Life insurance just had a record-setting quarter, nearly $4 billion in new premiums, and it's not just whole life anymore. We're seeing major growth in IUL, VUL, and shifts across the board. I tell a bigger story about where the industry is heading. In today's episode, we will be breaking down what's driving these numbers and answering your best questions, like how to actually dollar cost average with life insurance, what happens if your investment tanks while your loan is still due. We'll also be covering an important update from New York Life and their premium deposit bonus. They're offering all the way through November of 2025. So with that being said, let's go ahead and dive in. Mr. Caleb Williams, sir, it's good to see your beautiful face once again. It's good to be back. It's good to be back in the saddle. It's just you and me on this episode, so it'll bring us back to the good old days. Bring us back to the good old days inside of the dungeon. Let's go ahead and get it. That's actually where I had most of my biggest history lessons, where you challenged me a lot in regards to how to speak around life insurance. So grateful for those days. We definitely wouldn't be here today without them. And so, Caleb, you weren't here last week. We changed it up a little bit. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about a quick few updates that are happening in the life insurance industry. And then from there, we're going to talk about one of the most exciting, sexiest things on the planet. new annualized premiums for life insurance. And now they're rising. Sounds like one of the greatest things. And then for all of our Advent listeners and followers that watch our channel, we're going to be answering some of your questions as well. We want to make sure that we don't forget you guys. Okay. So with that being said, one of the cool things that are happening right now in the industry, New York Life is coming out with an incredible product, essentially for people who sign an application and to have it submitted between the 1st of October and November 30th. Okay. So it's gotta be, it's gotta be relatively soon, right? You can earn an enhanced premium deposit account rate of 12% or 10%, uh, which is absolutely incredible. Um, Caleb, I would actually love to start by maybe if you could just share a little bit about like what a premium deposit fund is and how maybe it might be used in something, uh, with specifically life insurance. Yeah, when I think of a premium deposit account, think of it like a holding tank or a pre-savings account that you can put money in that automatically funds future years of premium. And so an example could be in this example, New York Life is pretty much saying, hey, we will pay a premium, no pun intended, for extra premiums. So we will create a bonus because we really need to see more money flowing. I'm sure, that's probably why they do this. Companies don't do something like this if they're not looking for more money. And they're saying, okay, let's say instead of front-loading an insurance policy, let's say someone has four to five years of premium that they could put. Instead of maybe parking that into a high-yield savings account or parking that into a bond portfolio or even the market, you could put all of that into a premium deposit account. In this case, earn anywhere from 12 to 10% in the first year, and then it looks like 5% every year after that, which is very competitive growth rates. And then it will automatically fund the policy over a certain period of time, whether it's five years, 10 years. And so the benefit is you make one decision. A lot of times it's on autopilot. And in a lot of cases, you're earning very competitive rates of return that are... hard to beat. And in a lot of cases, what you could do is whatever you put in, whether you put in, you know, lump sum, that lump sum will actually be able to like your premium that you would put in each year, it will actually be a lot higher because they're including the interest in that number. And so that's the benefit. In some cases, you can have a third party lender be able to lend against it. And so that's kind of the best of both worlds is like, hey, you get this interest, you get this A savings account that's earning high interest, which is awesome. It's funding your policy ongoing, which is great. And then you also have a third party bank that's saying like, this is super, super secure. We'll give you a 90 to 95% loan against your capital. So you still have that freedom because I'm not sure with New York Life, but in other cases, they don't want you seeing this as like a savings account where you're withdrawing or putting money in. It's usually a one time upfront. And then, and then, um, You don't really, if you touch it, a lot of times you lose the benefit altogether of the premium deposited account. So that would be my summary. And overall, a great. great benefit for people that want to put their money in life insurance and like the idea of having a, as Alden would say, a backpack kind of deal as a storage tank that you could put money in to pre-fund it. Speaking of our big bearded friend, Alden will actually be making a video that goes into this super in-depth. So either A, he's already recorded it, and so go watch it, or B, he's about to record it and