've heard it called banking on yourself. I've heard it called. There's another name. What's the other name?
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Tony Stewart
Well, be your own banker. The missing money concept and the infinite banking.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Infinite banking, that's the one. Yes. But they're all related, aren't they? Aren't we talking really about the same thing?
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Tony Stewart
Yeah, it's about using a life insurance policy to provide magic to you that nobody else has figured out. And when you think about it, the companies that have the most cash are the life insurance companies. So think about it this way. A life insurance company is like a casino. There's no way they have these huge buildings and everything else they have going on because they're really bad at math. They're really good at math. So you're not going to beat them at math.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
So let's. I hadn't thought about it that way. The Bellagio is really big and so is nationwide headquarters, which I've been to.
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Tony Stewart
They're both kind of shiny, right?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
They are shiny, yeah. When we hear the pitch for infinite banking, it's that we can pay off debt faster, we can take out loans from ourselves. So the pitch that I always hear is that I've got this money in a life insurance policy. It's sitting in the cash. I take out the, the money in the cash and then I just use the.
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Chuck Jaffe
That.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
So I use my own money instead of a bank.
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Tony Stewart
Well, the appeal is that you can do that. However, it's not true. Joe, if you were going to borrow money from yourself, let's say you had $100 in your safe. You take out the $100 to the safe, would you charge yourself interest on that $100?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
No.
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Tony Stewart
Well, guess what? If you take money out of Your life insurance policy, the insurance company is going to charge you interest on that loan. And that's the first step to why these things don't work is because the insurance company is charging an interest rate usually of 7 to 8% on the money that you borrow. The other thing where. And do you want me to go into detail right now on it?
- [13:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, but I do have a question there first, because the insurance companies. I know enough about this, Tony, to know that the insurance companies will tell you. Yeah, but we've got this crediting process back so that even though there's a 7 or 8% interest, you don't pay the 7 or 8% interest because of this magic trick where we zero it out.
- [13:23]
Tony Stewart
Yeah. And you have to think about that again, it goes back to our theory about the insurance companies. Do they know what they're doing or do they not know what they're doing? And so you have to think about it. There's no free lunch, so the insurance companies are taking the money out somewhere. So, yeah, they can play that trick where it looks like the money's coming out, but they're still charging you interest on the money and then they're crediting you back. So if you went up to a guy on the street and he said, hey, Joe, you can borrow money from me, I'm going to charge you 8%, but then I'll credit it back to you, would you take that deal?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
It just sounds shifty. I mean, everything about it sounds shifty.
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Tony Stewart
Yeah. So you change that circumstance, and I can go into why it becomes a problem.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, let's do that.
- [14:10]
Tony Stewart
So when you have to think about it, we'll work with whole life insurance is that the cash value acts as a reserve account on the policy. So what happens is that there's less amount at risk to the insurance company each year. So if you have $100,000 life insurance policy in the first year, there's no cash value. So $100,000 is at risk to the insurance company. But if you go 10 years out and let's say you have a $10,000 cash value at that point, $90,000 is at risk to the insurance company because there's a $10,000 cash value that's retained at the insurance company. So they're using that to reduce the net amount at risk, which means that they charge you less for the pure cost of insurance if you take some of that money out. So let's say you take $5,000 out, there's 95,000 at risk to the insurance company. So they have to make that shortfall somewhere of the $5,000 that you took out of your policy. And that's where it comes in. It may come in through a lower crediting rate on that net crediting that you were talking about. They may have to charge you more for the cost of insurance. But at some point the insurance company is going to say, well, this is okay, we're just going to, you know, we're going to eat the loss. They're not going to eat the loss, they're going to pass it on. So it's not really your money, it's the reserve. You're taking out some of the reserve on your policy. It'd be like taking out some of the principal on your home is. Yeah, that's your money. But if you take out some of the principal through a HELOC or something else, and that's not my area of expertise, you pay for it in some way. Yeah.
- [15:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I mean, just thinking about what you're saying, let's say it was your home and you took out a heloc, you're going to then using the risk analogy, you've more at risk. And if you miss a payment, which is now going to be a bigger payment, there's 100% chance you're going to be dedicating more future cash flow to repaying it. But then there's also a greater chance that if something happens to that cash flow that the thing falls apart.
- [16:13]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. And so let's remember this is a life insurance policy. And presumably the purpose of the life insurance policy is that you have the insurance. So not only are you messing with the foundation of the policy, there's less coverage there for your loved ones if you pass away. So you, because you've already taken $5,000 out, so it's like that's problem. The bigger challenge is that the insurance company has counted on that amount of risk to them declining each year. Because as you get older, the cost of insurance gets more expensive. Because the likelihood as you get older is that unfortunately likelihood is that you're gonna die.
- [16:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, yeah. So let's just pause there for a second because I want everybody to grasp what you just said. The price of insurance goes up every year. Meaning a thousand dollar block of insurance might be X cost when you're 30 years old. When you're 31 years old, that same thousand dollars is X plus a little more money and then 32. That's what you're talking about, right?
- [17:16]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. So the insurance company, that amount that they're charging you for the total cost of insurance, which is that cost per thousand times the amount that's still at risk to the insurance company should actually be reducing because the cash value should be increasing. So if you taken out some of that foundation, then you also can run into a situation where the net amount at risk is not decreasing. So the insurance company has to charge more for the amount at risk. It gets pretty complex when you go through the calculations, but that's to illustrate that at some point that money is coming from somewhere. The money's not coming magically from nowhere. As you look at the infinite banking concept, you're not really borrowing money from yourself, you're borrowing money from, from a financial product.
- [18:04]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Let me try to summarize what I think that you're saying. If that cost of insurance that's more and more is mitigated by the cash value going in, you can really keep the amount that the insurance costs somewhat stable by continuing to raise the amount of cash. So as $1,000 gets more expensive, you're buying less. Thousands of keeping the policy healthy and running the way that it should run. Is that what you're saying?
- [18:34]
Tony Stewart
That's exactly it. And that's how the insurance company can project out a level premium on a whole life insurance policy is because they're canning on that glide path. So that's why at some point they have to charge you money somehow on the money that you borrow from the policy.
- [18:52]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, and this is interesting, Tony, because this also brings up a point that blew my mind when I first heard it, which is I remember my parents talking about their life insurance policies being paid up, right? I mean, older people, a lot of people had these whole life policies and they were, quote, paid up. And then I realized as I learned what you just said, and I'm thinking through what you just said, there truly is no such thing as a paid off insurance policy. It's just that you've put enough money into the cash value quickly enough that you no longer have to make premiums because now the cash can float it until you're 100.
- [19:27]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. And on those older whole life policies, let's say they were what was called a 20 pay, which meant there were premium payments for 20 years. So just to make it real simple, let's say you had a, you were going to live 40 more years and that was the extended life insurance policy. All you've done is like you talked about, is you compress those 40 years of premium payments into 20 years. Because again, it's math. And insurance companies hire the Best mathematicians in the world, and they do math. I don't understand. They're called actuaries. You know what I'm talking about?
