RPF0541-How_to_Protect_Your_Family_From_Your_Death_When_You_Cant_Qualify_For_Life

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:04.000 | insight, skills, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:08.840 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:12.600 | Today on the show we tackle a thorny financial planning problem.

00:00:17.720 | This week I was working with a consulting client of mine, someone that I have worked

00:00:22.520 | with here and there over the years, and this particular client is a very young man.

00:00:28.400 | He is financially competent and he was unexpectedly diagnosed with a very significant and serious

00:00:36.880 | form of cancer in his middle 20s.

00:00:40.520 | He originally wrote to me after his initial diagnosis and said that he wished that he

00:00:45.080 | had taken my advice to buy more disability income insurance, but that he thought it really

00:00:49.920 | would never relate to him, so he had chosen not to.

00:00:54.720 | So I tell that to you, if you have heard me give advice or if there's something in your

00:00:58.880 | personal financial plan that you know you should do, as in buy disability insurance,

00:01:03.200 | buy life insurance, get it done, because this particular young man was diagnosed with this

00:01:08.880 | serious and aggressive form of cancer in his early 20s.

00:01:12.320 | For the last few years he has battled the cancer and at present the prognosis is good.

00:01:16.960 | The cancer has gone into remission and he has recently married his long-time girlfriend

00:01:22.440 | who was with him through the medical trial they have recently married and are now building

00:01:26.880 | their life together as a married couple.

00:01:29.440 | But of course this particular type of health diagnosis and this particular type of health

00:01:34.200 | history changes the normal tone of a relationship a little bit.

00:01:39.100 | It brings mortality much more quickly into view, causes a more intense seriousness, and

00:01:45.320 | brings with it a couple of challenging circumstances for financial planning.

00:01:51.040 | If you've ever personally experienced an ongoing health problem or you've ever worked with

00:01:56.320 | somebody, you know how important good insurance is to somebody in that circumstance.

00:02:01.240 | There are many people who have severe medical conditions and the only reason they work is

00:02:06.040 | to maintain a good, solid, low-cost health insurance plan.

00:02:11.360 | There are many people who have severe health histories, and when that happens, the existing

00:02:17.400 | insurance portfolio, life insurance, disability income insurance, and health insurance, really

00:02:22.680 | make a big difference.

00:02:24.400 | Now thankfully my friend and client is doing better now, so I'm very pleased for that.

00:02:31.320 | But we spent some time working to say, "How do you plan for your wife as a husband?

00:02:37.160 | How do you plan for your wife and potentially children in the future when you can't get

00:02:42.080 | life insurance?"

00:02:43.840 | And this is something I've thought a lot about and I thought it would be interesting for

00:02:47.160 | me to share with you the advice that I gave to him.

00:02:50.600 | Now I hope that you'll listen to this with two things in mind.

00:02:55.480 | One is of course, well three things.

00:02:57.400 | One, get life insurance.

00:02:59.440 | Life insurance is the simplest and easiest way to do it.

00:03:02.240 | An average healthy 20 or 30-year-old man or woman could get a million dollars of term

00:03:06.560 | life insurance for under 50 bucks a month, anywhere from 30, 40, 50 bucks a month.

00:03:14.640 | It's simple and it's inexpensive.

00:03:17.200 | Get life insurance.

00:03:18.500 | And also take my advice on life insurance seriously.

00:03:21.160 | When I talk about why I shy away from things like 10-year level term insurance in favor

00:03:27.600 | of other approaches, it's stories like this.

00:03:30.560 | As a financial planner, it's really frustrating to know of a circumstance where good planning

00:03:36.560 | that allowed options in the future would have made the difference.

00:03:40.140 | And that's why so much advice, especially around life insurance, is short-sighted.

00:03:44.180 | It assumes things don't change.

00:03:46.700 | The weird thing about, just like if you work as a firefighter, you see a lot of people

00:03:51.700 | broken, a lot of dead bodies and hurt bodies because people don't wear their seatbelts.

00:03:58.540 | And so you probably are an advocate for seatbelts and airbags in cars and safe driving.

00:04:03.420 | If you're a police officer, you encounter so much violence on a regular basis that you

00:04:07.900 | become an advocate for people to prepare themselves against violence.

00:04:10.700 | And the same thing as a financial planner.

00:04:12.620 | If you've worked as a financial planner, as I have, you become an advocate for recognizing

00:04:16.740 | that life will change.

00:04:18.420 | And so these small probability events, like a healthy mid-20s male getting a serious and

00:04:26.560 | aggressive form of cancer and almost dying, these small probability events take on much

00:04:32.540 | more significance.

00:04:34.060 | And it changes you.

00:04:35.900 | It has changed me as a financial planner.

00:04:38.060 | I don't deny the unlikely probability, but here's the problem with probabilities.

00:04:43.460 | Although something may be statistically unlikely, as measured of percentage, number of people

00:04:52.100 | affected per 100,000, very statistically unlikely, but if it happens to you, it's devastating.

00:04:58.940 | So many people can go through their lives never having life insurance, never having

00:05:02.580 | homeowner's insurance, never having car insurance.

00:05:05.600 | Many people can go through their lives and never have a problem.

00:05:08.740 | But if it happens to you, it's devastating.

00:05:10.220 | That's the whole problem with insurance.

00:05:12.620 | So one is I encourage you to think carefully and properly insure yourself now while you

00:05:19.740 | don't need it.

00:05:21.180 | You may be glad you do.

00:05:22.880 | And even in this particular case, this young man didn't have parents, or sorry, he had

00:05:26.220 | parents, but wasn't married at the time.

00:05:28.060 | He had a girlfriend, I think, when he originally had his initial cancer diagnosis.

00:05:31.980 | But people ask me, "Joshua, why do you recommend to single people they get life insurance?

00:05:35.760 | They don't need it."

00:05:36.760 | No, technically, I agree, you don't need it.

00:05:39.000 | But I tell you what, when you have been living with your parents, fighting cancer for a few

00:05:45.200 | years and they've been paying your bills, taking you places to treatments, when you've

00:05:50.340 | been with your girlfriend and she's been sticking by you in difficult times, and then if you

00:05:56.880 | knew you were going to die, it may help you to feel a little bit better to be able to

00:06:03.080 | just take out your half a million or million dollar term life insurance policy and make

00:06:08.440 | sure that that beneficiary designation is sending some money to your parents and to

00:06:12.720 | your girlfriend.

00:06:13.720 | No, it's not technically necessary because they're not reliant upon you for your income.

00:06:20.720 | Technically, that's true.

00:06:21.720 | I admit that.

00:06:22.720 | I concede the point.

00:06:25.020 | But I just put myself in that situation and I would feel a lot better.

00:06:30.560 | And if I knew that my parents were going to go through grief of my dying because I had

00:06:34.480 | cancer, and I knew they had incurred heavy financial costs and lifestyle costs from their

00:06:40.520 | multi-year care for me, and then if I knew I were headed for death, I would feel better

00:06:46.700 | about at least knowing that when I die, a couple hundred thousand dollars will help

00:06:51.320 | them to be able to perhaps take a little time to grieve for me and yet not to feel financial

00:06:57.720 | pressure and to repay them in some small way for some of the financial costs that they

00:07:02.920 | have incurred.

00:07:03.920 | So life insurance is very, very useful, and it's why I'm such a steady advocate of life

00:07:09.240 | insurance.

00:07:10.680 | It's just so helpful.

00:07:11.720 | So that's one thing to listen to.

00:07:13.960 | But also, listen in the context of today's show, listen for both this particular unique

00:07:20.620 | creative approach to how do you plan when you can't get life insurance, but also think

00:07:24.760 | about financial independence and financial freedom.

00:07:27.240 | Because many of the things that I'm going to describe to you in this show are basically

00:07:30.600 | the same things that you do for financial independence and financial freedom.

00:07:35.160 | In essence, we're trying to solve the same problem here.

00:07:38.560 | We're trying to say, "How do I make sure that somebody's able to continue on when I die,

00:07:44.680 | but knowing that I can't leave money behind?"

00:07:49.680 | So that's the problem that we're going to solve.

00:07:52.560 | So first, for anybody who is in this situation, if you can't get life insurance, the first

00:07:58.620 | thing you need to know is it may actually be possible for you to get it if you shop

00:08:03.440 | hard enough.

00:08:04.960 | And here I would refer you back to episode 204 of Radical Personal Finance.

00:08:12.940 | That episode was titled, "A Behind-the-Scenes Look into High-Risk Life Insurance Underwriting."

00:08:17.520 | It was an interview with a friend of mine named Todd Simpson, who specializes in high-risk

00:08:21.960 | life insurance.

00:08:22.960 | Let's go back and listen to episode 204, because sometimes what one agent may not be able to

00:08:27.480 | get done, another agent may be able to get done.

00:08:29.960 | There are hundreds of life insurance companies that are all competing for business.

00:08:33.920 | And there are some companies who may not want your business because of your personal medical

00:08:39.320 | profile, but there are other companies that may want your business.

00:08:42.600 | Now generally with cancer, if somebody has had a recent cancer diagnosis, the answer

00:08:46.080 | is no.

00:08:47.080 | The company will take that.

00:08:48.520 | At least for about five years is the industry standard.

00:08:52.120 | What life insurance companies get very concerned about is being confronted with medical change.

00:08:58.760 | They don't like change, because change is hard to predict.

00:09:02.360 | So they don't like somebody who's recently had a health condition diagnosed, and they

00:09:07.080 | don't like somebody who's recently been cleared of a previous medical diagnosis.

00:09:13.840 | They want time, because time brings stability to the diagnosis.

00:09:17.760 | So with cancer, if you have survived a cancer diagnosis, frequently you may be able to go

00:09:24.160 | ahead and get a policy, but usually it'll be at least about five years after your diagnosis.

00:09:30.080 | But reach out to multiple life insurance agents.