release it. And if he does stay tuned for it, because I think this is a really cool opportunity for anybody who wants to get a very, very high rate in a very safe, guaranteed way. Premium deposit funds, they're very guaranteed. The only thing to consider is premium deposit funds. They are taxable. So unlike life insurance, there is some tax advantages with it. So the growth on that, you will pay taxes on it. But with all that being said, 10 to 12%, the 12% is actually for $100,000 or more. if you put it into the first year, and then 10% is $25,000 to $100,000 of first year contributions. And so there's a lot of companies that do premium deposit funds, and usually they start around 5% right now, and it's usually based off of the economic interest rates. And some allow you to do it in the middle of starting a policy, some only allow you to do it up front, some rates change depending on when you do it. So there's a lot of small nuances. So if you want to know exactly what it is New York life is up to and what they're doing. Again, take a look at our video that we either have done or that we're about to do. All right. So with that being said, another update, something that we found interesting. And if you guys don't know, if you guys never tried doing this, trying to find really cool, interesting facts about life insurance week after week is very challenging. So you guys can probably have a lot of empathy. And if you're here, you're maybe just an insurance nerd. So you're probably like, what are you talking about? This stuff is great. And if that's you, bravo. And feel free to send us emails. If you that are like, do this for fun, you're like, hey, did you guys hear about X, Y, and Z? Probably not. Let us know. Assume we don't know anything. Send us info because, yeah, this is a it's easy to be on top when you're in such a niche industry like ours. And so we don't have to be that great of a show to be one of the top insurance shows. We want to be the number one. So in order to do that, we need to talk about subjects that no one else is talking about. So. Uh, everything that you're saying, Don. Amen. And so for the second update, uh, insurance companies, they like to compare quarters to quarters from like first quarter of 2024 to first quarter of 2025. Um, and what we have discovered is that in first quarter of 2024 to first quarter of 2025, uh, there, uh, excuse me, actually half, like actually if you do it in the first half year of 2024 versus first half of 2025, there's been an uptick in about... 6.4% of death benefit payouts. And we're actually about 14% above 2019 levels. And you know, it's interesting because there's obviously the sickle nature. But Caleb, if I had to just ask you a question, obviously, it's no rocket science. It's not science. It actually probably is very rocket science if you try to nail down the exact issue. Why would you say that there is an increase of death benefit claims. 6% is actually quite a bit if you actually look at shared dollar amounts. Over the last year to this year, what would you try to guess that it would be? I mean, the obvious answer is more people are dying, but it's not. I don't think that's true. Maybe the question is, why do you think more people are dying? Let's be more specific. Yeah, that is a head-scratcher. I mean, the short answer is I don't know, and it would be really interesting to see. what some of these takes are. I know that during COVID, we've seen a lot more people get life insurance. And I would love to almost know like the layout of this, you know, it could just be one of those, like the more life insurance is being used as a wealth building tool, and you are just going to see more death claims because older people are, you know, going to use this. And I know one of the things that we talk a lot about is like, having this as a bond alternative. And a lot of people that do that are, you know, in their 50s, maybe even 60s, while they're getting insurance. But to be honest, I don't know, I don't know if this is a is alarming at all. It would be interesting to see like a graph like is this is this the top like is this kind of like the biggest death claims ever? The other the other thing would be the industry is growing. So like over time, like from 2019, like the premiums going into insurance has been increasing. So anytime you assume a growing industry, you're gonna get more premium. you're going to get more investable a premium to invest but you're also going to have more death claims um but i don't know what i don't know is if if someone's like looking at this and saying that this is alarming and i also would love to know like in what companies like what companies are maybe not having more death claims than usual and like what are they doing internally are they trying to adjust certain things you know you even look at like new york life they want more premium Usually what happens is if insurance companies are like really, really good because insurance companies don't want to grow a ton because they they're in the business of risk. And so they'll they'll potentially even make it less attractive to be like if the premium if New York Life is giving 12 percent for premium deposit accounts, certain companies could be like, we're going to give you four percent. What they're what they're saying is we'll