- [20:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
We have some actuaries that listen to the show. Whenever we make a good actuary joke, Tony, I get emails going, no, we really are fun people. I swear to God we're fun people. I'm like, whatever you say, actuary.
- [20:10]
Tony Stewart
You know, this almost calls for an actuary joke.
- [20:14]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Do you have one?
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Chuck Jaffe
I do.
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Tony Stewart
So how do you tell the difference between an introverted actuary and an extroverted actuary?
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Joe Saul-Sehy
God, I got no idea.
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Tony Stewart
So an extrovert actually looks at your shoes while he talks to you.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, hold on a second. Hold on, hold on.
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Tony Stewart
There it is. Getting calls already.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, that's right. I can hear my phone ringing. Remember, Tony said it, not me. Actuaries. Tony said it. It wasn't my fault this time. So this becomes the issue. The first thing that I hear when I hear about infinite banking or velocity banking is this. You put $10,000 into a life insurance policy, and then you take $10,000 out. You can borrow $10,000. What you're saying, Tony, just based on the analogy you just made, that is patently untrue. If you put $10,000 in, you might be able to take some money out, but you're not able to take $10,000 out and expect this to continue?
- [21:10]
Tony Stewart
Well, it gets better, Joe. Most permanent life insurance policies have surrender charges for the first 15 years. So in the first few years, the surrender charge is either 100% in year one or it's like 90% in year five. So that surrender charge declines over the first 15 years. So again, Joe, if you were going to take that $100 out of the safe in the first year, the safe would say, well, no, Joe, you can't take it. I'm keeping 100% of it. That's your surrender charge. Second year, you go to take the $100 out of your safe, and it says, well, you know, you can take like a dollar, you know, out of the cash value. That that's all you get. Because I'm the safe, I get my surrender charge. And then the other thing that happens is that it takes a long time for that cash value to equal the sum of premiums paid. So what they don't tell you about that is that, yeah, you're going to have money to borrow, but it's going to be 15 to 20 to 30 years, depending on how much cash you're putting into the policy before your cash value even equals the sum of premiums that you've paid. I can give you an example from a friend of mine who we just helped out with this situation like this.
- [22:18]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. And before we get to that, because I'd love to hear the story. If it takes years to equal the premiums paid, that means that there are fees then coming off of the premium payment the second you make them. It doesn't all go into your cash.
- [22:33]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. So the policies also have administrative fees. And because, again, because it's an insurance policy and this is something really important for people to remember when you open up any insurance policy, the first thing it says on that page, in really big letters, it says, this is an insurance contract. It does not say, this is an investment contract. This is a bank account. Yeah. This is. This is not a missing money whatever, blah, blah, blah. Contrary to whatever we told you during the sales process, this is an insurance policy, which means that they are always going to charge you for the insurance. So whether we call it the cost of insurance, mortality cost, whatever, they're going to say, hey, you have an insurance policy, we're charging you a premium.
- [23:19]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And yet you do. See, like, when I've gone through the math with these things, even though I can't take a withdrawal, which triggers a surrender charge, there are some companies out there that will let me take a loan on some of the money and not incur that surrender charge. I've seen the math and I've gone through the math on velocity banking, and it seriously looks like it could work to me. It looks like it could work. But to your point, Tony, it gets so convoluted and there's so many ways that you could F it up, that even if it does work over the short run, the point I think you make that is huge, that you got to remember is even if it works over the short run, over the long run, you're creating this deficit. That's going to mean that you're going to have to keep shoveling money into this policy long after you probably want to.
- [24:09]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. And it takes so long before you can actually get enough money out of it to make it work.
- [24:14]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Relevant. Yeah.
- [24:16]
Tony Stewart
You know, that. That makes it really challenging. I've seen some very wealthy people who are able to stuff a huge amount of money into these, and it can questionably work a little bit the edges, like you talk about, but most people are like, this is not a good use of my money.
- [24:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [24:32]
Tony Stewart
At the end of the day, no.
- [24:33]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Agreed. I had one client in my entire career where we used life insurance as A tax shelter. And we had used everything else, Tony. We used everything else. And then we used a variable universal life policy that mutual funds inside of it, mutual fund like things to be technical about it. And still the fees on the life insurance policy, even though you're not paying taxes, you're paying a bunch of fees. But it was better than an annuity. Like I like, we liked it way better than using an annuity. But this was not velocity banking, which is today's topic when we look at velocity banking. Well, you said you had a story about this, about a friend that you were helping with this.
- [25:12]
Tony Stewart
Well, so she's a perfect example. So she was 24 when she was talked into buying this policy by a cousin, which unfortunately is how mostly a lot of these policies are sold. So something to keep in mind for people watching.
- [25:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Can I just ask you something? 24 years old, the 24 year old buying permanent life insurance always cracks me up. Any dependence?
- [25:33]
Tony Stewart
No dependence, not married, nobody dependent on her. She's not even taking care of her parents.
- [25:39]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Not married, no insurance.
- [25:40]
Tony Stewart
Need lean that typical 24 year old. I'm just getting started out on a life.
- [25:45]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Disgusting.
- [25:47]
Tony Stewart
Yeah. Not overfunding her 401k yet. Not doing any of that stuff.
- [25:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. Okay, so.
- [25:55]
Tony Stewart
And it's a million dollar life insurance policy.
- [25:57]
Joe Saul-Sehy
A million dollars?
- [25:59]
Tony Stewart
Yeah, a million dollar life insurance policy with a premium of $500 a month.
- [26:06]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And, and not maxing out her 401k Roth contributions, doing none of that. Putting 500 into a life insurance policy.
- [26:14]
Tony Stewart
Exactly. With mortality costs. Now granted they're low because she's 234 years old, but she had a surrender charge of 16 years on the policy. So she can access the majority of the policy on that policy. The way it was set up, the cash value wasn't going to equal the premiums to about year 18. My advice to her was I go, you can continue funding this at $6,000 a year or you can take a loss on the money and just call it a, a bad choice and walk away from it. Because I go, you're not going to get your money back from it. There's no way, unfortunately to get your money back from it. But the worst part is the whole life insurance policies, the majority will lapse in the first five years. And you know, I'm using whole life here loosely. It could be variable life, universal life, equity index life. So all these policies, they're being sold for this velocity banking, the majority are going to lapse in the first five years. And remember they have those high Surrender charges. So guess who wins? The house. So did I say the house? I meant the insurance companies. That's why I use the analogy the house always wins.
- [27:29]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You know, one option that I don't know, that I've seen in this cascade of you have all these options that are bad, keep putting money into it and if you do that, you're not putting it into places that will grow. So you're just literally throwing quote, good money after bad, like mom says. Or the second thing, cancel it. I guess there's also the third option which is just let it run until there's not enough to fund it and it just crashes itself.
- [27:56]
Tony Stewart
And it crashes very quickly. I mean, you could do things, you know, like she could have reduced the death benefit, let it run a little bit longer.
- [28:05]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Right.
- [28:05]
Tony Stewart
But you know, all those who are like, they're not going to get her very much, so she just let it run out. But it's just a bunch of, there were no good choices, unfortunately. And that's what I see so often out there.
