Today, we are going to talk about how farmers use infinite banking and the principles of infinite banking in their line of work. I am joined by a regular within the Better Wealth team that might be a little bit new to our YouTube community, Ryan Stelzner. Ryan Stelzner is our tech guy. He is really helpful on the back end of all things in Better Wealth. And I, as you've seen, I've definitely put out a couple of videos so far, but we're doing this video, we're collaborating because we actually share something in common. And that is that both of us, one of them, past, one of them present, actually used to be farmers. And so Ryan currently has a small hobby farm. What state? Tennessee, right? Tennessee. That's right. Tennessee. I used to operate two farms in mid-Missouri. And that was actually the job I had before I joined Better Wealth. And so we're going to reminisce on some of our favorite parts of the line of work, as it specifically relates to infinite banking and some of the different challenges. that farmers face, but then also the way that Infinite Banking solves some of those challenges. So without much further ado, let's jump right in. So there's different problems that farmers face. And maybe if you're watching this, maybe I'm sure most of you can relate to several of these. And it is very specific to farms, risk management, resource allocation, and quality of life. These are three things that I was constantly up against. Is it risk management? Is that like, there's always some danger of risk on the farm. And I just want to like even a couple of historical cool examples of this. Like, You know, there's always an example, for instance, like, you know, maybe there's a lot of like fire, fire material on the farm or like thinking like brush or something where there's like kind of like a fire danger or, you know, maybe like, you know, there you're a farm and you're in Florida and there's like, you know, hurricane danger. There's also beyond just like, like ecological danger that exists. There's also a kind of incredibly like, like legal, legal danger or like kind of like what's kind of going on, like almost like above the farm. Great example of this is in the 1980s, there was a lot of overproduction of milk. This is one of my favorite stories about farms. It showed you how like why so many farmers are probably more on the libertarian side of things. A lot of overproduction of milk. It was an issue. And so the government decided that the government was the best solution to the problem. So the government's like, guess what? We're going to do this herd buyout for the dairy farmers. Those poor dairy farmers who are just making too much milk because they thought that the private market couldn't moderate itself. It couldn't regulate itself. So they come in and say, hey, we will pay you. X amount of dollars per cow if you slaughter all or part of your herds. And the dairy farmers are happy with this arrangement. They're like, great. You know what? If I stop making milk, I can still be compensated for the cows I no longer have. And obviously, some farmers even took advantage of this and they could buy a bunch of cows and then they could pay to have them slaughtered and all that kind of stuff. But they were great. Now, the problem is that they didn't just slaughter the cows and put them in a landfill because that would just be a gross negligence. Like that's just wasteful. They did it. the right thing, which is that then those slaughtered cows got processed and put on the beef market. But this destroyed the beef market. So in the 1980s, like 1986 to 1990, the beef went from one week to the next when this dairy herd share buyout program was implemented. The price of beef went down like $2 or $3 per hundredweight. It was this insane drop because there was so much extra beef on the beef market. And since the beef market has become a commodity market, which itself is its own. own conversation amongst farmers about why that's a dangerous thing. And the only thing that differentiates most beef is its price, is that if now there's just more beef, it's just all going to be worth less. And so something like 80,000 farms and ranches disappeared over a four-year period from 1986 to 1990, all because the government was trying to protect those poor dairy farmers. And so that's something that those poor beef farmers, nothing about what they were doing was different, but... The legal environment above the sore lead above their head caused some of them just to go belly up, even though, you know, nothing that they had done in the past. So like risk management, like how do you manage the risk that is inherent in A, operating dangerous equipment, you know, B, weather, C, you know, legal stuff. And there's literally a hundred different things that you could point to there. Can you think of any risks that you feel like that you're managing daily or even seasonally on the farm? I think a lot of the risk for us is just making sure that as we scale the farm, that we are not also scaling the input of work and labor. I am making sure that we are able to essentially couple... It's an issue you don't really have in permaculture, but it's something that we think about a lot is there are only so many animals and so many things you can do on the farm before the farm itself starts to eat away at other things. And right now we're not... seeing enough income from the farm to fully support it on its own right. So what we do now is figuring out how we can walk this line of scaling slowly and still being responsible with our finances. Yeah. Even kind of touching on that second point of that resource allocation is how do you scale up? Because obviously, sometimes you are limited by just the resources that