take your premium, but we're not going to like we're not going to like bend over backwards to try to get you in. And. When it comes to something like this, I would just be really curious to see what the stats are like. Those are all great questions. That's why I always love asking you questions because then you just ask another 12 questions on my night. Yeah, I have more questions than I can. And I think actually some of the most successful people that I've ever talked to say that the number one thing that keeps them frothy is their curiosity. So I love it. You could get all foo-foo-y or... you know, whatever you want to call it. And it's just be like, at the end of the day, it is what it is. Like more people just die sometimes than others, or you could make something up and you can point it to, uh, there's more isolation. People are getting more lonely, depressed, they're getting sicker. Um, you know, there's more baby boomers, generations growing, like, you know, it's, it's a massive population, right. Um, or people were making babies back then. So all the older people are now, if people are now old. and they're probably passing. I mean, there could be a gazillion reasons why, right? So it would be actually interesting if we could go find maybe more definitive answers. And so if we find that, we will make sure to bring it back to you and share that as well. Yeah, according to ChatGPT, it's number one, after effects of COVID-19, chronic health, just population health trends, like more people are just dying in general, underestimation of the model risk. I'm not sure if that and then the risk. So ChatGBT really doesn't know either, but just gave some talking points. ChatGBT, we thought you knew everything, but apparently you don't. Amazing. All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump into our main topic of the day. And so again, rubbing my hands together, this is going to be great. And nonetheless, again, this is the And Asset, the life insurance show. So. Don't think that we're going to be talking about anything super exciting like, you know, President Trump doing something crazy on Twitter. I mean, that'd be epic if he tweeted something about life insurance or how it probably affects. Imagine if Donald Trump was like, buy life insurance, people would freak out. You should be fully insured over the next month. If he were to do it, he would probably say buy IUL or variable universal life. And I own the reason I say that. specifically is because of this topic. I actually do believe that first and foremost, if Trump were to ever tweet that about any product, it would definitely be whole life, uh, just due to the sheer fact of the history and how long it's been around. And, um, he, there's a good chance he has it, but with all of that being said, and I think there may be actually studies that show or somebody knows somewhere that he actually does have it. Not, he probably, he does. So with all that being said, uh, today's main topic is we're actually going to talk about the amount of life insurance premiums. that have actually been paid first year and comparing it from Q1 to Q2024, Q1 to 2025, and how that number has increased about 8% from year over year. And that actually goes into Caleb's last point about, hey, the industry is just growing. It's growing in general, right? That's why there's more death claims. Well, more death claims because there's more money that's going into the system. And so overall, about 8%, but something that I thought was extremely fascinating. Well, one, the total dollar amount is around 4 billion, which is a pretty significant number if you're just looking at first year premiums. But secondarily, there's something that's super fascinating. So for all of you guys that are watching, some of you may be avid whole lifers. But if you're just sheerly agnostic life insurance individuals, or maybe you're big into IUL, you'll maybe find a good kick out of this. The industry is saying that There's been an 11% increase in IUL, okay? But there's been a surging of 41. percent okay of ul right and then just a whopping two percent in whole life and actually down one regards to term. Now the numbers, when we're looking at percentages, sound like, wow, like VUL is straight crushing it. And IUL is kind of, you know, just second, the second best loser. But at the end of the day, what's going on is if you look at sheer dollar amounts, though, whole life is still blowing everybody out of the water in regards to shared premium dollars that are entering. And so whole life is right now currently actually 37% of a majority of all the NIS premiums. Pretty much if you take index universal life and VUL and combine them, it's pretty much the same amount of dollars that's going into whole life from a new business perspective. And so, Caleb, I would love to just pick your brain first and foremost, you know, 41% to VUL and 11% to IUL. I'd love to hear your thoughts on like why you think that there's been such an uptick and increase percentage wise in regards to these products. Yeah. So I just want to take a step back and just from a grand scheme of things here. we have just under a billion dollars going into IUL. And so that's a, it's 11% up. It's obviously trending up. And obviously VUL is just 41%. That's a big, big number. So, but that also