- [28:17]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, it is so hard to see people that are 24 get involved in a permanent life insurance policy that way. And I feel like when we talk to a 24 year old about banking and about how great this is, that we can borrow money from ourselves. This wraps more people into insurance without a real insurance need. Like how does, how does the insurance company, I know there has to be an insurable interest, right. How does the insurance company justify an insurable interest on a million dollars? On a 24 year old maybe making 50k or 60k a year? I mean, I don't know what they make.
- [28:55]
Tony Stewart
That's an excellent question, Joe. I, I even spent almost a decade on the California Department of Insurance curriculum board. And the challenge is that even though there's insurance regulations in place, it's really hard to crack down because it's like an insurance regulator would need to decide, okay, this is the problem, then they need to dedicate resources to going after the insurance companies. And some of the insurance companies are very good and they would not write a million dollar policy on a 24 year old, no insurable interest. But a lot of the insurance companies are going to be like, well, you know, she might be worth it. Because that's the other thing you hear from the insurance companies all the time. I, the life insurance policy today because you may not be uninsurable tomorrow. And it's the only form of insurance you can buy before you actually need it. It's like I can't go out and buy an Insurance policy on a Porsche because I think I'm going to buy a Porsche someday and I might not be insurable later on. No insurance company would even talk to me, but yet I can say, well, you know, I might need life insurance later on because I think I'm going to get married in 10 years and in 15 we're going to have three kids, so I better get $5 million of life insurance today. Does that sound right? It doesn't to me. But that's the way the life insurance industry has always worked.
- [30:11]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And that's the justification I've heard over and over. Well, you know, my family has a history of heart disease and everybody thought that if I got it when I was young and the cost of insurance is really low. To your point earlier, Tony, if the cost of insurance is really low now, I can stuff a bunch of cash in it early and then I don't pay as much later on, which still we're assuming so many things.
- [30:32]
Tony Stewart
Yeah. So I got to throw in one other thing because the most popular type of insurance today is equity index universal life insurance. And that's what's being used for a lot of these schemes. And that is absolutely the worst insurance product ever invented by the insurance industry. And that's going a long way. Is the problem with that policy is they sell it on the benefit that you can't have a negative return rate on it. However, what they do is they have a cap on the maximum return rate, which is usually 10 or 12%. So if you're invested in the S&P 500 returns 20% in a year, you got 10%. The other thing they don't tell you is there's something on it called the participation rate, which is set at will by the insurance companies and it's projected at 100%. But the insurance company can turn the wheel on that and say, well, you know, this year you're only going to get 80% of the return rate. So the S&P 500 earning 20%, your cap rate is 10%, your participation rate is 80%. So you're only getting 8%, you know, so you're counting on this thing to be a banking system for you.
- [31:40]
Joe Saul-Sehy
These kill me.
- [31:41]
Tony Stewart
Yeah, it's not good.
- [31:44]
Joe Saul-Sehy
By the time you get through all the caveats, you are much better just investing. I mean, you're not going to earn any type of return. And yet they're not sold that way. They're sold. Hey, Tony, wouldn't you like to have some of the participation in the SB500? But none of the downside. Come on, everybody wants that.
- [31:59]
Tony Stewart
Exactly, Wolf. Were that easy, everybody would be doing it and you'd be reading about it. I mean, when was the last time you heard Warren Buffett go, boy, I'm really glad we put all Berkshire Hathaway's money into a whole life insurance policy, Charlie. And I think that whole life insurance is the best way for us to go.
- [32:17]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Could you see that at the shareholder meeting? That'd be great. We made a decision and it's called velocity banking. One more question I have you that's not on this topic, but I think that we did it on velocity banking insurance on kids. A lot of the time you'll see people buy life insurance policies on children. You'll see companies offer life insurance policies on children. What's the plus and what's the minus of that?
- [32:44]
Tony Stewart
Well, the only time it makes sense is if you're financially dependent upon your child. Now I've seen situations where like let's say the child is a child actor, actress and you know, maybe it makes sense for the parents to have some life insurance because of business reasons and you know, it can get pretty complex. That makes sense. But on your average 5 year old, why do you need an insurance policy on your 5 year old? Are you financially dependent on your 5 year old? Probably not. If something happens to your 5 year old. And again, I'm just talking about financial impact here because there's nothing more horrible than your kid dying. Do you need money if your kid dies? Is that something? You know, I mean the costs are going to be final expense costs which are not that much. So maybe a small policy but really that is something again and that gets back to conditioning because the logic is like Gerber Life will sell it this way is yeah, you're buying, you're locking in their future insurability by buying them an insurance policy while they're a baby. So that means that 20 or 30 years from now that kid may or may not need a life insurance policy. So yeah, I'm not a fan. You can google Tony Stewart child life insurance and you probably see 100 times I've been quoted saying that. So very consistent on this issue.
- [34:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I'm not a fan either. And like anything it is, you beat us in the eye of the beholder. I, we do have some stackers that write me every time we bring us up going no, I'm glad I did it. And you know what, I guess that sure, it's truly as Tony peace of mind for people and if it gives you Peace of mind to do this thing. Fine. But I'm 100% in the Tony Stewart corner.
- [34:23]
Tony Stewart
Yeah, well, I agree with you, Joe. If you buy a $20,000 policy on your kid and it gives you peace of mind, that's fine. It's not the worst deal in the world. But it's when we get into these other things. Yeah. That's going to hurt your overall financial picture.
- [34:39]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. The velocity banking thing, the infinite banking thing. Stackers. I'm just with Tony. Why complicate this with life insurance when that's not. To use Tony's words, that's not what life insurance was built for. Like, it isn't at all what it's built for. We're putting a round peg in a square hole. Tony, rumor has it you have a badass YouTube show podcast called Get Ready Money. Is that true?
- [35:03]
Tony Stewart
It is. And I've had fantastic guests like you on. It's called the Get Ready Money podcast. It's available on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and other podcast platforms I've never even heard of.
- [35:15]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It is so funny when you see.
- [35:17]
Doug
Where they all go.
- [35:17]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You're like, that's a thing. I had no idea. We had so much fun, you and I and a couple of our other friends. We had a great time talking about what we can learn from improv and we had a two parter on that. I'll link to the podcast, the YouTube show and also link to. Link to that discussion, which was a ton of fun. Tony, thanks for clearing the air on permanent life insurance. This has been requested by so many of our stackers and I super appreciate your time, man.
- [35:46]
Tony Stewart
Glad to be here, Joe. Thanks for the opportunity.
- [35:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Foreign Doug, I know you were happy that Tony came down to the basement because you were wondering about those terms.
- [35:57]
Doug
I was. I didn't understand. Is it, is it permanent insurance? Is it premature insurance? I was confused a little bit. And about Velocity, like, how fast is this supposed to happen or is it supposed to last a long time and slow down?
- [36:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It turns out, OG that I think if we take everything Tony just explained, we can wrap it up this way. It's called velocity banking because the commission check hits the agent's bank account so fast, very, very quickly. Once you get roped into this infinite banking because it makes the insurance agent an infinite amount of money like it is, who knows how much money they get paid for these big thanks to Tony for sorting that out. You know, OG I don't understand why people want to wrap life insurance into their banking.