00:09:32.720 | Try to reach with somebody who specializes in high-risk life insurance cases and who

00:09:37.920 | has personal expertise.

00:09:40.440 | So if you have diabetes, if you have heart disease, if you have a cancer history, if

00:09:44.000 | you have some other medical condition, and if you need life insurance, then remember

00:09:48.800 | to go and just work hard and work with multiple agents.

00:09:52.040 | It's worth the search.

00:09:53.560 | Don't just go to some website.

00:09:54.780 | Go to an agent and do your best to get life insurance.

00:09:57.920 | You may be able to do it.

00:09:59.640 | The next suggestion for you is go ahead and try to get insurance when there is no medical

00:10:06.160 | underwriting required.

00:10:07.960 | Now here's where you get the value of a group insurance contract.

00:10:12.540 | With many companies, many companies provide as a package of their benefits a group life

00:10:19.400 | insurance contract.

00:10:21.000 | And frequently a group life insurance contract will either be issued with no medical underwriting

00:10:27.760 | or simplified medical underwriting.

00:10:30.940 | The norm here is one-time salary.

00:10:33.600 | But depending on the business that you work in or the company that you work with, there

00:10:37.120 | may be a larger number.

00:10:38.720 | I've worked with a number of clients over the years who have very high amounts of group

00:10:43.360 | life insurance as a component of that firm's benefits.

00:10:47.620 | So you should look for any kind of life insurance that you can get without medical underwriting.

00:10:53.800 | Don't despise it even if it's a relatively small amount.

00:10:57.720 | You might like to have a million or two million dollars of life insurance, but you might only

00:11:01.900 | be able to get $50,000 of life insurance.

00:11:05.040 | But $50,000 goes a long way towards giving your spouse a few months to recover, towards

00:11:13.160 | wrapping up some medical bills, towards getting some breathing room, etc.

00:11:16.600 | So don't despise a small amount.

00:11:19.400 | Also remember that group contracts can be changed.

00:11:22.980 | So if you have a position of influence and you would like to change the group contract,

00:11:27.960 | you could always try to work with somebody to see if they could enhance the group contract.

00:11:32.360 | The chances of that happening are low, but you might be in a position where that could

00:11:36.200 | happen and a reworking of group benefits could qualify you for an additional amount of insurance.

00:11:43.280 | And don't despise small bits of life insurance.

00:11:45.640 | You may be able to join an organization or an association, and frequently an organization

00:11:52.880 | or association would entitle you to be able to get a small amount of life insurance, and

00:12:01.840 | that could be very helpful for you.

00:12:03.480 | So obviously try to get life insurance and try to get it in any way that you possibly

00:12:09.000 | can, even if it's in small amounts.

00:12:11.680 | If you have $0 of life insurance and you can put together a $10,000 policy that was guaranteed

00:12:17.000 | issue, no underwriting, it's a little bit expensive, but that covers you, and then $25,000

00:12:22.680 | from joining some organization that was marketing to you, and then a one or two-time salary

00:12:29.400 | at work, you may be able to put together enough life insurance to be meaningful for your family.

00:12:35.240 | Next, before we get into the creative approaches that don't involve financial products, let's

00:12:44.320 | talk about some unique financial products that might help you and are worth your paying

00:12:51.120 | attention to.

00:12:53.040 | So let's start with other insurance programs.

00:12:58.440 | Life insurance, if you think about what it's designed to fund, there are a number of things

00:13:03.080 | that it's designed to fund.

00:13:04.700 | One is debt.

00:13:05.960 | One is paying off debt for a surviving spouse.

00:13:09.560 | Another would be providing income for an ongoing period for a surviving spouse, and another

00:13:14.640 | example of what it would fund is taking care of things like medical bills.

00:13:19.040 | Frequently somebody will acquire medical bills towards the end of their life, and so life

00:13:22.840 | insurance can be helpful to pay off some of those medical bills.

00:13:26.600 | But if you think about that, you may be able to substitute an alternative insurance product

00:13:30.680 | that would help with that.

00:13:32.040 | Here's where you get the value of a strong health insurance contract.

00:13:35.640 | So you may not be able to get life insurance, but can you make sure that your health insurance

00:13:39.120 | contract is the strongest you could possibly get, or a disability insurance contract is

00:13:44.280 | the strongest that you could get?

00:13:46.160 | If you think about a health diagnosis like cancer, somebody who has a severe form of

00:13:50.720 | cancer, they are weakened by their cancer treatment, they're unable to work.

00:13:54.920 | If somebody has good disability income insurance during that period of time, they can at least

00:14:00.200 | have an income, and that income can go to help their family.

00:14:03.380 | So don't be scared if you're in a situation like this.

00:14:06.440 | Don't be scared to change jobs or change companies just based upon the overall package of benefits,

00:14:13.320 | the overall package of a strong group long-term disability insurance contract that doesn't

00:14:18.320 | require personal underwriting and medical qualification, or a strong health insurance

00:14:24.960 | contract that will result in relatively low out-of-pocket costs for you.

00:14:29.720 | Those types of products can help to minimize the potential for you to have large medical

00:14:36.000 | expenses.

00:14:37.840 | The next type of financial product to consider is something that has a death benefit, and

00:14:42.640 | that death benefit is not individually underwritten.

00:14:45.360 | The most obvious example here is something like the value of an annuity contract.

00:14:50.520 | One of the recommendations that I made to my client was that he consider transitioning

00:14:55.440 | some of his investment dollars out of traditional mutual funds and into an annuity contract.

00:15:02.120 | Let me explain to you why.

00:15:04.560 | There are various kinds of annuities.

00:15:07.900 | In essence, an annuity contract is an insurance contract issued by an insurance company that

00:15:14.160 | is designed to function as the opposite of life insurance.

00:15:17.800 | A life insurance contract is a financial product that's designed to pay out a sum of money

00:15:22.360 | at death.

00:15:23.520 | You make premium payments into the contract, and then at death that contract pays out a

00:15:28.920 | large lump sum of money to a survivor.

00:15:32.600 | An annuity contract is, in its most traditional sense, designed to take a large amount of

00:15:38.040 | money as a lump sum and then to pay it out for somebody's entire lifetime.

00:15:44.400 | A traditional annuity contract, something that would go under the classification of

00:15:49.360 | what's called a single premium immediate annuity, would be a way for you to say, "Here, Mr.

00:15:54.480 | Insurance Company, I have $500,000.

00:15:57.440 | Will you please take my $500,000 from me and in exchange guarantee me a monthly payment

00:16:03.560 | of $4,000 per month every month for the rest of my life?" or some variation of that.

00:16:10.360 | That is a traditional annuity contract.

00:16:13.640 | However, that basic concept has been expanded into dozens and dozens of flavors of annuities.

00:16:23.640 | That traditional single premium immediate annuity can be affected in a number of ways.

00:16:29.200 | The two ways that are important in this context are these.

00:16:33.400 | First, you can change a single premium immediate annuity into a deferred annuity.

00:16:41.200 | A deferred annuity is a contract with a life insurance company wherein you can systematically

00:16:47.920 | either put in monthly payments or you can transfer in a lump sum, and then you can defer

00:16:55.040 | the receiving of money from that contract to the future.

00:16:59.540 | That's why it's called a deferred annuity.

00:17:02.500 | That can be very helpful.

00:17:04.440 | The second reason it can be helpful is in this way.

00:17:08.840 | You can take an annuity contract and you can choose to have it either be what's called

00:17:14.920 | a fixed annuity, which is a guaranteed fixed rate of interest that's guaranteed by the

00:17:19.840 | insurance company, or you can have what's called a variable annuity.

00:17:24.040 | A variable annuity is an investment product that features an underlying investment account

00:17:30.120 | or group of accounts, and that performance of that underlying account or group of accounts

00:17:36.840 | creates within the context of the annuity contract an underlying investment return.

00:17:42.280 | In the world of annuities, these are called variable subaccounts.

00:17:46.460 | They function in basic equivalence to a mutual fund.

00:17:51.440 | A mutual fund in the open marketplace just simply is taken and brought under the wrapper

00:17:56.760 | of the insurance contract, and it's called a variable subaccount.

00:18:00.280 | Frequently, if you're working with a large annuity provider, you would have the ability

00:18:04.520 | to purchase shares in exactly the same internal account.

00:18:11.920 | The big mutual company growth and income fund could be labeled publicly and privately.

00:18:20.160 | You'll frequently see if you look at an insurance company, you look at their subaccounts, you'll

00:18:24.040 | see the names of the management companies, and you'll also see the specific products

00:18:31.120 | listed.

00:18:32.120 | So it allows you to own mutual funds inside of an annuity contract.

00:18:36.200 | Now sometimes, this is a bad idea, frequently these types of variable annuities get a bad

00:18:42.460 | wrap in the personal finance space because they're more expensive.

00:18:46.500 | The reason they're more expensive is because an annuity contract adds an additional insurance

00:18:51.800 | charge onto the underlying investment fund expenses of the subaccount.

00:18:58.880 | If you think about the structure of an annuity contract, and you think about the fees that

00:19:04.880 | are paid, the first problem you have is the fees of the underlying subaccounts.

00:19:09.600 | If you have a fidelity fund that is in your annuity contract, and you have a fidelity

00:19:18.260 | fund that you're purchasing as an open-end mutual fund in the public market, you still

00:19:23.240 | in both of those cases have investment expenses.

00:19:26.300 | You have all of the fees for administrative costs, all of the fees that are paid to the

00:19:29.840 | investment managers, et cetera.

00:19:32.120 | And so those fees are going to be identical in your public open-end mutual fund that you

00:19:37.040 | purchase in the public market versus your individual subaccount that you can fund your

00:19:41.680 | variable annuity contract with.

00:19:43.280 | Those fees are going to be the same.