tells you that in the past, VUL has gotten a black eye and there's been some horror shows when it comes to that. So it's not one of those things where it's like, this is just coming onto the scenes. V-U-L for you know, in the past has not been a product that has been looked at super great. And so it for sure is being used. And I think it's, it's a better overall product. If you're going to use life insurance with an upside, it's like, why not do a VUL versus limit some of your upside with an IUL. So obviously that's, that's increasing in, in its 533 million. And when you add those two numbers together, you add those two record breaking numbers together, you still get less premium than whole life in that. quarter. So whole life being under $1.5 billion. So sometimes when people hear numbers, we can just glaze over. But number one, what that tells you is whole life did increase only 2%, but it's like very, very stable. And even with that, whole life still is a big, big component of new premiums, which to be honest, if I were to guess, if you're just like new premiums, I probably would have guess that IUL would have beat whole life. But then if you really think through this, there's some big companies, the major mutuals that, you know, they have a whole sales team that is just focusing on whole life that don't have IUL. And so it just goes to show that a lot of the lot of the wealth and a lot of the planning is still being done with whole life. But the the new kid on the block for sure is the sexy upside. And so the... Uh, index universal life, we're going to continue to see that probably increase. Um, it will, will be interesting. And I do think that VUL is taking from IUL more than it is whole life. Because when someone thinks about whole life, um, the, the selling point is not like, oh, we want a sexy investment. Like you want a stable asset. You, you, whether it's a bond alternative or whether it's a place that you can, you know, do infinite banking with like you, a lot of times, like you, you. don't want this thing. You don't want to be surprised, good or bad when you see your statement, like you're seeing this as a stable deal, where when you do something like VUL, it's very much a play of like, I want to invest in the market, and I want to do so in a tax free wrapper. And so that just goes to show that there's a lot of confidence in the overall markets. And, you know, and that means that there's probably some type of marketing or something that's being um shared when it comes to the the premium but i also think dom these numbers are kind of small in the grand scheme of things whereas like one or two really really big whales could skew this number so i'd be what i would love to know with the vul is the average policy size because what we might find is you have some big family offices that are doing this and like they can skew the numbers because they they could put 50 to 100 million dollars in that quarter Whereas, you know, like they would do that, whereas you wouldn't necessarily do that with an IUL. I would imagine that IUL is more consistent, if I had to guess. Hence why I think the 41% increase is so dramatic. We'll see what that actually does. And then I think IUL is one of those things that are going to keep going up. And time will tell. I think it's going to, as more regulations come in, it's going to be harder to harder to sell IUL, but we're going to still see people doing it. Because if... If you're... It's just easier as a product to sell. The message of upside, no downside risk, more flexible, like all those things that sound really good. You know, if you're a nerd and you really study, you might not see all of those as big of a benefit, but the story itself is strong. So overall, I look at this and, you know, for being mostly whole life centered, I feel really, really good about these numbers. And it will be interesting to see the VUL. I don't think that's sustainable. I do feel like since we're doing quarter to quarter, you're just seeing kind of a blip. And so that's my thoughts. I mean, even if you look at some of the uncertainty last year in quarter one, that could be what you it could just be just people were very not willing to put a lot of money into the market, whether it's through life insurance or not. So that would be my whole summary on everything. I just still think it's interesting that whole life. is only growing 2%, but it still is by far the biggest premium dollars. And so it's still pretty cool to see. Yeah, no, for sure. And, you know, one to two is 100%, right? So if you have a smaller number and you increase by, you know, a large amount, it's easier for the percentages to look pretty drastic. And so if VUL was around 41%, I mean, it maybe was at 300 million relative to, you know the whole life being in the billions. So obviously having to increase dollars coming into the industry as a whole, there's only so much money to share money around. So percentage wise, you know, like we said, it's only 8% up, but like one of the products through 41%. So you could just show like, well, even though it seemed like a drastic amount percentage wise, it really wasn't a ton, just relative of premium. Uh, but I do think it's still fascinating to just see even in a trend, right. What it'll look like for year after year going forth. Even