- [36:45]
OG
Well, it's a solution in Search of a problem. Is that the way to put that?
- [36:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [36:49]
OG
Or is it the other way to say it?
- [36:50]
Doug
No, no, that's it.
- [36:52]
OG
There's very few things that operate well merged together, especially in the financial products market. Right. It's like when you say, oh, I've got a growth product, that is paired with the idea that you're never going to lose any money. You have downside protection. It's like, well, that doesn't really work out very well because then you have, like, crappy growth product and a crappy insurance product put together. Or if you say, well, I've got this investment strategy and it does two things at the same time, you're never going to be able to, like, see how that actually is performing because it's muddled together. That's one of the reasons we don't like Target Day funds. It's like it just. It puts everything in one bucket, which seems simple, but you just get a bunch of crappy stuff plowed together, and you have no idea how those things are working. You know, if you need life insurance, you should have life insurance. If you have debt and you need to pay off your debt, you should pay off your debt. It doesn't make sense to pile those two things together and try to say, well, this is easier, because it's most definitely not easier.
- [37:55]
Joe Saul-Sehy
No, I mean, when it takes Tony half an hour to explain how it.
- [37:58]
OG
Works, yeah, it's definitely not easier. And even if it were a scenario where it's like, yeah, but it's 0.001% better, it's like, is the juice worth the squeeze? Then in terms of complexity, Keep it simple.
- [38:10]
Doug
I mean, I like the way you phrase that, OG but when you first started and you were saying, you know, why do we keep trying to put two things together? I'm thinking, have you ever had French fries and Wendy's Frosties? Because sometimes it makes a lot of sense to put. Take two totally different things and put them together.
- [38:25]
OG
Yeah, that. That is. That is a known exception to the rule. Yes, absolutely.
- [38:30]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I might have a Wendy's Frosty story later. Just might. But we've got something else we got to do. Doug, time for your trivia, man.
- [38:39]
Doug
Let's do that. Hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And when you think Labor Day, you think patriotism and the people who built this great US Of A. Unless, of course, you're listening from another country in which you might be thinking, man, it's just a normal Monday here. Normal sucky Depressing. Back to work Monday. I wish I were in the US of A. Having hot dogs and playing in a park somewhere with friends. And to that I say, come on and join us. You know, there are lots of patriotic songs you can think of when you think of Labor Day. And here's a big one that was created on today's date. Woody Guthrie, who was squarely part of the labor movement in America, wrote a song on today's date and in 1940 called this land is yous Land. Hilariously, though, he didn't write it because he was feeling particularly patriotic. He wrote it because he was so sick of constantly hearing another song at the time, famously sung by Kate Smith. And he wanted to hear something, anything. I mean, God, just anything else besides Kate Smith. And not finding anything interesting, he decided to write it his own song. Which Kate Smith patriotic tune was Guthrie fed up with when he wrote this land is your land? Hey there, stackers. I'm hot dog lover and guy who's always up for some Labor Day Frisbee. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. All right, let's get you this trivia answer so we can dive into the second half of this shindig and then head out to the park. Woody Guthrie was so sick of one patriotic tune that he wrote this Land is your Land back on Today's date in 1940. What song was he sick of? Well, Guthrie apparently wanted to rest on Labor Day because he was sick of standing beside her and guiding her, because it was Kate Smith's version of God Bless America that caused Woody to drive from Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters just to get away from it. Okay, let's move along before you get sick of me. Back to Joe and Og yelling. That's possible.
- [40:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It's taking matters into your own hands, isn't it? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a different one. I'm not going to turn off the radio, break the record, do whatever. I'm just going to write another one.
- [41:05]
Doug
I like it.
- [41:05]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Wasn't that how Irving Berlin wrote White Christmas? Was it was on a dare that he thought he could make the best Christmas song of all time. I think that is true.
- [41:15]
Doug
I have heard that, yes.
- [41:16]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, Very, very similar story. Og, were you putting money into your kids accounts right after they were born?
- [41:25]
OG
No, no, I wanted to. I didn't have any money when my kids were born.
- [41:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, yeah, me neither. That happened a little later. And then I, you know, tried to catch up, put money in. 529 plans gave them some money to begin their investing journey.
- [41:43]
Doug
I think that's a common. A common thought and a common stressor for a lot of parents is I want to put money into. And I feel like you guys have been telling me I should be putting money into my accounts, my kids accounts from the day they were born. I would say it's pretty rare. I mean, a lot of people won't even have children when they're younger because they think we're not financially ready to do this.
- [42:07]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Too expensive.
- [42:08]
Doug
Yeah, it's too expensive. And I remember when my wife and I were talking about that, I remember my dad said, ready is a decision, not a feeling. Oh, you're never going to feel ready.
- [42:23]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, gee, what the hell's up with Doug today?
- [42:25]
OG
I know.
- [42:26]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Bringing it. Holy cow.
- [42:28]
Doug
That landed pretty good with, clearly with my wife and I. Yeah, I like that one.
- [42:33]
Chuck Jaffe
Yeah.
- [42:33]
OG
I think my grandkids are going to have a lot more of my money than my kids do also.
- [42:38]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, we got a guy who's super excited that he's becoming a grandfather. Our friend Chuck Jaffe from the Money Life with Chuck Jaffe. Back in the 1990s, when I was a financial planner, I would read Chuck Jaffe's columns that appeared in the Boston Globe and elsewhere around the country. He was syndicated all over the place. And I remember taking them into client meetings and saying, here's what. Here's what this nationally syndicated columnist, here's.
- [43:00]
OG
What Chuck says to do. I'm not crazy.
- [43:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
No, Chuck's crazy. I'm not crazy.
- [43:07]
OG
They're like, well, if Chuck's doing it, we'll do it. It's not because of your recommendation show.
- [43:10]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But because maybe the second most famous Chuck after Chuck Schwab, Right? Chuck Barkley, Chuck Jaff. Chuck Jaffe also was the editor in chief of a newspaper on the most hated campus in Michigan in this little town called Ann Arbor. Just horrible job. I don't know why anybody would want to run that newspaper. Actually, that newspaper is pretty damn famous.
- [43:33]
Doug
Yeah.
- [43:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
For being a place where a lot of great people came from. If you're somebody wondering, like, we've had questions from other people, how do I give money to nieces, nephews? How do I think about that? How do I start saving for kids, for grandkids? Here he comes, Chuck Jaffe joining us. The Chuck Jaffe's here. How are you, man?
- [43:55]
Chuck Jaffe
I am great. How could I be any better than. I mean, actually, I am better now that I'm talking to you because that does make a good Day Better.
- [44:02]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Let's stop. Keep going. Stop. Well, no, no, no. There's a real reason, Chuck, that you are doing great. And that is that you are. You're either about to be or you are grandfather.
- [44:15]
Chuck Jaffe
That's correct. Thank you very much. The answer is, as we record this, I am about to be. We just don't quite know when and if you are into numerology. My youngest daughter is the one having the baby. It's my first grandchild. She is 31 years old and she was due on August 14th.