you have available to you. And I think, honestly, the most important resource that maybe we experience as farmers and maybe even as humans that we don't often think of as a resource, but it is our time. Is it like we only have so much time in a day? We only have so many things that we can do. And, you know, as a farmer, like how you spend your time is obviously really valuable. And then also on top of that, how you spend your money is also really valuable. And you have to put those dollars and those hours to work in the enterprises in which they're most fruitful and most productive. Spend 80% of your time doing 80% of the things, right? And then try to make sure that the things that only maybe account for like 20% of your income only take like 20% of your time instead of having that ratio flip-flopped, right? Deciding how to spend your valuable resources is a problem. It's a tough one. And every day you end up getting it wrong and you get like sidetracked on things that are just like a black hole of time that that kind of thing um it's diligent focus to not just get in a goldfish moment on the farm oh yeah oh yeah and and i used to tell people like the things that a lot of farmers spent time on like in my farm i spent almost no time on so like we had virtually no vaccination schedule we gave him like a tetanus vaccine that was it just for black leg i never helped like during birthing season I There was like maybe three or four times during my five years that I helped a single animal give birth because it was like our animals had just been trained and we had kind of selected for animals that weren't going to be an issue in giving birth to us. Like I spent some almost no time doing things that like some farmers stayed up all night having to do, like, you know, making sure that there wasn't, you know, problems with their animals, cows giving birth or whatnot. Now on the flip side, though, there were things that I spent a ton of time doing, doing that like regular, more traditional farms spent almost no time doing. And like I spent. hours every day checking my electric fences, like hours every day checking for shorts. Whereas like that is not at all like on the radar of people who just, you know, like, let's just put a really tall steel fence in or whatever. Like I spent so much time, you know, on checking the things that, you know, ultimately we built and that we had to maintain because, you know, we didn't need really tall steel fences because our animals were totally happy and contained at 10 30. sorry, it was 10, 16, 22, 32, 32 inch high fence. A 32 inch high electric fence would even contain a cow. Like our cows wouldn't even try to jump it. So, you know, that was just me kind of allocating my own personal resources to things. And then lastly, quality of life. And we talked about this last time we were discussing this episode is that ultimately you can do a lot of great things as a farmer. You can be engaged in a lot of really life-giving and fruitful activities, but ultimately like it can be too much. There comes a time when it's like, it's just too much. And it's too much of a good thing and that you have to scale back in some way. And so farmers are, it's a very life-giving occupation, but it also can be really draining because you might feel like you need to do all these different things and there's just not enough hours in the day to do them. So some different ways that farmers could benefit from an infinite banking style life insurance policy. Ways that farmers could benefit from infinite banking is, so access to capital and lean seasons. So instead of relying on banks, you know farmers can borrow from their own policy during cash-strapped periods like planning season, emergency repairs. And the nice thing is, you know, there's no lengthy loan applications, there's no credit checks, there's no outside approval. It's your money when you need it most. And that is so important because we already talked about how important flexibility is to a farmer, is that you need to be able to pivot, observe, and adapt right away. So that's one thing. Number two, control over financing, right, is that you can use this policy to finance equipment land, livestock, or operating costs. You can repay on your own terms. As long as this enterprise that you're undertaking, as long as it takes to grow, and remember we talked about patience, is that as long as it takes to grow, you don't have to pay off a loan. And then whenever it does, you do harvest whatever it is, then you can pay off your loan. And you can avoid the trap of really high interest loans, bank loans, and rigid repayment schedules. So some number two, control over financing. And then also tax advantages. The nice part is that the cash value grows tax deferred. Now, it practically grows tax-free because this is a contract between you and the carrier to age 121. If you lived at age 121 and you were still kicking, first off, congratulations. That's amazing. You're like the world's coolest farmer. Please tell me all your secrets, then at that point, the policy would mature and you would. owe taxes on the gains inside the cash value. But from whatever age you are until age 121, there is no... there is no taxes that are assessed during that time. That's why it's tax deferred. So the loans taken against the policy are generally tax-free as long as it's not a MEC. And then the death benefit is also income tax-free and it can support your farm succession plans from passing it into the next generation. Next, asset protection, right? So in many states that the cash value is protected from creditors, there's creditor-predator lawsuit protections. It's different state to state. Some states are really good. Some states aren't so