in the planning space, when I go to networking events and I talk to other producers, especially that are in the higher net worth space, they all rave and talk about VUL. And even Bobby Samuelson, who is one of the most smartest individuals in the space, he talks about that there is a very, very strong case for a VUL, especially as of late, the way these insurance companies are writing products. He actually talks about it at a very high highlight. And you know, you could hear the tone and the undertone sometimes and speaking about some like uh, like IUL, he's like, well, it doesn't ever sound like he's very advocate for IUL, just talks about how the product works and definitely obviously believes in whole life. And so it'll be, it's interesting to just see how the dynamic has changed. Cause you know, for experience, when we first got into space, the one thing that I specifically always remember about the VUL was Garrett Gunnarsson raving about the, I don't know if he called it a Monte Carlo stimulation for life insurance, but said that there's a 97% chance. that at VUL, you will lose all of your money. And that just like ingrained into my head. And I just like, remember it being like the worst product on the planet. And it stuck for me for a while until I'd say as of late, it kind of, I'd say three or four years ago when I went to Finseca and I heard Bobby talking about this and how these companies are now building, have built new products that have catered to a permanent death benefit that's wrapped in a tax advantage wrapper. that is guaranteed, that is probably one of the best ways to get upside, but also have the death benefit there too. So the VUL in my mind, when I hear it now, it's more of like a guaranteed cheap death benefit play. Like it's really what it is, but you still also can get upside potential. It's not something for you guys that are listening and watching. VUL is not something you'd want to use for quote unquote, the IBC concept or high liquided cash guy and asset. Like that's not what VUL is used for. It's used for sheerly planning purposes. and the death benefit to pass down generationally, but have it in a tax-free environment. And so I do think because of the insurance industry is putting more emphasis on designing these well, I do think that they, insurance advisors, they get paid a whole lot more. I do think that that's actually becoming a very good viable product. I do think that in general, that product alone is starting to grow. Now, on the other side, I have my thoughts around index universal life. on essentially why that one's going. Well, and Dom, can I just mention something with VUL? Yeah, yeah, of course. I would love to hear it, yeah. Yeah, I also think companies are getting a little bit more creative on how they're compensating people. And so from an advisor standpoint, it can be a little bit more attractive because instead of getting a one-time commission and then low ongoing, a lot of times VUL, they're able to pay you with the underlying asset. And so the advisor loves that because it's way more sticky. It's way more sticky. It's not someone... Someone can't just be like, oh, I want to change my advisor and just easily move assets. It's like more sticky there. And so advisors are able to. you know, almost get the best of both worlds where they get those assets under management, tie them up, but then the insurance company can be potentially create a unique life insurance death benefit play and have it be really efficient because the advisor is getting paid ongoing instead of all up front. So that is another thing to look at. One of the questions I have is it's It's just... Is the market overpriced? I know that people have been saying that for years and you kind of look like you have egg on your face. When I just look at some of these companies right now and you look at like what Warren Buffett is doing recently and all that, that's just the other question. It's like it it might be better from a sickiness factor. But when the market comes down, the advisors, it's one thing to have, you know, your account balance come down. It's another thing to have an insurance product wrapped in there. So I think even though there's definitely advantages to it, it... it's great when the market's up and going to create more questions when the market's down. And when the market does crash, we're going to see whole life and IUL, they're most likely going to spike because of the message that they have. And so just some more questions and thoughts around the VUL number. And just to have clarity for everybody who may be not familiar with the VUL, VUL stands for Variable Universal Life. And the variable side of it, is you have to work with somebody who is security licensed because you are having it tied, not even tied, it's in the market versus the IUL being credited based off of a market indexed. And so with what Caleb said, with what you said is I fully agree with you in a lot of ways. I think Warren Buffett has the quote where it's like, when the tides are high, everything's good. But when the tides come down, you'll finally be able to see who's swimming naked. And really what that's saying is, well, in a bull market and things are good, everything's good. But then when the market comes down, it'll see like who's really actually