- [44:36]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Wow.
- [44:38]
Chuck Jaffe
And so as we record this, we're not quite a week past. She expects to have the baby on August 21st, because when she was born, her mother was 31 years old and was due on August 14th.
- [44:52]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, there you go.
- [44:53]
Chuck Jaffe
How's that for weird math for you?
- [44:54]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, you know what? We're all numbers geeks here, right, Chuck? I mean, of course, only a numbers.
- [44:59]
Chuck Jaffe
Geek would actually pay attention to that stuff and figure that one out.
- [45:02]
Joe Saul-Sehy
There's no way we don't believe that. Okay, you and I are going to talk again in a couple of months about Halloween. For people that don't know Chuck has a numbers fetish. Where, where, where he goes off the rails designing these games. I gotta think you have already overthought being a grandfather who's going to teach grandchild about money.
- [45:27]
Chuck Jaffe
Oh, I certainly have overthought it, but that's also because I did a lot for my kids. So here's where the genesis of this comes from for all of this stuff. And then we're going to get into where it really goes. My brother was nine years older than. Than me, and in 1953, when he was born, somebody bought him a couple of shares of AT&T stock. I would love to know who that somebody is, because they didn't buy me anything when I was born. They didn't buy my sister anything.
- [45:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You want to go give him one star?
- [45:54]
Chuck Jaffe
But my brother, 40 years later, basically was using his three shares of AT&T to be like, the down payment on his house.
- [46:04]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Wow.
- [46:04]
Chuck Jaffe
You know, remember @t went through the breakup. He got a bunch of shares this way, that way, the other way, and you had 40 years of accumulation. Well, I didn't get that. People were giving us savings bonds when we were born, and I always thought it was a cool idea. So for my own kids, I created stock portfolios for them. My girls are now in their 30s, so it was really before we could get discounted commissions and everything else. People go, really? You're going to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of shares, but you're going to pay, you know, 25 bucks in commission. I'm like, yep, I am. And so my kids had stock portfolios from the day they were born. And it's really been important and good for them because both of my kids have moved at times where they didn't have a job planned out or what have you. But they knew what their support level was. They knew that they had this money. It was set aside. And amazingly, because you tell a kid they come into a bunch of money when they're 21 or what have you, they didn't go off and blow it. They still basically have their portfolios intact. My oldest, I think it's going to wind up being the down payment for her house when the time comes. I think that's what she's planning to do with it. So I'm a huge believer that you want to do stocks. And these days, Schwab and Fidelity have stock slices or stocks by the slice or whatever they call it. That makes it super easy. Like, I buy shares as gifts for kids, for grownups at times, whatever. My niece and nephew have had babies. They now have Microsoft shares, et cetera. So I've always planned to have a stock portfolio for any grandchild. But I'm going way further than that, Joe, as you can imagine.
- [47:33]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Absolutely you are. But before we get to that, did your girls ever follow the stocks? Did they?
- [47:39]
Chuck Jaffe
Not only did they follow the stocks, this is why it's important to do this, because they get involved super early. And we have a number of stories about this, but you start having questions from your kids about things. So, for example, my kids. I wanted them to have companies that they would understand. I didn't want the AT and T that my kids wouldn't have understood. I wanted things like McDonald's. My kids owned Coca Cola. Well, if you owned.
- [48:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
In the.
- [48:03]
Chuck Jaffe
In the 1990s, when my kids were born, you couldn't buy a Coke at Burger King. So my kids were learning that we didn't go to Burger King because we owned Coca Cola. They didn't sell it. And we wanted to support the businesses we had. My kids learned things like the time that my oldest went to Blockbuster Video, not a particularly successful stock selection for her, but she had shares in Blockbuster, was told that the Jungle Book was out. And she looked at me and said, even for me, because I own this place. She was 4, Joe. She was 4.
- [48:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So I wanted to hear her. I want to hear. Say that to the kid working there. I own this place.
- [48:46]
Chuck Jaffe
Well, my youngest, Whitney. It was a birthday for Whitney, and my mother wanted to take her to a new toy store that had opened near where my parents live. So we're down for a visit. We go to the toy store. It's Noodle Cadoodle. Maybe your audience remembers, maybe not. Whitney has a grand old time, and we're pulling away. Whitney's six. My mother says, what did you think of the store? Whitney's like, I love it. And I'm like, this seemed like a pretty smart toy store. My mom goes, what do you think of the stock? And I'm like, I haven't looked at the stock. And Whitney in the backseat goes, I could buy that place because I love that store. So we bought some shares of Noodle Cadoodle with extra money because it was trading at like a buck, a buck and a quarter. The next year, we bought maybe another hundred shares of Noodle Cadoodle because it was trading at like, a buck and a quarter. And mind you, you read their statements and they go, we've got 94 shareholders. I'm like, yeah. And one of them, seven. So noodle cadoodle all of a sudden goes to like, six bucks a share. My daughter's like, well, I still love it. We should keep owning it. I said, you know, maybe we should learn a lesson, take a little bit of money off the table. And she says, no, don't want to. Don't want to do that. Okay. Noodle Cadoodle goes through a. Announces that they're going to go through a merger with Zany Brainy. And my daughter goes, well, Zany Brainy is my other favorite toy store. This is amazing. Yeah. And then the companies went bankrupt, so she lost everything. Fast forward. My daughter is a teenager. She is an athlete. She's playing lacrosse. And she knows that Under Armour was started basically by some lacrosse guys and that one of their officers used to play with me, the guy had taken a job down there, etc. She goes, well, what all my friends, all they want this holiday season is Under Armour. What about that? So we bought our first shares of Under Armour at 13 bucks a share. We bought $130 worth of stock. We did it the next year as well. Again, this was just extra money. It wasn't her primary purchase. The third year, we bought a full gift's worth of Under Armour stock. So now she's got 50 shares of Under Armour. And then Under Armour went 13. She bought it to, like, 85 Ching. Now she's a teenager, and I go, you see this money that you've made? Maybe you want to take some off the table. She's all my friends love Under Armour. I don't think I do. And I said, remember Zany Brainy and Noodle Cadoodle? And she goes, yeah, let's take some of that money off the table there, Joe. It's there. They get it. They learned that lesson early.
- [51:23]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That's sweet.
- [51:23]
Chuck Jaffe
You know, that's. Proud to say that. That my kids also call me for advice in their retirement plans, but they don't need the biggest advice because they're both maxing out everything they can say.
- [51:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That's super. All right, so grandchild, now. Now you got a chance to go 201, 301. You can jaffe this thing up. What's it. What's it gonna look like?