good. Most states are pretty good. I'll say there's probably only like a handful of states that are absolutely atrocious. Most states give you pretty good extra protections so that the money there, you know, if you get into a car crash or something, they want to sue you for everything you're worth. The assets held inside your life insurance policy, they can't get their grinding little fingers on it. Then multi-generational legacy planning, right? So that policies, you know, they can be structured to benefit your heirs. Like we said, you know, with succession plans, helping pass that farm on with liquidity to pay estate taxes or debts. And then you can build that generational banking system so that you can also pass off your farm generationally. And then lastly, consistent growth amid market volatility. So the nice thing is that the rest of your portfolio might be doing this. And the seasonality on the farm, there's crazy stuff that happens that you don't plan on. I specifically remember a time when it snowed so much here that I couldn't even make it. We had two farms. I couldn't even make it to one of our farms for two or three days. and By the time I got there, I was like, what happened to a thousand sheep? And so I found them. They were still there. They were okay. They were pretty cold. And I had to dig through the snowbank down a foot or so and then expose all the grass that was there so that the sheep could actually get through it and eat. So there's a lot of volatility on the farm. But your life insurance policy is this anti-volatile hedge against that risk. That's just a very predictable and very consistent asset. It's helpful for long-term planning and stability. even when crop prices or markets swing wildly. It's kind of like the Thomas the Tank Engine sort of asset. It's just going to chug along, doing its thing. It's not flashy, but it's doing multiple things at the same time too, which is why I like it so much. Hey, it's Caleb Williams here. I'm just interrupting this video quickly to invite you to check out our Andesit Vault. You may have been there. We've actually revamping it. And if you are somebody that wants to learn more about, is life insurance the right fit for me? Does this Andesit make sense? Does this actually help me be more efficient? We've put together a 10-minute documentary-style video that I think does a really, really good job giving the history, why the Andassit, different setups and designs that we use. And then we have an Andassit Vault that gives case studies, calculators, handbooks, and so much more. We are here to serve you, whether it's a conversation, whether it's education, or the video. So make sure to go check out andassit.com slash vault, learn more. Did you want to add anything to that, Ryan? Do you feel like there's any other ways that you could think of off the top of your head that farmers could use this? I mean, I just think some of the coolest potentials of life insurance and farming is, again, around the generational protection, like making sure that as your farm is passed down, as that business is passed down, as that income and revenue is passed down, you can tether this, from what I know, with a trust as well. And it's an extremely powerful tool to protect what you own and pass it off to your kids. And then the thing that I'm going to use it for in this upcoming season is. for expansion and scaling farm opportunities, things that you would generally go after grant money for. I think that there is a lot of power in being able to purchase a new dairy cow with the policy and then paid off with the profits from that dairy cow. And that's extremely exciting. Everything else, to me, it seems so joined at the hip with a lot of the ideologies around farming, which is, I think, a lot of what you're talking about. And it makes a lot of sense. So I think, to me, like there's still a bit of an educational gap. I think that there is almost an infinite amount of opportunities to use this as a farmer. Mason. Mason could not agree more. So ultimately, farmers, they're always looking for dependable multi-use tools, which help them run a flourishing operation. A financial asset that can act as a safety cushion in the present and a legacy guarantee in the future, it's a win-win as far as a farmer goes. Some takeaways here, patience. It's all about delayed gratification. Make sure that your family is resilient to weather financial storms in your life. Another thing to take away from here, trust. It's a precious commodity, right? We commodify a lot of things here in America. But ultimately, give the trust that you have to the people and institutions who actually deserve it. Rather than just people who don't and people who are far away from you who have no vested interest in your life. Give it to the people, your family, your neighbors. Give it to, and if you need to, give it to institutions. who are personally invested in your well-being. Be faithful in the small things. and be a smart manager of your money. That's what I got. Wanted to kind of give you a farmer's insight, two different farmer's insights into infinite banking. If you have questions, please hit us up in the chat below. This could be a pretty interesting video as far as questions go. If you have questions about our farming experiences, we might need to make a totally different video for that. But if you have like infinite banking kind of style questions, please ask that in the chat below. Would love to connect with you and kind of talk more about that if that you find yourself in a similar line of work. So thank you so much for watching. Appreciate you, Ryan. Thank you for joining me on this. See you later. Bye-bye.
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