like in a really bad place or overexposed in a lot of ways. And I do think that if you just look at business cycles and you look at just tier market cycles, like usually there is something every four years in a lot of ways where something from a correction will happen that's pretty significant. And it's usually also after in during the midterm year of presidency, right? You obviously every president is going to do their absolute best to try to keep the market up as they're running for presidency. And then right when before they're going to run again and elect like they want the market to stay good because if the market goes down, well, then there's obviously a lot of chaos. And usually when the market goes down in one of those terms, well, then a new presidency comes in because they could obviously point to be like, hey, like this presidency was an office. And so if there's a time. where President Trump is like, I'm willing to allow the market to actually do its thing where it's supposed to. It would have to be in 2026 because it's the midterm year. So we're right around the corner. We'll see what happens. I'm not predicting anything. It's not financial advice. I'm just talking about sheer business and market cycles. And so with all that being said, there is some things that I think people should consider when they're putting their money into something like a VUL or overexposing into it equities without having some protection in place. That is the good thing, though, how some of these products have been at least been built within the VUL is that there is some guarantees that are built in, regardless of how the market can perform, to making sure that at least the death benefit is there, no matter what happens, as long as you keep paying your premiums. And so that's at least some good stuff there on that side of things. It also just shows this say that last quarter, quarter one, President Trump got in. Regardless of your opinion of him, there's Mark. the fact that it was a 41% increase tells you that whether it's a few really wealthy families or family offices or just a lot of small policies, overall, the belief in the markets were a lot higher. And if you remember last year, when there was a lot of uncertainty, who's going to be the president at all, there are people are just sitting on, there are just a lot of unknown. And the fact when President Trump won, you just saw lots of people just starting to deploy money because of that perceived confidence. Most people have no idea where to start or how to really evaluate whole life insurance. That's why we've built The Vault. It's all of our best life insurance resources and educational tools all in one place, all for free. We have calculators, handbooks, crash course, deep dive videos on numbers. If you want to learn more, click the link in the description or tag comment below to unlock The Vault. All right, back to the video. So true. So good. And then real quick, when it comes to the IUL. in regards to just like where it's at, the state of the market. If you look online, social media, you know, you look on TikTok, et cetera. It's really the rave of the generation when it comes to life insurance as a whole and how it's used because of the high cap rates, the quote unquote high crediting rates, like the upside potential. And people will talk about 10, 11, 12, 13%. Shoot, John Hancock just came up with a NASDAQ index where essentially they can get 14% from a cap perspective. And some people will take that and they'll say you get 14% on your IUL. they forget to factor the actual expenses, the mortality cost, all of those things that come in from a fee perspective. When you actually look at the IRR, it's actually a lot similar to maybe more of a whole life or slightly above it in a lot of instances. And with that, unfortunately, the industry eventually gets a bad rap because of how the products are promoted. And people then talk about how it's a scam. And then it gets like this very scammy vibe. And it's the same thing with infinite banking. A lot of ways, you know, you can have both sides of the coins. And so I do believe that the MLMs, whether it's PHP or WFG or, you know, some of these companies where they're growing rapidly because it's exciting and enticing, they're promoting these products consistently because it's all they sell. And so therefore it's spreading quicker and faster and they're better at marketing than the actual maybe. financial planner or advisor who maybe know a little bit more about the concept and money that isn't very good about marketing, but they're really good at planning. And there may be more in the whole life camp. And so you get a 2% growth from like the people who don't talk about it and you just get the typical planners and you're getting an 11% growth on the people that are great at marketers at the end of the day. I'm not saying necessarily the IUL as a product is bad, just talking about how it's presented and talked about. Yeah. Well said. Okay, now... There's something we didn't talk about at all. There's the negative 1% from term insurance. Do you think that that is just because there's a sheer amount of increase in the other products? Do you think that it's just, it's so boring that people are just, it's just the typical standard behavior. So it was just pretty much, you