- [51:45]
Chuck Jaffe
First, let's also talk about the fact that, you know, now my grandchild will be born with what is being talked about as the Trump account, where, Right. They're getting a thousand dollars. And that kind of sort of might have stolen some of my thunder, because my idea was going to be take a couple grand and set it aside for the grandchild and basically say, let this money grow until you're 65 or 66. Like, do not break the glass on this. But again, I can't leave well enough alone, Joe. So you have the problem in this country that you can't really start retirement saving for a baby unless the baby has some income. And I am sure that, you know, our baby will be spectacular and fabulous and awesome, but I just don't know that they're going to be like, Hollywood material, often being whatever, you know, as a baby. But, Joe, when you do a show like ours, sometimes you need sound effects kind of like. Kind of like this, Joe. Okay, so I will point out that couldn't possibly have been my grandbaby, but this is my dog. This is also my dog. And we use those sounders on the show as needed. And my dog got paid in dog treats. My baby's going to get $2,000 in cash. We're going to take that money, pay the child, issue a 1099, put that money into a Roth IRA. That's how you're going to do it.
- [53:30]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That's nice. And by the way, to be clear for everybody, too, I mean, when, you know, the pay has to match the work, and when you and I buy a sound effect, I mean, $2,000 is a number that is reasonable, which is what the IRS wants to see.
- [53:44]
Chuck Jaffe
Exactly. This is for Voiceover work. I need to have sounders for when I'm going to be broadcasting down where my grandchild. And we'll do this repeatedly and we'll pick up a number of different things. And if the IRS truly wants to come and get me, oh, they probably could say I'm overpaying. I'm not going to really fight that, I think, as having been audited before and having actually twice in my life paid my tax return to the head of the IRS directly. By the way, the only discount you get for doing that is you don't have to pay any postage. That's the only benefit you get.
- [54:18]
Tony Stewart
And.
- [54:18]
Chuck Jaffe
And if you get audited that year, you got quite a story. But the answer is, I have been audited in my life. I don't really want to go through it again, but I would take that chance for my grandchildren.
- [54:30]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I don't know. $2,000 for first sound effects, though. I mean, just looking at the things that we pay for the show for some of the episodes we've made, I think, and the amount that you're going to use it, I think it's fair.
- [54:41]
Chuck Jaffe
Yeah. By the way, if you really wonder, for anybody out there who's wondering, Chris Carosa is a journalist and financial advisor who wrote a book on the child Ira that came out in 2018. He subsequently has written a book on making your teenager setting them up to be a millionaire before they graduate from high school. So if you can find him, his website, I think, isjust his name dot com, but Chris Carosa for child Ira. You can figure out how to do this for yourself. And we did do. I did do an interview with Chris going, like, you know, I'm not going to jail for doing this, am I? Yeah, right.
- [55:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
No, nobody wants that. And I'm sure some people are more imaginative than others. I can see somebody walking the dog. Chuck going, I, I don't have a podcast. I can't pay $2,000 for that. But I think the bigger message isn't using sounders for your podcast is get a little creative. Think about creative things that truly can add to the world where you could pay the grandkid or the child. What are you going to put inside of it? What investment? You talked about individual stocks for your daughters. Are you going to go with that or with an index?
- [55:42]
Chuck Jaffe
My grandson will have an individual stock account and that will start with Microsoft. And it will start with Microsoft because I have felt for quite some time, it is, I will point out, I own Microsoft. I have owned Microsoft from the day after they announced they would pay a dividend. And it's done pretty well by the way. That's around the time that was that year that my kids and I discussed do we add Microsoft to their portfolios.
- [56:07]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I own Microsoft as well.
- [56:09]
Chuck Jaffe
I happen to believe in the stock and I happen to believe that what they backstop is still going to be here. And I do like the idea of the AT&T when my brother got it was a company that was unstoppable. You could not see it going anywhere. I will point out that my oldest daughter Thompson, the stock that we bought for her when she was born was Coca Cola, obviously still recognizable. Etc. So I want something that can do well. But in the stock portfolio I know it's just the first pick and I will be adding to it. Even if all you do is at the beginning, Right. Trust me, my wife has obd. Obsessive baby disorder. This child will be spoiled. But this baby's going to get stuff for a couple years before it realizes who's put anything in the box. Right. I have always said until the child is old enough to appreciate what's in the box, basically it doesn't make a difference who they get it from until they can appreciate that you don't have to. So give your gift in another way and use it to forward the discussions etc. So that is going to be stock in the long term. What's going to be in their Roth ira? It's going to be a broad market index fund. The question that I really have is whether will I, will I equal weight it or will I, you know, total market is. But it's going to be some form of index fund that I believe in.
- [57:26]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So you're going to have two different accounts? Yes. How do you set up the beneficiaries on those? How are those going to look?
- [57:33]
Chuck Jaffe
It's an open question because I could set it up for my kids to be running it.
- [57:39]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [57:39]
Chuck Jaffe
Ask my niece and nephew because I told you I set up things for their children, their first children, whether they wanted me to be doing it or them to be doing it. And they both said they'd rather have me running it. Which makes it actually a little bit easier for me in terms of I don't have to go to anybody else when I want to add money to it.
- [57:56]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Right. Just jump on the computer and bam.
- [57:58]
Chuck Jaffe
So those allowed me to set it up. Gift to Minors Act. I do understand that, at least theoretically. Although who knows what it's going to be like in 18 to 20 years that you know if they have a lot of money in their own name, it could impact their ability to get student loans. I did this. It didn't impact my kid's ability at all. So may that be a problem that they're lucky enough to have. Right?
- [58:20]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [58:20]
Chuck Jaffe
But there will come a point where we change it from my name as the primary to my niece or my nephew. And then we basically, it's always been for the benefit of the child. So it should. If anything does happen to me, and that certainly is not outside the realm of possibility, it should pass very easily and not have it be a problem.
- [58:40]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Great.
- [58:41]
Chuck Jaffe
Just they would have to appoint a new guardian. And by the way, in our wills, it says, who's going to get that account anyway?
- [58:47]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you, while we have you here, what's been going on at the Money Life show?
- [58:53]
Chuck Jaffe
Man, you know, we're talking with as many smart, brilliant people as we can, Joe. It's been fascinating to watch because we went from a period during the Liberation Day where, you know, we suddenly had everybody saying, going to have recession, recession. And now there's no talk of recession. It's a really interesting time to be an investor and watch the wall of worry, which is legitimate. Like, everybody's concerned. And then to talk to experts and know that the outliers are the ones who are truly concerned. The outliers are the ones who think whatever we get is going to be temporary. Most are like, we'll see a little bit of turbulence, and then we'll go on into 26. It'll be good.
- [59:33]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Cheryl and I were talking about that at dinner last night, Chuck, So I'd love to pick your brain on this, which is we were talking about inflation. Just how, you know, you go to a restaurant now it feels so much more expensive than it did before. You just feel this effect. And Cheryl was talking about some of the housing data that we've seen lately in the inflationary number, and she's like, so what do you think? I said Wall street likes to worry more than. I mean, Wall street worries 1,000% over these little tiny things, and yet Wall street doesn't seem to be worried at all right now. Chuck.