00:19:45.400 | And because frequently the funds that are in a subaccount are actively managed funds,

00:19:50.440 | those fees are high, just like all actively managed mutual funds are.

00:19:56.440 | But the second set of fees that get placed onto a variable annuity contract are what's

00:20:03.120 | called mortality and expense charges.

00:20:05.480 | And these fees can range from very small to very large, depending on the individual feature

00:20:11.360 | of the contract that is being offered.

00:20:13.980 | So some fees are simple and normal.

00:20:16.960 | We're just going to charge a small mortality and expense charge because we're an insurance

00:20:20.460 | company and we're going to make you this promise in the future.

00:20:23.520 | But then inside a variable annuity contract, sometimes you can add on additional enhanced

00:20:27.680 | benefits.

00:20:28.760 | The most meaningful in the context here of our financial planning scenario is what's

00:20:33.700 | called a guaranteed death benefit or some form of enhanced guaranteed death benefit.

00:20:40.280 | So the way it works is essentially this.

00:20:42.200 | Let's pretend that my client had $100,000 in a mutual fund.

00:20:46.120 | Well, he may be concerned about keeping that money in a mutual fund if he's concerned about

00:20:52.000 | providing that money for his wife.

00:20:54.600 | And in that context, here's the danger.

00:20:57.000 | If he keeps the money of $100,000 in the mutual fund and then he gets cancer, what happens

00:21:01.440 | if the market has declined by 30% when he gets cancer and has declined from $100,000

00:21:06.920 | of value to $70,000 of value?

00:21:09.760 | That could be very problematic because if he dies of cancer and his wife needs the money

00:21:14.560 | or if he needs to access it for his own expenses, he just can't afford to take the risk.

00:21:19.940 | And if he can't afford to take the risk, then he can't afford really in the long run to

00:21:23.040 | get the return.

00:21:24.340 | So how does he keep the money invested?

00:21:26.320 | It would be unwise for him to have all this money invested if he thought he were going

00:21:29.820 | to die relatively soon.

00:21:32.680 | But a death benefit and annuity contract can elegantly solve this problem.

00:21:37.600 | There are a number of different approaches to death benefits, and I'm going to give you

00:21:40.320 | just two very simple ones that are relatively inexpensive, and there are other annuity contracts

00:21:45.840 | that charge more for fancier death benefits.

00:21:50.400 | There's a whole line of annuity products that have a ratcheting death benefit that's beyond

00:21:55.400 | the scope of what I want to talk about today.

00:21:57.660 | But one form of death benefit is just a guaranteed return of the amount of money put into the

00:22:02.400 | contract.

00:22:03.400 | So in this case, if you put $100,000 into the contract and then the value of the underlying

00:22:11.280 | subaccounts in the contract decline because the stock market is declining, let's say the

00:22:16.160 | value declines from $100,000 to $70,000, and then you die, the insurance company will pay

00:22:22.000 | out your initial contribution of $100,000 to your beneficiaries.

00:22:28.040 | That can help you to keep your investments invested aggressively because you can know

00:22:34.820 | that at least you'll always get the return of the money that you've put in.

00:22:39.220 | That's the cheapest death benefit, and that's basically a standard option on almost all

00:22:44.080 | variable annuity contracts, at least that I have ever seen personally and studied the

00:22:47.480 | paperwork for.

00:22:49.420 | There are other benefits.

00:22:51.060 | One example of another type of death benefit that you can purchase is a small, what's called

00:22:56.980 | a ratcheting death benefit.

00:22:59.000 | The way that works is you have a death benefit on the contract that always goes up, and it

00:23:05.260 | always goes up at something like your policy anniversary.

00:23:09.300 | So in this example, if you invest $100,000 into the contract, and then a year from now

00:23:16.060 | that contract has grown to be $120,000, and then four years from now that contract has

00:23:22.660 | grown to be $150,000, each year on the policy anniversary, whatever the contract value of

00:23:29.740 | the account is, that becomes your new death benefit.

00:23:34.700 | Now after your new death benefit has reached $150,000, perhaps there is a recession and

00:23:40.300 | the value of your underlying investments decreases.

00:23:43.420 | You go from $150,000 to $100,000.

00:23:46.580 | The death benefit doesn't ratchet down, it only ratchets up.

00:23:51.000 | So you know that that $150,000 will always be available as a death benefit for your beneficiary.

00:23:58.120 | Even if the market is down for three or four years, at least you have that death benefit.

00:24:03.980 | That's the type of product that can be really helpful to somebody in this situation, because

00:24:08.980 | it solves the problem of allowing you to invest for the long term, allowing you to invest

00:24:15.340 | in potentially volatile assets like stocks, but to also make sure that you have a death

00:24:20.900 | benefit.

00:24:22.160 | And that can be a substantial benefit for someone in this circumstance, especially if

00:24:29.040 | they are someone who has a shortened lifespan.

00:24:34.320 | This may even help to engage in a little bit of adverse selection against the insurance

00:24:39.640 | company, because if you purchase a contract with this type of death benefit, then you

00:24:44.120 | personally have an incentive to perhaps consider investing the money as aggressively as possible.

00:24:53.620 | After all, if you're not going to use the cash while you're alive, you don't think,

00:24:58.640 | or you think it's possible that you might not use the cash while you're alive, then

00:25:02.600 | why not go ahead and invest in an aggressive portfolio, trying to aim for the largest growth,

00:25:09.840 | knowing that if the portfolio declines, at least you have the death benefit, and at least

00:25:14.280 | your family will do well.

00:25:16.660 | So that can work for someone in this circumstance.

00:25:21.080 | That's the best example I can think of as the value of looking at other types of insurance

00:25:25.680 | products and looking to see, is there a potential death benefit that I can get?

00:25:31.480 | And so you should seriously consider that if that plays a role in your plans.

00:25:37.400 | If I were in the type of situation that I'm describing, I would move many of my investment

00:25:44.480 | dollars out of open-end mutual funds.

00:25:46.900 | If I had open-end mutual funds, I would move them out of open-end mutual funds, and I would

00:25:50.520 | move them into an annuity, variable annuity, with a sub-account in order to get the benefit

00:25:56.560 | of that death benefit.

00:25:58.620 | Many people, it's not a significant benefit, and it can be a significant cost.

00:26:04.160 | Those additional mortality and expense charges can be significant, but that death benefit

00:26:09.680 | can be very valuable in a circumstance like I am describing.

00:26:13.400 | Now here would be another example of something you should consider.

00:26:17.940 | This would be appropriate if you were at an older age, not my mid-20s client, but if you

00:26:22.840 | were at an older age and you had something like an annuity or you had something like

00:26:27.080 | a sum of money, you should seriously consider your distribution plan from an annuity.

00:26:35.880 | Now if you are in a severe medical state, there do exist enhanced risk or increased

00:26:46.040 | risk annuity contracts, which are actually, the annuity payout is actually medically underwritten.

00:26:53.960 | Usually if you have a sum of money and you're trying to get a sum of money out of an annuity

00:26:59.120 | contract, usually there's no medical test for that.

00:27:03.360 | But there are increased risk products where they'll come and they'll say, "Okay, you

00:27:09.000 | have cancer.

00:27:10.100 | We think you're probably going to die at an early age, so we'll pay you an extra amount

00:27:13.040 | of money out of this annuity because of the fact that you have cancer."

00:27:16.880 | But in this context, if you knew that you were going to die soon, you would have good

00:27:20.120 | financial incentive to carefully consider what annuity payout you're going to choose

00:27:25.840 | for the benefit of your spouse.

00:27:27.800 | And you might choose a benefit that had the highest ongoing benefit for your surviving

00:27:32.680 | spouse so that instead of having something that was, for example, an annuity payout plan

00:27:37.900 | for you, a single life income only payout.

00:27:40.400 | That would be unwise because there's a good chance that the insurance company would keep

00:27:43.480 | all that money.

00:27:44.960 | But in the other case, if you were likely to die soon and your spouse were likely to

00:27:48.920 | not die for a long time, you would be wiser to, say, purchase a life income payout that

00:27:56.560 | would be the same amount for you and the same amount for her for the rest of your life.

00:28:00.600 | So carefully consider the various benefits and think of this in mind.

00:28:05.680 | Now let's get back out of the weeds of financial products, although hopefully those suggestions

00:28:10.360 | are helpful to you.

00:28:13.320 | Before we get out of the weeds, there are other potential products.

00:28:17.800 | Sometimes you can purchase a, you can consider things like a combo product.

00:28:24.280 | Sometimes there are life insurance and long-term care combination products.

00:28:28.600 | Usually those wouldn't work for somebody who's already had a medical diagnosis because of

00:28:34.480 | their, they wouldn't be able to qualify either for the long-term care or for the life insurance.

00:28:40.600 | But if you already have a product, sometimes you may be able to adjust the product that

00:28:45.040 | you have in order to fit your needs.

00:28:48.040 | So now let's get out of the weeds.

00:28:50.160 | The basic plan for finances is, basic plan for how to solve this problem is to try to

00:28:58.320 | figure out how to protect your spouse.

00:29:02.240 | And it depends, there's a big difference here depending on if you are already in a

00:29:06.000 | strong situation or if you're not in a strong financial situation.

00:29:11.040 | The ideal circumstance is you're already financially independent and you should be working towards

00:29:14.920 | that.

00:29:15.920 | Because if you're financially independent and then you die, by definition your spouse

00:29:20.040 | will continue to be financially independent.

00:29:21.840 | So I'm going to describe to you how I would do this if I received a cancer diagnosis and

00:29:26.960 | I had an expected lifespan of five to ten years.

00:29:29.840 | I'm going to explain to you how I would do this.

00:29:33.040 | First let's pretend that I get this diagnosis and I'm in a very difficult financial situation.