know, stagnant. Or do you think there's any validity in up, down, left, right, whatever? I don't know. I don't know. I mean did the $738 million for a quarter of term, that's a lot of money just in general. I just want to like, that's a lot of premium because you think about term, that's just a lot of people insured in general. And I would say more people got insured via that number than IUL, VUL, and probably Whole Life altogether if you just think about the type of people. So overall, not... Not sure. I mean, it is comparing it to other term insurance, but I think anywhere from negative one to two percent to a little bit like I just see it more as like level. And so I don't think it has anything to do with IUL VUL personally, but maybe maybe there was some people that end up putting their money into an IUL versus term. But but overall, I I'm not worried about any of those. those numbers, unless we saw like a huge decrease. I'd be curious, the Charlie Kirk effect to see what the end of quarter four is. Because I know, or I mean, just many people, I think when they saw that whenever there's something really traumatic that happens, they're like, Oh, shoot, I need I need to get some type of protection. And a lot of times, when people have that they're not thinking about whole life, right? They're just like, I gotta have some protection for my family. It will be really interesting to see quarter four numbers to see. Did it move the needle at all or did it not? Because I would bet you that whenever there's uncertainty, I would imagine that people would be flocking more towards protection products. Amazing. In Q4, it'll be good for us to come back and do the same thing. And I mean, technically it is Q4, but we can get the numbers for the end of Q4 to see what they actually come out as. And then we could do another episode that kind of compares this and bring it back up where we talked about here. And to look at annual numbers, because I think Quarter to quarters can be tough, but it's like annual to annual. It would be really interesting to see overall what are the numbers. And so that's something. Stay tuned when we get the annual numbers and the quarter numbers. It'll be fun to do every quarter to kind of give an update on where things are as an industry. Amazing. All right. Well, if you look at Mr. Caleb Williams, he's a pretty face and a visionary and very charismatic. And somehow he got us to talking 30 plus minutes about life insurance and around two or three subjects. And so, uh, So Caleb, beyond don't understand how we're able to do it, but here we are. And what we're going to do next in the next segment of this is we're actually going to answer some questions for you guys that have been in the comments. We're ungrateful for helping us grow our channels. What we want to do is make sure that we get back nonetheless and be able to talk about them. We don't want to ever just have you guys put a question in and us not talk about it. So here's the first question, and we can go back and forth, Caleb, or you, I, you, I, or we both can talk about it nonetheless. First question is, how would you dollar cost average with the life insurance policy? Question mark. Are you funding it monthly and borrowing monthly to invest or taking a lump sum loan instead? Caleb, would you like me to take this one or you got it? I'll take this one. Okay, so the idea of dollar cost averaging is you can, like, I dollar cost average into Bitcoin right now. It's a small portion, but it's like I'm putting in every month. I'm going to... buy Bitcoin and just instead of like putting all my money in and buying at a certain level, I don't know if Bitcoin is going to continue to go up, if it's going to go down. And so that's the idea of dollar cost averaging is I'm going to be disciplined and buy certain assets. You also can do this. I also do the same thing with the S&P. So when I think of dollar cost averaging in a life insurance, I don't see life insurance is not an investment. So I don't necessarily care. I just want to make sure it's with the life insurance policy, not into one. So it's essentially the idea of how would I use DCA and strategies of like what you just shared into Bitcoin, but using the life insurance policy as the vehicle? Yeah, I'll address that. I just I wanted to kind of like. So I look at it. I look at life insurance as as that safe as that safe asset. And so overall, I... Yeah, if your investment thesis is, I'm going to dollar cost average, and I'm going to put a portion of my money, and you know that, and you want to run your money through policies, great. I think that the point of caution I would have in using your life insurance dollar cost average maybe into the S&P and Bitcoin, for example, is how are we going to pay that interest and really be able to... to think about that i i know that some people use life insurance to then dollar cost average into things but overall i would say majority of people that we talk with that use life insurance are investing in either business or other assets that they have like a clear like i'm gonna buy this thing i'm gonna sell it or i i have a game plan of how i'm gonna fund like pay for the interest and overall i'm not necessarily sure that dollar cost averaging and then selling some of those investments to pay the interest