- [60:07]
Chuck Jaffe
It's alarming on one hand because the market normally is worrying, but by the way, consumers are just complaining. They're not worrying either. I mean, if you take a look at the consumer spending numbers, Joe, we are old enough to know that when gas prices go up, consumer confidence, et cetera, goes down. That has historically been the way it works, investor optimism, all that stuff falls and rises in line with gas prices. You get to the summer, well, guess what? None of that's been affecting people. I had somebody tell me, well, don't you see what's happening at the gas pump? But I said, yes, but I don't drive very much. So, yes, I'm unhappy every time I go to the gas pump, but it's costing me about 25 bucks a year. So it's not that big a deal. Like we can argue with it because it doesn't feel good to pay higher prices. And at the same time, we are currently accommodating them and the sign sayer is not there. Now when this happens, and I do think we're going to see a turn, I do think we're going to wind up seeing inflation be stickier for longer. And I don't think the Fed's going to come back to where they go, hey, we'll just say that 3% inflation's okay because the economy's been chugging along with 3% inflation. I think there's going to be some pain that comes up. But until the consumer is has it beaten out of them, they will complain about it, but they won't change their spending habits.
- [61:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Latest data I saw was that consumers spending less money on the credit card lately, which is good news.
- [61:31]
Chuck Jaffe
Yeah. But consumer spending on the whole has not really declined by dramatic numbers.
- [61:36]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, yeah.
- [61:37]
Chuck Jaffe
And what you're seeing is, yes, I want to be better positioned because I think that there's trouble coming good. And that means we'll weather the trouble a little bit better. I hope that that's the way it plays out. But there's a lot to worry about. Like, you can legitimately make cases about not liking where we are on a fiscal policy standpoint. You can talk about whether the international rally that we've seen this year is the beginning of something very long because the valuations there are great, or if it's the end of a rally that, like there it was, you know, Europe, finally, the diversification paid off for you. Like both sides have merit. And you know, you and I know that disagreement makes a market. And you and I sit in the middle of that disagreement. And I very seldom sit completely on the other side of any of these experts, even the ones who are outliers. You kind of go, yeah, there's some good points there I may not fall in line with. That's how it's going to play out. But the realm of possibilities is wide. And so the interesting Thing is, watching everybody come to consensus, and consensus is very much right now in the middle of the road.
- [62:40]
Tony Stewart
Yeah.
- [62:41]
Chuck Jaffe
That tells me we're gonna. Something's gonna happen here at some point. Just hope it doesn't break too big.
- [62:45]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And that's all the time, right? That's your. My favorite phrase, Chuck. At some point, something is going to happen. That's a hot take, Mr. Jaffe. At some point, we will have something happen.
- [62:55]
Chuck Jaffe
Well, you know, look, the hope is that whatever happens, we pass through it kind of like a kidney stone, etc. And all the things that we should have been worrying about, whether it's war in Ukraine, war in the Middle east, looking at what's been happening with prices, trade wars with China, all the tariff stuff, has not really derailed it. And yet you're like one ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal away from having something that kicks inflation over the top and creates other real problems. So I'm not worried that much about the stuff we can see at this point. I'm much worried about, you know, the known unknowns or the unknown unknowns.
- [63:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
My favorite takeaway from this whole thing, though, is sell the noodle ca doodle when it's up or whatever it was called.
- [63:39]
Chuck Jaffe
Yeah. The answer is, if you don't understand why you've made the money on it, even if it's like, take your profits, just at least. I talked to a guy at a Red Sox. I'm sitting next to a guy who finds out what I do.
- [63:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, no.
- [63:53]
Chuck Jaffe
Winds up starting to talk about crypto.
- [63:56]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, no.
- [63:56]
Chuck Jaffe
He's talking about it. And he's like, well, I made all this money in crypto, like, in the last couple of months, and look what's going on. And I said, and did you expect to make it? He goes, absolutely not. And I said, what are you going to do? And he sat there and he said, are you going to tell me I should sell and just go back? And I said, I'm not going to tell you anything. He goes, because that would sound like really smart advice. And I'm like, well, good. You may have just become the smartest crypto investor I've ever met.
- [64:23]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Chuck Jaffe, always a pleasure, my friend. Listen to Chuck five days a week, right on the Money Life show.
- [64:28]
Chuck Jaffe
Five days a week. That's why we. That's why we call your show Slacking Benji.
- [64:33]
Joe Saul-Sehy
He's one of the few people on Earth, he's like, three days. How cute. How cute. Chuck, we'll see you again. Well, I'm gonna see you in In Portland. But our stackers are going to see you again at Halloween time.
- [64:44]
Chuck Jaffe
Yes, absolutely. And if your stackers want to hear you when you come on my show, it'll be somewhere around that trip to Portland, which is September 9, through whatever couple days of our show. And. And they can find our show any place they find yours. It's Money Life with Chuck Jaffe. Joe, thanks as always. We'll see you soon.
- [65:04]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Big thanks to Chuck. I love this idea og of saving early and often. And wow. The big takeaway might be save like Doug's dad. It's a. It's a what? It's a decision, not a feeling.
- [65:19]
Doug
Yeah, everybody waits till they feel like they're ready. There is no. You don't feel like you're ready. You decide you're ready in anything in life. That was some of my favorite advice from dad.
- [65:28]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I just think that when. I don't know about you, but when I decided it was time to have kids, it was both a decision and a feeling. It didn't have to be there.
- [65:38]
OG
Oh, boy. Yeah. Right off the rails.
- [65:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be either or. But, oh, gee, you were going to say something about saving early, making it a decision.
- [65:49]
OG
I talked about this a couple of months ago with a 529 plan for my nephew and my niece. We started a 529 for them. We didn't start one for my kids, but what we did for them. And we put 50 bucks most of the time on, but on occasion off just on auto. You know, 50 bucks, like, you know, not saying that that's not $0, but it's also not a bunch of money. You know, 50 bucks is kind of not a lot. From the time they were born until they went to college, it was a year's worth of school in a public. In state school for each of those kids. And it didn't really. I don't feel like it really crimped our style by having that thing on autopay. Like, if you're thinking about starting saving, whether it's for your kids or your grandkids or yourself, just the littlest amount, you know, if you don't have a cash reserve, take 10 bucks a day or 10 bucks a week or 25 bucks a quarter. You know, like do something that is moving you in that direction because it's easy to build on top of it when you've got those habits established and you say, well, I don't have any money. You got a dollar can you do a dollar. You know what I mean? Like, do something to move yourself in that direction.
- [67:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I love Chuck's idea of how he's going to save og, but what I also love about it is how it fits him and it's great for him. And this is something over the years people have said during our roundtables. There's like, well, I can't believe you guys advocate for xyz. I'm like, well, just because Paula advocates for it doesn't mean OG advocates for it. And the reason we have all these people on is because there are many different ways to do things. But I like the fact that Chuck likes individual stocks for these kids accounts. He likes the behavioral aspect of as you heard. He likes the fact that, you know, you're on your Xbox and the kid all of a sudden puts this, wait a minute, I own this company, I own this thing. Or they walk into a restaurant and I own a piece of this restaurant. I like that piece. But there's also a lot of, you know, things that can go wrong when you only own a company or two. Right. Do you like putting individual stocks in young kids stuff like Chuck advocates for?