00:29:38.920 | If you know someone in this situation, I want you to learn this information so that you

00:29:42.520 | can go and help them and teach them, possibly refer them to this show so they can at least

00:29:46.520 | improve their circumstance the best way possible.

00:29:49.800 | Let's pretend that I am very financially unhealthy.

00:29:53.240 | I have a lot of debt, I'm having income problems, we have some assets but not a lot.

00:29:59.960 | This is common because by the time somebody gets a diagnosis, they frequently are already

00:30:04.680 | pretty deep in the hole.

00:30:06.280 | They frequently are accumulating credit card debt to pay for living expenses while they

00:30:10.080 | try to figure out what's wrong with their health situation.

00:30:13.500 | They're frequently accumulating credit card debt and draining down assets to pay for additional

00:30:18.080 | medical costs, co-pays, medications that aren't covered under health insurance, etc.

00:30:22.780 | And so frequently by the time somebody gets a terminal diagnosis, they are in a deep place

00:30:30.080 | financially.

00:30:31.600 | So let me describe what I would do if I were in a situation.

00:30:35.920 | The first thing that I would try to do is I would try to figure out how I could minimize

00:30:40.720 | the burden on my wife, who I would expect to survive me by a long period of time.

00:30:46.800 | And I would use every trick that I know to try to make sure that she is not liable for

00:30:53.400 | any debts, if at all possible, and to make sure that she has as much money as possible

00:30:59.820 | set aside for her.

00:31:02.200 | Now you need to be careful in some of these circumstances because you face the risk, if

00:31:06.920 | you are structuring your transactions, you face the risk of a court coming back and undoing

00:31:16.760 | your work.

00:31:17.760 | An example is this.

00:31:19.680 | I know I'm going to die next week, and so the last thing I do is go and take a cash

00:31:24.800 | advance on my credit card.

00:31:26.360 | Let's say I have a $50,000 limit and I take out a $40,000 cash advance for my credit card.

00:31:31.760 | I take that money and I give it to my brother, thinking that when I die, that at least he'll

00:31:39.400 | have the money and that debt, well, they're never going to collect it.

00:31:43.160 | That's a pretty big risk.

00:31:44.520 | That's a pretty significant potential problem.

00:31:47.520 | And I think there would be a good case for the credit card company to sue your estate

00:31:51.360 | and try to claw back that money from your brother.

00:31:54.840 | That's a serious and significant...that would be...I think they would have a good legal

00:32:00.320 | case there.

00:32:01.320 | I'm not aware of any case history, but I think they would have in that circumstance a good

00:32:06.560 | legal case.

00:32:08.400 | However, you can use the same approach yourself in perhaps a more practical way.

00:32:14.760 | The basic thing I would first look at is I would look at all of our assets and I would

00:32:18.480 | try to say, "What is the ownership of our assets?

00:32:22.720 | What is the ownership of our house?"

00:32:24.120 | If we own a house, are we both on the deed?

00:32:27.440 | What's the ownership of our vehicles?

00:32:29.440 | What's the ownership of our personal assets?

00:32:32.240 | What is the ownership of our accounts?

00:32:37.040 | How are our accounts structured, our bank accounts, etc.?

00:32:40.320 | If all of those things are joint accounts, I would do my best to start a process of transferring

00:32:47.120 | assets from joint ownership into my wife's ownership exclusively.

00:32:52.160 | Again, in my scenario, I'm pretending that I'm going to die.

00:32:54.600 | I've got a few years of a diagnosis and my wife is going to survive me.

00:32:58.960 | I would try to transfer all of my assets out of my name and into my wife's name.

00:33:04.880 | As best we can, I would try to make a clear legal distinction in the ownership of assets

00:33:11.160 | and I want to move the assets over to her.

00:33:14.280 | I want to do this early, as early as I possibly can, so that we don't run the risk of right

00:33:21.480 | at the end trying to make some kind of transfer and then somebody sues us as a fraudulent

00:33:26.960 | transaction.

00:33:28.180 | There is no reason in the world why I can't give my wife everything I own.

00:33:32.640 | It's not a fraudulent transaction, but in the way that I do it, I should be wise and

00:33:38.480 | circumspect in the actual approach that I use.

00:33:43.600 | So I would work on that.

00:33:45.320 | I would go so far as to say, if I own something and it's already jointly owned, can I make

00:33:51.060 | an intelligent trade so that my wife will wind up owning whatever the next thing is?

00:33:56.440 | So an example here would be a house.

00:33:59.080 | In a moment I'll talk about making sure that the house would be financially sustainable

00:34:02.320 | for my family after I die.

00:34:04.440 | But if we own a house together and I can't just quit claiming and get that out of my

00:34:09.320 | name, which would be hard because of the way that at least most houses would be owned,

00:34:14.760 | I would consider selling the house and I would say, can we downsize into a small house, but

00:34:19.400 | when we buy the next one, can I make sure that my wife is the one who owns it fully?

00:34:25.080 | And then I'm moving things out of my estate.

00:34:28.800 | The second thing I would try to do is I would try to transfer all of the debt in the house

00:34:33.720 | under my name.

00:34:34.720 | Oh, anything possible, I would transfer liabilities into my name.

00:34:39.040 | When you die, your estate has to stand good and pay your debts.

00:34:48.640 | But just because that is true doesn't mean you have to have a big, healthy estate of

00:34:53.820 | lots of assets to pay lots of debts.

00:34:56.920 | So I want to disconnect, as much as we can figure out how to do, I want to disconnect

00:35:04.040 | our asset ownership and move everything that we own into her name and then refinance and

00:35:09.720 | move all the debt into my name.

00:35:12.440 | If we have joint credit cards that have balances, I'm going to apply for new credit cards in

00:35:17.660 | my name and I'm going to use those new credit cards to pay off the balance of the old credit

00:35:23.340 | cards.

00:35:24.340 | The goal is that my name is on all the debt and her name is on all the assets.

00:35:29.180 | That will help to make sure that when I die, she's not stuck owing a lot of money.

00:35:38.200 | Additionally what I would do is I would try to make sure that our assets that we do own

00:35:44.920 | are held in protected accounts.

00:35:47.880 | The most important types of accounts here are retirement accounts.

00:35:52.540 | This sometimes cannot be workable because of the high expenses.

00:35:56.520 | If you have high expenses to keep yourself going, it may not work.

00:36:00.900 | But I would try to make sure that any money that we have is moved into retirement accounts.

00:36:07.900 | So if, for example, we have $100,000 in the bank and we have $0 in a 401(k), I'm going

00:36:16.780 | to divert as much of our income into that 401(k) account as possible and minimize the

00:36:24.580 | number of money that we have in the bank.

00:36:27.260 | This helps me to move assets from insecure places, as in the bank, into more secured

00:36:33.620 | places, into my 401(k) accounts, which are protected from the claims of creditors.

00:36:38.260 | This will help to protect my wife, especially if I have a significant account balance.

00:36:44.480 | She will be the beneficiary of that account.

00:36:46.740 | That account is secure from the claims of creditors.

00:36:49.400 | And even if she owed money, let's say that I weren't able to get all the debt into

00:36:55.340 | my name so that it would die with me, even if she owed money, at least the money that's

00:37:00.840 | in the 401(k) would be secure from the claims of her creditors.

00:37:04.060 | And that would help to assure her future retirement.

00:37:07.540 | She may need to declare bankruptcy after I'm dead.

00:37:10.440 | She may have to go through that process.

00:37:12.700 | At least the money that's in those accounts is protected.

00:37:15.700 | A 401(k) account, an IRA account, hopefully in your state, it has that same level of protection.

00:37:23.020 | These types of accounts are very helpful.

00:37:25.100 | Also things like annuities.

00:37:27.060 | If you have them, you can fund annuities.

00:37:29.800 | That gives you some creditor protection.

00:37:31.780 | It's not quite as strong as a 401(k), but it's going to do the job.

00:37:36.220 | And fund these accounts and move the assets as much as you can out beyond the reach of

00:37:43.540 | your creditors.

00:37:45.280 | In addition, make sure that you minimize the ownership of money that's in accounts.

00:37:52.540 | So move money out of the bank, move it into cash.

00:37:55.220 | Move money out of the bank, move it into hard assets.

00:37:58.860 | Assets that can be owned by your wife and are not as easily traced as money that's sitting

00:38:04.400 | in a bank account.

00:38:06.200 | Don't waste the opportunity to make sure.

00:38:10.960 | Your number one goal in this situation should be to care for your loved ones.

00:38:14.960 | Long-time listeners of Radical Personal Finance know I very much want you to always stand

00:38:22.000 | good for what you owe.

00:38:24.240 | I want your debts to be paid.

00:38:26.160 | But I want people who are in a difficult situation to be equipped with knowledge.

00:38:32.260 | I despise hearing about families who are facing cancer and their credit card companies are

00:38:40.200 | calling and they start cashing money out of the 401(k) in order to pay the credit cards.

00:38:46.320 | Usually that's the wrong plan.

00:38:48.200 | Don't pay the credit cards.

00:38:49.580 | They knew what they were going into.

00:38:51.000 | It was a business deal.

00:38:52.480 | You'll pay them when you can, but while you're dealing with it, keep your protection in place

00:38:56.560 | for you.

00:38:57.960 | So big picture, transfer liabilities into the estate of the sick spouse, transfer assets

00:39:04.900 | into the estate of the healthy spouse.

00:39:09.680 | Hopefully you've avoided debt in the first place.

00:39:11.720 | I would not.

00:39:12.780 | If you're in a strong financial position, don't go out and just start racking up debts.

00:39:17.260 | That's not a good plan and you put yourself in legal jeopardy, especially if you've done

00:39:20.760 | it intentionally with an intent to defraud the insurance company or the financing company.

00:39:25.480 | Don't do it.

00:39:26.480 | Just avoid debt in the first place.

00:39:27.720 | But if you're already in a difficult situation, try to protect yourself as much as possible.