- [68:01]
OG
I like the idea of involving the kids. And if the way to involve the kids, you know, and I'm Talking about like 10, 11, 12 year olds a little bit harder, I think under that. But as you have the opportunity to share with them how that works, especially when you contrast it to something else. What landed for my kids was when they got their bank statement and their Schwab statement at the same time. And so they say like, oh la dee da. I've got 150 bucks at the bank and it made one penny of interest. And I've got 150 bucks in my Schwab account and it made $3 of dividends. Or the market was up this month and it made, you know, $15 of capital appreciation. You know, you can see the chart, you know, or whatever. And I get that it's not, I wasn't trying to teach them that every month they're gonna make 15 bucks. The dividends I was trying to teach, but I wanted them to see the contrast between if you keep your money safe and secure in the bank, you get a penny and it's guaranteed. Like, that's awesome. You're getting a penny. If you take a little bit of risk, you're getting three bucks. That also is awesome. But there's a difference with that. And I wanted to explain the idea of owning companies and so having the individual shares Makes a lot of sense because they can see to your point, Joe, they can see the line items as Microsoft or Sony or Apple or whatever and pair it with the people they do business with, you know, as they get older. Once they started piling up, I think right around 10 or 11 stocks is when I introduced the idea of putting it all together. So, you know, one of the things that we could do if you didn't want to keep track of all this, we could have one line item that owns all of these in one line item. Oh, so I could have like all the tech companies that I want to invest in in one thing. Yeah, let's do that instead.
- [69:46]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Great. Yeah.
- [69:47]
OG
You know, so just kind of an evolution.
- [69:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I think there's also a case to be made for just going with the index fund from the beginning. You can still teach a lot of the same stuff. This is interesting. Yeah, it is. This is not a hill that we die on. Stackers like this is find your path, teach your kids. I think this is the big thing. A lot of people og doing nothing. Right. The fact that Chuck's out there excited about teaching, that you were excited about teaching, the fact that, you know, we've had stackers call in wanting to save money for their nieces and nephews even, that's really cool. Teach them about money. Don't just save, teach them. And I think that lesson goes a long way. Thanks again to Chuck. And as we mentioned, we'll link to Money Life with Chuck Jaffe in the show notes. Doug out on the back porch. Just one very quick thing here before we say goodbye is I will be doing an HSA Basics webinar on Wednesday night. Stacking benjamins.com HSA gets you there. And this is not 201 through. This is HSA 101. If you don't understand how HSAs work and you want the basic bedrock of this thing that we keep talking about, everybody keeps talking about, you might have one available. Open enrollments coming up. You finally want to find out how this thing works. You can take advantage of it. We'll talk the basics of what it is and basic strategies on Wednesday night. Stacky benjamin.com HSA and I think for today, that's about all we got because it is Labor Day and. Oh, geez, got to hit the golf course.
- [71:17]
Doug
Yeah, and I'm late for doing nothing.
- [71:19]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, we got a frisbee tournament. Doug. Come on. All right, let's get out of here. Doug, what are our big takeaways for today?
- [71:26]
Doug
Well, Joe, first take Some advice from Tony. Using life insurance for banking. That might be a bigger struggle than you think it is. Second, take some advice from Chuck. Have a go goal for you or a grandchild? Start early. With time on your side, they'll have either a house down payment or a big head start on retirement. But the big lesson. Why do they call it Labor Day? Because nothing says holiday like watching Joe and OG labor through another explanation of compound interest. Oh, man.
- [71:58]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Watch this.
- [71:58]
Doug
Get the popcorn out. You ready? Hey, guys, could you explain the difference between AP and aper? Again, thanks to Tony Stewer for joining us today. You'll find Tony's Get Ready Money show on YouTube. We'll also share a link in our show notes@stackingbenjamins.com and thanks again to the Chuck Jaffe for bringing home today's show. For more of Chuck's insights and humor, head to your favorite podcast platform and search for the Money Life with Chuck Jaffe. We'll also include links in our show notes. This show is the property of SP Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025, and is created by Josal Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome team@stackingbenjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.
- [72:54]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, yeah.
- [72:55]
Doug
And before I go, not only should should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
- [73:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
SA Doug, you and I were having a conversation yesterday about our little travel show passion project, Stacking Adventures. Yeah, we were talking about a recent guest was talking about Capri and I looked for hotels. OG have you ever looked for hotels in Capri? OG No.
- [74:22]
OG
No.
- [74:23]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You don't want to pre Italy, just.
- [74:25]
Doug
Not like Capri, Pennsylvania. It's like Capri, Italy.
- [74:29]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It's actually right up your alley because I think the minimum stays like, you know, a thousand dollars a night.
- [74:36]
OG
Oh, so pretty inexpensive.
- [74:37]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It is slightly expensive, yeah. And then. And then, Doug, I started telling you about San Tropez and the time I went there where it was either junk shops, there was a little fort that the Nazis turned into like a fort there. And then there were these unbelievably expensive restaurants, like where the wealthiest among us live But, Doug, you had a.
- [74:59]
Doug
Well, I. I mean, I don't have a story about San Tropez. I've never been there. But every time I hear that. That place's name, I think of a commercial from. I think it was probably the early 80s. There was a sun tanning product, not a sunscreen. But back in the 80s, when we didn't know any better, people were just putting Crisco lather butter on yourself.
- [75:21]
OG
In Crisco.
- [75:21]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [75:22]
Doug
Just to stand in the sun and get as dark brown as possible.
- [75:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
We're getting baked at a whole different meeting.
- [75:29]
Doug
Exactly. There was this commercial for a product called Bando Soleil. And there was this little jingle. It showed this beautiful woman by a pool, and she was. She looked like a Thanksgiving turkey, she was so brown. And this little jingle that would play was Bandes Soleil for the San Trope tan. But I never heard it that way.
- [75:54]
OG
How did it go again?
- [75:55]
Doug
I'll sing it again. I'll do it as often as you need me to. I don't care. Bandesole for the Santrope tan. But all I heard in my little middle school brain was Banda Soleil for the Central Asians. I'm like, do the Mongolian people really need this? Is this a product that. That was, like, built for them and now they're branching out to the rest of the world.
- [76:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Doug's growing up in southeast Michigan, just going, why are we Mongolia?
- [76:28]
Doug
And based on the woman they were showing, I'm like, I need to go to Central Asia. Because they figured it out. Have you ever wondered about this idea called infinite banking or velocity banking while people selling it tout the virtues? Should you be worried, we'll talk premature insurance. That's not what we're talking about.
- [76:52]
OG
Premature insurance.
- [76:53]
Joe Saul-Sehy
What did you say?
- [76:54]
OG
I know it's on Doug's mind recently. That's a Freudian slip if I ever heard one. There's a pill for that.
- [77:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Doug, you just gotta relax when you're getting the insurance.
- [77:05]
Doug
Sometimes insurance just happens.
- [77:08]
OG
This never happens to me. I just bought this insurance.
- [77:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I'm sorry.
- [77:13]
OG
Usually better than this. Let me try again.
- [77:15]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I swear to God. They said it was whole life, thought.
- [77:21]
Doug
It was gonna last forever.
- [77:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I didn't think the term would be this short.