00:39:32.040 | Second, try to move your debt from any kind of secured debt to unsecured debt.

00:39:38.960 | If my wife and I own a car and I know that I'm going to die and we owe $10,000 on the

00:39:43.960 | car, I'm going to try to move $10,000 of car debt off of the car onto a credit card, which

00:39:52.020 | is an unsecured debt, so that at least my wife will have the car and not worry about

00:39:57.280 | the car getting repossessed.

00:40:00.120 | If it were feasible with a mortgage, example in the state of Florida, where I live, in

00:40:05.680 | the state of Florida, all of your homestead is protected from the claims of creditors.

00:40:12.460 | So if I had a $40,000 mortgage balance remaining on my home and if I had $40,000 of credit

00:40:18.400 | line available on my credit cards, I would do a cash advance and I would take the money

00:40:23.760 | from my credit cards and use it to pay off my home.

00:40:27.600 | You need to be careful there because of course that comes with massive difference of fees

00:40:32.080 | and charges, etc.

00:40:34.200 | But conceptually, if it's possible to do that, conceptually I want to pay off secured debt.

00:40:41.480 | My goal is when I die, I want my wife to own as many assets as possible.

00:40:47.360 | Next, plan your assets so that the debt is sealed off as much as possible.

00:40:54.440 | Pretend my particular client has a portfolio of rental properties.

00:40:58.920 | Let's say that you have five houses, six houses, and on your six houses, each of your house

00:41:04.560 | has a 50% loan to value ratio.

00:41:09.040 | So you have 50% of the value of the house is mortgaged on each of the properties and

00:41:13.280 | that's spread across all of the assets.

00:41:16.760 | If I were in the situation, I would try to renegotiate and refinance the houses so I

00:41:23.240 | could move the debt from each of the houses onto half the portfolio.

00:41:29.360 | I would rather have three houses owned without mortgages and three houses owned with mortgages

00:41:36.040 | than have six houses with 50% mortgages.

00:41:39.440 | That way, hopefully my wife will be able to continue paying everything.

00:41:43.480 | We can pay the mortgages off, she'll continue to own those rentals, et cetera.

00:41:46.760 | But if we get into trouble and we can't pay them, maybe our finances are drained because

00:41:50.920 | of our medical condition, if we can't pay those mortgages, I want to make sure that

00:41:55.640 | if at all possible, we don't lose all the houses.

00:41:58.160 | We'll only lose a couple of the houses.

00:42:00.520 | So try to seal off your debt as much as possible.

00:42:03.960 | If your family owns three cars and they all have car payments, consider refinancing them

00:42:09.120 | and moving the financing onto one of them.

00:42:11.040 | So at least two of them are owned without debt.

00:42:24.440 | Managing debt and assets properly, I think will make a big, big difference.

00:42:29.840 | Now in thinking further about the situation, I think it's important for us to start and

00:42:34.560 | to think about what would we need life insurance for?

00:42:38.880 | What would I do if I were diagnosed and someone says, "Joshua, you have five years to live.

00:42:45.000 | Could be longer, could be shorter, but we think you're going to have five years to live."

00:42:48.320 | I would think very, very carefully about how do I provide for the family's needs knowing

00:42:55.880 | that I can't get life insurance.

00:42:58.200 | By way of inspiration, I remember when I was a young child, my family visited a family

00:43:03.280 | who had, the father had died.

00:43:06.720 | By my memory, the family was large, they had a large number of children.

00:43:10.440 | But I was impressed even as a child that although the father had died early with a house full

00:43:14.880 | of young children, this family was in a good situation.

00:43:19.680 | Why?

00:43:20.680 | Well, they had moved to a rural area with a low cost of living.

00:43:25.040 | They had built from scratch their own home, a beautiful log home.

00:43:28.380 | This was in Montana.

00:43:29.380 | We were visiting a beautiful log home in Montana.

00:43:32.080 | The home was built with no debt.

00:43:34.380 | They had developed a family-run business.

00:43:38.720 | And when the father died, the family was able to continue on because they had no debt, they

00:43:45.160 | had low expenses, and they had a family-run business.

00:43:49.520 | Even at an early age, I appreciated that testimony.

00:43:52.160 | That was a father who took his responsibility seriously.

00:43:56.600 | Life insurance is a wonderful invention, but thoughtful people have been planning for the

00:44:02.020 | well-being of their families since long before life insurance were ever invented.

00:44:08.580 | And the way you do it is to go back to those fundamentals.

00:44:12.680 | What are those things that a family would need?

00:44:15.840 | What are they fundamentally?

00:44:18.300 | So let's talk through them.

00:44:19.380 | The first thing would be obvious expenses like burial costs.

00:44:22.600 | Well, if I knew that I were going to die, I would go ahead and have my plywood casket

00:44:29.600 | built.

00:44:30.600 | I would build it myself or have a buddy build it so that when I died, my casket were sitting

00:44:34.360 | right there.

00:44:35.360 | My wife didn't have to deal with going and finding that.

00:44:38.440 | Archives of Radical Personal Finance, we talked about how to get buried inexpensively.

00:44:42.440 | If I knew I were going to die, I would figure out where is my body going to be buried, and

00:44:46.120 | I would do it as cheaply as possible.

00:44:48.120 | If the laws allow us to just plant me under the oak tree out back, then I'll figure out

00:44:52.640 | who's going to talk to my buddies.

00:44:54.760 | "Hey, you two, when I die, you come over and you dig the grave.

00:44:57.840 | I need to go in there.

00:44:59.160 | I'll buy the book on how to care for the body and make sure that there are people who have

00:45:05.440 | been trained and who have learned how are we going to care for my body when I die so

00:45:08.800 | that my wife doesn't have to be the one to do that."

00:45:11.560 | If we get to the funeral, I'm going to plan out the funeral, and I'm going to say, "Here's

00:45:14.760 | what's going to happen.

00:45:15.760 | Here's where it's going to be.

00:45:16.880 | We're not having some ridiculous $10,000 funeral.

00:45:20.480 | Here's where we're going to do the funeral cheap.

00:45:22.440 | What's the building we're going to use?

00:45:23.560 | Who's got a house?

00:45:24.560 | Who's got a backyard?"

00:45:25.560 | I would work to arrange those circumstances as much as possible.

00:45:29.200 | I would do everything possible to minimize burial expenses and minimize emotional trauma

00:45:35.360 | for my grieving wife so that she doesn't have to face those things.

00:45:39.720 | And here's where good planning will result in a lower outlay.

00:45:44.720 | By planning in advance what would be necessary for the funeral, by going ahead and getting

00:45:48.800 | the coffin, if we buy it at Walmart or have it shipped in or build it out of plywood,

00:45:54.840 | let's get the coffin squared away, let's get the burial squared away, let's get the people

00:45:58.280 | assigned, let's figure out what's going to be done so that when the number gets filled

00:46:02.320 | in on the exact day of my death, then it's just a matter of, "Here's the book.

00:46:06.560 | Here's the manual.

00:46:07.560 | Here's what you do."

00:46:08.560 | That lowers burial expenses.

00:46:10.560 | That's a big deal because frequently a grieving spouse just lost their husband, just lost

00:46:16.660 | their wife.

00:46:17.660 | A grieving spouse will look at that and say, "Well, I've got to provide for this funeral,"

00:46:21.440 | and frequently all of a sudden there's $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 out of pocket.

00:46:26.320 | If you want to go a more traditional route, you tackle it head on, go meet with the person,

00:46:30.800 | make the burial arrangements, buy the plot, whatever the situation is.

00:46:34.540 | But I would personally take the cheap route.

00:46:38.840 | I don't want people spending $1,000 on a coffin that's going to rot in the ground, build it

00:46:43.560 | out of plywood, ask a couple of buddies of mine to do that.

00:46:46.660 | So that's the first thing.

00:46:48.180 | The second thing is what about immediate expenses, immediately following my death?

00:46:55.700 | Not funeral expenses, but immediate expenses.

00:46:57.820 | Well, that's where I've talked about assets already.

00:47:00.340 | I want to make sure that assets are transitioned.

00:47:02.860 | I'm going to make sure that we have no money in the bank.

00:47:06.100 | All of the money that was in the bank has been turned into cash and hard assets.

00:47:11.340 | For example, food.

00:47:13.140 | How is my family going to eat?

00:47:15.220 | Well, you can solve the eating problem more directly than just saying, "I need $10,000

00:47:26.620 | of life insurance to solve the food."

00:47:28.500 | I would go ahead and get busy and say, "Here's how we're going to solve the food problem.

00:47:32.420 | First thing we're going to do, we're going to store food."

00:47:34.460 | I would feel a whole lot better.

00:47:35.900 | If I've got five years to prepare, I'd feel a whole lot better knowing that our family

00:47:40.500 | has a couple of years of food stored up in reserve so that my children aren't going to

00:47:46.660 | go hungry and my wife's not going to starve.

00:47:50.660 | Then looking at an empty pantry.

00:47:52.700 | Well, guess what?

00:47:54.100 | If you get serious about food storage, a couple thousand bucks can buy enough food to keep

00:48:01.460 | my family going for a few years of just simply stored food.

00:48:06.980 | You better believe I'm taking my credit card down to Costco.

00:48:09.700 | I'm buying bags of rice.

00:48:10.940 | I'm buying bags of bean.

00:48:11.940 | I'm buying flats of vegetables.

00:48:14.260 | These are hard assets.

00:48:16.940 | I'm going to make sure that my family's need for food is met.

00:48:21.620 | Now, another context would be food production.

00:48:25.820 | Do we have a way to produce food?

00:48:28.420 | If I've got small children, how am I going to make sure that my children are going to

00:48:33.380 | be able to eat?

00:48:34.620 | Now, with my family's approach, I would want very much my wife to be able to fulfill the

00:48:41.260 | vision that we have for our family and not to immediately have to say, "Well, she's just

00:48:47.500 | got to go and get a 40 or 50 hour a week job."

00:48:51.220 | I would work really hard to figure out a new living situation that would allow our family

00:48:56.140 | to produce more of our food.

00:48:59.660 | Children can be very, very helpful in the garden.

00:49:01.580 | So I get busy and say, "How can we get the garden planted?

00:49:04.020 | How can we turn our—let's rip out the lawn in the front yard, rip out the lawn in the

00:49:07.300 | backyard and let's get the garden in so that my family can eat."

00:49:11.220 | Simple things like shelter.

00:49:13.560 | I would change whatever circumstance necessary in order to have shelter.

00:49:18.700 | If I knew I were probably going to die, let's say that we were living in a fancier house,

00:49:22.340 | perhaps we have a mortgage, we're living in a fancier house, but we know that there's

00:49:27.980 | a good chance that that was based upon our higher income with me working and being productive,

00:49:33.060 | but now I might die.

00:49:34.340 | Well, let's move into a small house.

00:49:37.020 | Perhaps we can own that house debt free so that way I can at least know my wife's not

00:49:40.460 | going to be evicted from our house.

00:49:45.340 | Now if we don't have money, I'm going to work really diligently to try to figure out what

00:49:48.940 | relationship capital can we use to make sure that my family's cared for.

00:49:57.280 | Do my parents have an ability to take us in or to build an addition or put a mobile home

00:50:02.700 | out back of their house?

00:50:04.700 | How are we going to make sure that a shelter is cared for?

00:50:08.180 | If you look at the problem and you disconnect it from life insurance and you study it in

00:50:12.340 | the context of shelter, now you have an opportunity to fix it.

00:50:21.380 | If your problem is shelter and you approach it as shelter saying, "How can I get shelter?"

00:50:26.020 | then you can start your creative juices going.

00:50:29.100 | We might just be buying a big fifth wheel trailer and parking it out back of mom and

00:50:32.860 | dad's house, but at least my wife and children aren't going to be on the street.

00:50:39.500 | We might be building a tiny house.

00:50:41.220 | We might be parking a single wide trailer out back somewhere, depending on a friend

00:50:47.120 | or family member who has some rural acreage, but at least I can plan for shelter.

00:50:52.980 | How do I provide shelter for my family?

00:50:56.860 | Education.

00:50:58.660 | One of the major costs that when I do a life insurance analysis that I plan for is education.

00:51:04.180 | Frequently we sit down with the parents and say, "Well, how much money do you want for

00:51:08.300 | college, for high school?

00:51:11.560 | How much money do you want for college?

00:51:12.780 | Do you want to plan for private school, public school, et cetera?"

00:51:15.580 | And usually there's some amount of money there for education.

00:51:18.020 | Hold on.

00:51:19.020 | If I don't have the ability to buy life insurance to provide for education, that doesn't automatically

00:51:24.640 | mean that I can't provide education.

00:51:28.940 | I've always been inspired by the example of a man named Art Robinson.

00:51:33.820 | Art Robinson is an interesting guy.

00:51:36.740 | I first found him when I found his website, which is at the, it's called robinsoncurriculum.com.

00:51:44.420 | It's a really interesting story, but Art Robinson, he and his wife are both research scientists,

00:51:52.980 | both PhD holders, research scientists.

00:51:54.940 | He researches a bunch of things, especially relating to blood and a couple of other things,

00:52:00.060 | nuclear stuff beyond my scientific knowledge.

00:52:03.620 | But he and his wife had a large family, six children.

00:52:07.360 | And when their youngest child was a baby, his wife contracted a very strange illness

00:52:14.900 | and died within something like 24 or 48 hours, leaving him as a surviving widower with six

00:52:22.880 | small children.

00:52:25.340 | They had been homeschooling their children, and that was very important to them in terms

00:52:29.540 | of the educational heritage and the family values that they were seeking to instill in

00:52:34.220 | their children.

00:52:35.220 | And so here he is as a research scientist, a busy research scientist, unexpectedly, completely

00:52:41.080 | out of the blue with no time to transition, facing six small children trying to figure

00:52:47.860 | out what do I do?

00:52:50.100 | Well, one of the things that he did, he was blessed by his wife's foresight and planning

00:52:56.440 | with regard to their children's homeschool curriculum.

00:53:00.700 | She had worked for years on developing and planning ahead with homeschool materials.

00:53:05.600 | So when she died, his wife, her name was Laura Lee, when she died, his wife, Laura Lee, left

00:53:10.640 | behind multiple filing cabinets with all of the materials, all of the books, all of the

00:53:16.720 | curriculum prepared for a complete K through 12 education.

00:53:22.720 | What he did was he moved his desk into his children's schoolroom or moved his children's

00:53:28.000 | schoolrooms into his research laboratory, and they figured out a way to care for the

00:53:33.560 | baby.

00:53:34.560 | They figured out a schedule where his older children were able to help care for the baby,

00:53:38.920 | and they continued their educational plan just like they had done from the beginning

00:53:44.640 | because his wife had worked so hard and had left a legacy in that complete curriculum.

00:53:50.540 | They later went on, and his children, while they were in their high school years, later

00:53:54.160 | went on and developed the Robinson curriculum.

00:53:58.260 | They took all of the materials that their mother had put together.

00:54:01.920 | They scanned them, collected them, and sold them and created a business out of selling

00:54:08.220 | those materials to any other homeschool family that was interested, and they sold them as

00:54:14.560 | a set of CD-ROMs.

00:54:15.560 | They still sell them today.

00:54:17.600 | For $200, you can purchase from them all in, $200, you can purchase a complete K through

00:54:24.200 | 12 educational curriculum for $200 total, one time, no matter how many children you

00:54:31.560 | do, no matter how much you need.

00:54:33.240 | You can buy it, and you print out the materials.

00:54:36.520 | Some of that curriculum is dated, but you could start, and I would have no fear whatsoever

00:54:42.000 | if I were dying of saying to my wife, "We're going to buy this curriculum," and the secret

00:54:47.540 | to it is you print everything out.

00:54:49.080 | "We're going to buy this curriculum.

00:54:50.080 | We're going to buy the printer.

00:54:51.080 | Now, at least we have the necessary school materials."

00:54:54.160 | His children, of their six children, had some very impressive educational outcomes.

00:54:58.000 | I think four of his six children have PhDs.

00:55:01.120 | All of them are extremely competent with regard to their learning.

00:55:05.160 | He has continued on to do his scientific research, and they let a lot of things go.

00:55:10.160 | If you listen to him lecture on it, and he tells a story, it wasn't the most, shall

00:55:14.800 | we say, traditional of households.

00:55:16.920 | They certainly weren't able to do everything the way that he would have been as a couple

00:55:22.280 | if his wife had survived, but as a single widower with six small children, they were

00:55:27.560 | able to come out with a loving family, stayed together.

00:55:31.360 | He continued his work, his productive work.

00:55:33.800 | All of his children were educational stars, and they continued to maintain the family

00:55:38.800 | of image that they had planned for.

00:55:41.800 | If you break it down into education, instead of funding it vaguely with life insurance,

00:55:48.160 | you could say, "What are we going to do?

00:55:50.320 | How are we going to provide for education?"

00:55:52.040 | Now, perhaps homeschooling is your thing, and you would do something like I've described

00:55:55.800 | here.

00:55:56.800 | Perhaps, if I were in that situation, I would say, "We're going to take our money, and

00:55:59.480 | we're going to turn it," since if we had debt, and hopefully, again, hopefully we don't

00:56:02.600 | have debt, but I'm trying to make this show accessible to a listener who is in a tough

00:56:08.360 | situation, I would say, "How can we make sure that we assemble homeschool materials?"

00:56:12.400 | At the very least, everyone in the world has 200 bucks to buy the Robinson curriculum,

00:56:17.480 | a printer, and a stack of paper to print out the materials.

00:56:22.680 | At the very least, everyone has 200 bucks.

00:56:25.880 | Or you might go with more than that, but assemble the materials for your children's education.

00:56:30.040 | Or perhaps another consideration, in a moment, I'm going to talk about income, but another

00:56:34.200 | consideration would be, you might say, "Well, we can't afford, we don't want to homeschool,

00:56:39.680 | or homeschooling is just not going to work based upon the capacity of our family.

00:56:43.480 | But we do need income, but education is serious."

00:56:47.080 | So I would look at that and say, "How can we get my wife a job at a private school?"

00:56:51.920 | If I could help my wife to get a job at a private school, then now as a component of

00:56:56.680 | that overall education, we could now send our children to the private school with a

00:57:03.680 | reduced or eliminated tuition cost.

00:57:06.880 | Frequently, many private schools will provide for their employees the benefit, instead of

00:57:12.280 | paying out a higher salary, they'll provide a benefit that a certain number of their children

00:57:15.920 | can attend that private school without paying or by paying a reduced rate.

00:57:24.480 | There is a mother that I've known for many years who was left as a single mom, and one

00:57:30.400 | of the things that I deeply honor her for, her husband left her, divorced her, she was

00:57:36.480 | left as a single mom with four young girls to care for.

00:57:40.680 | One of the things that she did is she always worked at a local private school, and she

00:57:46.000 | worked very diligently.

00:57:47.680 | She drove school buses, and she worked in the cafeteria.

00:57:50.560 | She had very limited job skills.

00:57:53.080 | She didn't have the intellectual or background to be a high-income earner, but by working

00:58:02.520 | for the local private school, she was able to earn enough to keep a roof over her girl's

00:58:07.560 | head, to keep food on the table, and to provide for a very strong private school education

00:58:14.720 | for all of her daughters.

00:58:17.480 | That would be a way of saying, "How do we solve the education problem without additional

00:58:22.800 | money?"

00:58:23.800 | A similar type of thing can be done with college costs.

00:58:29.040 | By researching and helping our children prepare to pay for their own cost of college, we can

00:58:35.480 | mitigate the need for that life insurance.

00:58:38.120 | Let's talk about income.

00:58:40.320 | The other aspect of life insurance planning is income.

00:58:45.120 | How can we provide an income for the family?

00:58:48.920 | Usually when doing a life insurance analysis, you simply sit down and say, "Well, we want

00:58:53.040 | to have $4,000 a month into the family for 20 years, or for the rest of my wife's life,"

00:58:58.760 | or whatever context that is.

00:59:00.560 | "Well, if I can't get life insurance, I've got a problem.

00:59:03.480 | So I need to figure out what can we do to provide income when I'm gone?"

00:59:10.920 | This is where we get back to ideas like a family business.

00:59:14.140 | One of the things I most appreciated about that particular family that we visited when

00:59:21.720 | I was a child was they had done the hard work of developing a family business where the

00:59:26.600 | children could contribute.

00:59:28.720 | This allowed the surviving wife, the widow, to be able to still be involved with the children

00:59:35.400 | and for them to keep their family together in a very difficult time.

00:59:41.080 | So if I'm facing a five-year diagnosis, I'm going to look very diligently to say, "What

00:59:49.640 | skills does my wife have?

00:59:52.680 | What resources do we have?

00:59:56.080 | How can we establish a family business that will be enough to provide an income for the

01:00:01.160 | family?"

01:00:02.160 | Now, here's where you would look at the total package.

01:00:04.960 | Do you look at where somebody is living, what the situation is?

01:00:11.920 | How do we provide for this?

01:00:13.520 | I use by way of example, let's say that we decided, "Okay, we need to move to a slightly

01:00:17.320 | more rural area."

01:00:18.740 | We could find potentially some rural area that had enough proximity to hospital and

01:00:23.760 | medical providers for me to continue my oncology treatments.

01:00:27.600 | But we could then also look at providing for the family.

01:00:32.200 | We could have a big garden, we could buy a single-wide trailer or a double-wide trailer.

01:00:36.000 | It would be inexpensive.

01:00:37.160 | We could own it debt-free so that my wife wouldn't have the concern of paying a mortgage.

01:00:42.600 | So now, what business could we develop in this context based upon the skills and the

01:00:47.720 | resources that our family has?

01:00:49.820 | That would be one way of providing for income.

01:00:52.720 | Another way would be a more traditional job.

01:00:55.480 | So I would look at my wife's job skills, my children's job skills, and say, "How can we

01:01:02.640 | enhance these?"

01:01:04.240 | Back to that financial planning, one of the things that I would seriously consider doing

01:01:08.640 | is I would seriously consider turning money into job skills.

01:01:16.720 | Let's say that my wife would benefit from an additional certification.

01:01:21.460 | Maybe she needs to get training in a certain area.

01:01:24.840 | Perhaps that training costs money.

01:01:27.720 | I'm going to work really hard to take our money, use it to buy the training so that

01:01:32.680 | we can establish her in a high-income earning career so that when I die, she'll have the

01:01:40.400 | income necessary.

01:01:41.880 | This is especially important many times for if a father or husband is going to die.

01:01:47.520 | Frequently, a mom who has given up her income earning outside of the home will be left with

01:01:54.800 | slightly rusty job skills and a little bit out of step with the job market.

01:02:00.480 | That can make it hard for a new widow to go into the job market and earn at an appropriate

01:02:06.080 | rate, especially if you have children, to earn at a rate that makes it worth her leaving

01:02:12.860 | the children who would really benefit from her presence.

01:02:17.000 | So if necessary, take the money and use it to buy upgraded job skills, certifications,

01:02:22.880 | specializations, etc., so that she can earn enough money in order to have a high hourly

01:02:30.080 | productivity so she can still have time with children.

01:02:33.580 | This is another similar problem that many time newly divorced mothers face, is that

01:02:39.840 | their job skills have grown rusty as they've cared for their children.

01:02:46.840 | And so when their husband leaves them, they're faced with, "Well, what do I do?"

01:02:51.920 | And sometimes their earning ability is only a very small percentage of their capacity.

01:02:57.880 | And that can be a real problem, because then that newly single mom has to spend many hours

01:03:02.620 | per day away from the children, and that would be the most valuable place for her would be

01:03:06.620 | to be with the children.

01:03:07.840 | Well, you can't do without income, but perhaps what can be done is upgrade the hourly earning

01:03:12.720 | ability with whatever appropriate plan would solve that, so that she can earn sufficient

01:03:18.700 | amounts of money while being away from the children for a minimal amount of time.

01:03:24.220 | So with income, income can be solved, or at least improved, in ways that don't require

01:03:32.340 | a life insurance payout.

01:03:34.880 | Now back to investments.

01:03:36.920 | What if you have investments?

01:03:39.040 | Hopefully you have investments.

01:03:40.040 | And here's where we want to structure things in a way that they're going to be in their

01:03:45.800 | best...they're going to be done well after I'm gone.

01:03:53.400 | I don't know how to speak to this generally.

01:03:55.640 | I've already spoken to mutual funds, investments, being held in creditor-protected accounts.

01:04:02.360 | There's not a lot of skill related to mutual funds.

01:04:07.000 | But I would work very diligently with my wife to, especially me, I'd work very diligently

01:04:11.800 | with my wife to make sure that she has the knowledge that she needs to be a successful

01:04:16.320 | investor, to make sure that she knows the source of trusted advice, etc.

01:04:21.600 | With other investments, my client that I was working with was a heavy real estate investor,

01:04:26.600 | and one of the pieces of advice that I gave to him was it's very important that his wife

01:04:31.400 | is very involved in that real estate business.

01:04:34.760 | Usually there will be one spouse or another who is involved heavily in a business and

01:04:39.880 | the other spouse is not so heavily involved in the business.

01:04:43.160 | That can work okay as long as the spouse who's involved has taken the time to put together

01:04:49.480 | a manual of how the business operates, some instructions, etc. so that if they died unexpectedly

01:04:55.360 | that their surviving spouse would be able to continue on.

01:04:58.820 | But if you know that you're probably going to die in a few years, then you really got

01:05:03.800 | to roll up your sleeves and make sure that your spouse is fully involved in the investments.

01:05:10.320 | I would very diligently make sure that my wife was fully involved and actively managing

01:05:16.600 | our real estate portfolio, actively managing our business, etc.

01:05:21.600 | You've got to make sure that she is knowledgeable about every aspect of the money and that her

01:05:28.520 | skills are up to the task.

01:05:31.600 | One of the most vulnerable places that a woman can be in, especially women, is if they're

01:05:39.680 | newly widowed.

01:05:40.680 | And frequently a newly widowed woman is caught unaware and caught with poor planning.

01:05:48.160 | And because her husband handled everything, she doesn't know where everything is, how

01:05:52.180 | it's all done, etc.

01:05:53.960 | I think that's a major dereliction of duty for husbands.

01:05:57.820 | If you are a husband, do not leave your wife in that situation.

01:06:02.300 | Make sure that you've left instructions.

01:06:05.600 | Make sure that you've left layout.

01:06:07.560 | Make sure that you've helped her and taught her to know what's going on so that if you

01:06:12.340 | are unexpectedly removed from the scene that she's not left not knowing what to do.

01:06:21.000 | And here, I think fundamentally when you look at the problem of how to solve these issues,

01:06:30.340 | I think you have to go back and look at relationships.

01:06:34.060 | Relationships and community.

01:06:36.260 | As I thought through this, I realized that I personally would have no fear of being in

01:06:44.620 | this situation.

01:06:46.340 | I would have no fear of if I couldn't, didn't have life insurance, I were diagnosed with

01:06:50.460 | a terminal disease, I would have no fear of my wife and children not being okay.

01:06:57.940 | Even independent of any of these things I've described.

01:07:02.120 | And one of the big reasons is because of the strong family, community, and church relationships

01:07:09.860 | that we enjoy.

01:07:12.300 | I would have no fear about my wife being put out on the street because I know that I have

01:07:18.540 | many people in my life who would immediately say, "Come and live with us."

01:07:24.100 | There are many people in my life who would say, "Come, I'll buy a single wide trailer

01:07:27.780 | and you can be there so you can have your own place with the children and we'll park

01:07:31.500 | it on our property."

01:07:33.260 | There are many people in my life who would say, "Come, I'll tell you what, here's an

01:07:36.220 | apartment.

01:07:37.220 | I know you can't afford all of that rent, but I'll subsidize it by 50% and I'll do that

01:07:42.900 | for the next decade."

01:07:44.420 | That all comes back to relationships, strong family relationships and strong community

01:07:51.540 | relationships.

01:07:52.940 | At its core, when there's a strong community, a strong family of people, these financial

01:08:01.300 | things are less necessary.

01:08:04.820 | But with the modern US American society, these financial things are more necessary because

01:08:10.580 | of the fracturing of relationships.

01:08:12.700 | Let me give two examples to drive this point home.

01:08:17.500 | I have an interest in understanding the Amish community.

01:08:20.980 | I've never lived in Amish country and I always thought it'd be fascinating to drive through

01:08:24.540 | Amish country.

01:08:25.540 | But I've had an interest in studying how the Amish handle finances.

01:08:30.940 | First I respect and appreciate them, that they were able to get out of the debacle of

01:08:34.360 | Social Security and unfortunately, Protestant Christians were not, which I have a deep grudge

01:08:41.700 | against Protestant Christians for not towing the line on that one.

01:08:46.500 | But the reason that the Amish have been able to stay out of things, Amish not participating

01:08:50.360 | in financialized insurance programs, not participating in Social Security, even not participating

01:08:55.500 | in much of the commercial credit markets, is because of the strength of the community.

01:09:01.240 | Everything is based on the community.

01:09:03.940 | And it works well.

01:09:04.940 | I have more confidence in the strength of my local community than I do in any financial

01:09:09.980 | institution.

01:09:12.740 | But that community has to be developed and exercised in advance.

01:09:17.700 | There are communities in which if you're going to have a house raising or a barn raising,

01:09:22.520 | you could have dozens and dozens of people there.

01:09:26.520 | But yet the lives that many of us lead in the modern society would be that if a house

01:09:31.200 | were needed or a barn were needed, many families couldn't get a single person to show up.

01:09:40.840 | Now you think about that.

01:09:42.660 | So you're familiar with the traditional barn raising.

01:09:44.640 | This was in the old, in the more agrarian society.

01:09:48.160 | If somebody was going to have a barn, there would be a community event.

01:09:51.920 | And so the landowner would prepare ahead, they would put together the materials, the

01:09:57.760 | raw materials, and then they would schedule it and all the community would come together.

01:10:02.200 | And then they would do the heavy work of raising the rafters, raising the walls.

01:10:06.640 | All that would be done together because you need a lot of manpower.

01:10:08.480 | And then traditionally it would be a big party at night, perhaps a dance in the barn or whatever

01:10:13.280 | was necessary.

01:10:14.280 | That's a barn raising.

01:10:15.720 | Same kind of thing with the house raising.

01:10:17.960 | So I've reflected on this question.

01:10:19.640 | I realized that is one of the biggest weaknesses in our modern era.

01:10:26.280 | If our house burns down, we don't have anyone to call except an insurance company.

01:10:32.840 | And they might send a check, hopefully, and we might be able to buy those things.

01:10:39.780 | But there are communities where if the house burns down, everybody comes together.

01:10:45.040 | Some people load up a truck, bring a bunch of wood.

01:10:47.440 | People have knowledge, they have skill, everyone gets together and a week later the house is

01:10:51.280 | built.

01:10:54.260 | If you have the strength of relationships and community, strong families, I say large

01:10:59.920 | families, strong churches, strong community organizations where people are built together,

01:11:06.600 | you can have a high degree of confidence in this.

01:11:09.600 | The story that happened this last year that I was aware of, in my mind it shows the ideal

01:11:14.960 | scenario, it shows the value of this.

01:11:18.880 | There was a man this last year who unexpectedly drowned.

01:11:24.660 | And this man and his wife, they had adopted, I think it was a total of seven young children.

01:11:29.740 | And all of the children were very young.

01:11:31.980 | So unlike a family that may have by natural birth seven children where the children are

01:11:36.620 | split out in ages, they had adopted seven young children.

01:11:40.460 | That's a heavy burden, heavy burden on a mother and father.

01:11:44.140 | The man unexpectedly drowned while they were at the lake and it was totally out of the

01:11:51.500 | blue and the family didn't have life insurance for whatever reason.

01:11:55.700 | And so here you have a young widow, a mother of seven small adopted children who've just

01:12:01.740 | lost their father.

01:12:03.700 | Take a moment and imagine the trauma on a young adopted child, the potential trauma

01:12:10.980 | of previously being orphaned through whatever circumstances and then being adopted into

01:12:19.600 | a loving family and now all of a sudden losing one of those adoptive parents.

01:12:26.620 | Sorry, but that is a situation that is a big, big deal for those seven children.

01:12:34.060 | And what I was so gratified to hear was in the circumstance Juan, the community, took

01:12:37.540 | up collections of financial donations, which was of course helpful.

01:12:43.400 | But there was in that community somebody who went ahead and provided for that lady.

01:12:47.460 | It was a man who was a wealthier person.

01:12:50.500 | He had acreage, he had land, and he established on his house, I think they brought in a double

01:12:54.540 | wide trailer or something like that, and he bought a double wide trailer.

01:12:58.380 | He put it on his rural property so that that mom would be able to care for those seven

01:13:04.180 | children and not have to immediately put them into an institution.

01:13:08.980 | If you want to talk about using your money to make an impact, that's the way to do it.

01:13:13.580 | If you want to talk about the value of community, that's a pretty good example.

01:13:18.420 | So make sure if you don't have that in your life, get busy and find it or build it.

01:13:26.100 | Because at the end of the day, financial institutions are great.

01:13:28.500 | I've tried to talk about how to use them, but relationships and community, strong families,

01:13:37.940 | strong communities, strong churches, strong networks, that's ultimately what gets you

01:13:44.060 | through is people.

01:13:47.340 | I hope that's encouraging to you, and I hope you are able to use that and to be the catalyst

01:13:53.260 | for change in your local community.

01:13:56.260 | Hope these ideas are helpful.

01:13:57.820 | I hope that this show serves you and serves somebody who's in this difficult situation.

01:14:04.660 | If you understand the things that I talked about in the beginning, especially if you

01:14:08.620 | understand things like ownership, use the financial system to your benefit.

01:14:15.280 | If you've gotten a diagnosis, like I said, if I got a diagnosis, I would do every one

01:14:20.220 | of these things.

01:14:21.460 | I would make sure that we took, in the time that I had that I was alive, I'd make sure

01:14:25.300 | that we took every bit of money, and I would make sure that I very carefully structured

01:14:30.580 | all the assets for maximum protection.

01:14:33.980 | And I would take the money and I would use the money to buy those things that will provide

01:14:42.860 | for my family.

01:14:44.900 | And even, there may be other circumstances in which you can do it, but just consider

01:14:49.380 | that.

01:14:50.500 | You can buy educational materials, and if you are in a situation, you're going to leave,

01:14:56.420 | if I were going to leave my wife and children behind, it's pretty hard for me to imagine,

01:15:03.300 | let's say that I had started off deeply in debt and I had problems because I wanted this

01:15:06.360 | show to work for someone in that situation.

01:15:10.460 | It's easy to imagine the creditor coming and hooking up the car out front.

01:15:16.380 | It's easy to imagine being sued by a credit card company.

01:15:20.440 | But if you pay off the note on the car, the car will sit there.

01:15:26.220 | I can't imagine the credit card company sending the police out and searching through our file

01:15:31.580 | cabinet of educational materials and saying, "We're going to take these educational materials."

01:15:36.900 | They're not going to go and search through the pantry and say, "We're going to take all

01:15:40.220 | this food that's going to feed your family for the next few years."

01:15:43.140 | They're not going to come through the house and find that we bought a commercial, we bought

01:15:50.540 | some homemade bread from somebody recently who had put this very nice cottage industry

01:15:54.660 | from homemade bread.

01:15:56.060 | They're not going to find the commercial quality bread machine that we've built for a family

01:16:01.060 | business that my wife and our children could do and sell artisan bread in the local community.

01:16:07.260 | So that's the way that you need to think, is you need to think if you're in a situation

01:16:10.340 | like this, how do I use the financial system to provide those other things for my family?

01:16:17.420 | In closing, make sure this doesn't happen to you.

01:16:20.900 | I repeat, make sure this doesn't happen to you.

01:16:26.140 | If you're already in this situation, hopefully these ideas will help you or will help you

01:16:31.340 | to help someone else who's in the situation.

01:16:33.860 | One of my missions is I want to equip you so that you can go and help the people who

01:16:39.060 | are never going to sit and listen to radical personal finance.

01:16:42.740 | Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people will go and sit and listen to something like this.

01:16:48.860 | I probably lost with talking about financial products and annuities and single premium

01:16:53.700 | median annuities and variable subaccounts and annuity units, I lost the vast majority

01:16:59.860 | of the population.

01:17:01.540 | But my friend, there are people that are struggling and that are hurting, and you can go and help

01:17:06.940 | them.

01:17:07.940 | You can take this knowledge and go and sit at their kitchen table and help them.

01:17:11.380 | That's my mission.

01:17:12.380 | There are a lot of people who will never sit down and listen to my show, but you're listening

01:17:19.300 | to my show, and those same people who would never sit down and listen to my show, they

01:17:24.020 | will sit down and listen to you.

01:17:26.140 | So I hope these ideas serve you so that you can go and help somebody who's in a situation

01:17:31.980 | like that.

01:17:32.980 | Be back with you soon.

01:17:36.380 | Thank you for listening.

01:17:37.380 | You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that.

01:17:41.620 | And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics

01:17:46.440 | and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals.

01:17:51.160 | Before you go, three simple requests.

01:17:53.740 | One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take

01:17:59.300 | action on it.

01:18:01.340 | Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically lead

01:18:06.740 | to a life change.

01:18:09.060 | It's action that leads to a life change.

01:18:13.060 | So take action.

01:18:14.700 | Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody

01:18:20.380 | that you care about.

01:18:21.940 | I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message

01:18:29.140 | that I'm seeking to share.

01:18:31.620 | That helps the person that you are engaging with, and it also helps you because teaching

01:18:37.460 | others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning.

01:18:44.260 | Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining financial

01:18:49.580 | benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for

01:18:54.300 | this work voluntarily.

01:18:56.940 | Come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, and you can sign up there to support the show

01:19:01.180 | at whatever level you feel is right for you.

01:19:04.420 | This is a voluntary support.

01:19:06.180 | That's my Patreon page.

01:19:07.820 | You can support me with a dollar a month, five dollars a month, ten dollars a month,

01:19:11.780 | any number that seems right to you.

01:19:13.500 | But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving financial

01:19:18.780 | results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

01:19:28.300 | Don't just dream about paradise.

01:19:30.820 | Live it with Fiji Airways.

01:19:32.500 | Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale.

01:19:36.580 | Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs.

01:19:41.540 | Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value.

01:19:48.700 | Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com.

01:19:52.620 | That's FijiAirways.com.

01:19:54.300 | From here to happy.

01:19:55.820 | Flying direct with Fiji Airways.

01:19:57.300 | (upbeat music)

RPF0541-How_to_Protect_Your_Family_From_Your_Death_When_You_Cant_Qualify_For_Life_Insurance