is like a great strategy. So the, I was thinking about this even last night as I was doing some things when it comes to like overall investing, you, you, the step number one is building an emergency and opportunity fund. And then step, step number two is really building a investment thesis and figuring out what is my, what is the play that I'm going to do? And then step number three is vetting and then step number four is actually deploying that capital And so if you're someone that's watching this and you're like, I'm all in on Bitcoin, I believe Bitcoin is going to be the thing. And then you want to use life insurance in that part of your investment thesis needs to be able to figure out how I'm going to address the interest that's going to get more and more. If you're putting money into something and not going to exit in 20 to 30 years, let's just say, because the idea of dollar cost averaging is you have to think long term. So all that to say, I personally don't. dollar cost average with my money using insurance policies, but it's all interconnected because the insurance policy is my volatility buffer. And so I don't know. I don't know if I answered that super well, but that would be, you know, yeah, that's how I would answer that. And if it's a big, big part, if it's like all your money is going into funding life insurance and then loaning against to invest, I don't know if that's like the best way to go about it. It seems like a lot of work but I think that might be better off than not doing insurance in general. So I guess we could compare like buy term and invest the difference, pros and cons. I still think over time, you'd be better off using whole life and doing it that way. You've got to address how we're going to cover the interest cost. And that needs to either come out of pocket or that needs to come from the investment. And that needs to be factored into your dollar cost averaging deal. That's good. No, I actually couldn't agree with that more. and the way you... VISA framework. I love that. You know, and my encouragement would be dollar cost average into the life insurance policy in theory, right? You pick a fixed number, whether it's monthly, etc. or put it into a savings account, right? Dollar cost average of it. Take those dollars and fund your life insurance premium, or you do it and then you do it on an annual basis. And then what you said, ask the question, or are you taking a large lump sum loan? Then when the opportunity presents itself, take a policy loan. And so, you know, the idea of something like Bitcoin, I think that just keeping money stored inside of your life insurance policy for whenever there's red is a good time to then take. a policy loan to do versus like if you start dollar costing averages and you're doing it at the peak on just accident, because that's what DCA does is you'll do it sometimes at the peak, sometimes at the bottom. You may for a time period be upside down on your investment. And that's what Caleb said is like, well, where are you factoring maybe the loan costs, the loan interest? And if you have to wait like four years, et cetera, and you don't have a plan, it may create some chaos in regards to your investment overall P&L. I think there's a couple ways to do it. I think what Caleb said is a great way. And I think that, you know, taking a lump sum in the right time for an opportunity is another great way to do it, too. And one of the benefits of dollar cost averaging is it's getting your money. It's like putting it's like automating money for the future. It's automating money for the future. If you have a life insurance policy, you're already creating a system to do that. So then so then I would then it's less of like per month and more of like very much. It's very much like when there's red, just being like, okay, I'm going to buy every, I believe in this asset class. Every time it dips below a certain level, I'm going to, I'm going to put money in. And then I, I'm going to know that life insurance is going to reimburse that, you know, and all, I think that's a great strategy. And if you didn't have insurance, you may not have the discipline or have some type of system to take money aside. And so just know that by default, putting money into life insurance, half the battle is already done because you're you're getting that money inside that policy, which is great. It's then investing month to month. That's the real question. I don't necessarily think that needs to happen as long as you're thinking like an investor. Warren Buffett got a lot of money on the sideline right now. I think Berkshire Hathaway's cash and cash equivalent short-term investments right now is $344 billion at the end of June. That just goes to show that Warren Buffett, one of the greatest investors of all time, is got a lot of money on the sidelines waiting to pounce. If someone like him has that much money, I just would challenge you to say like, are you ready to pounce when there's opportunities out there? And dollar cost averaging can bite you in the butt if you don't have any gunpowder to be able to take advantage of something. Amen. All right. Let's go ahead and move on to question number two. All right. How much do you have to put into a policy and how long before you can borrow against your cash value? Also, whether the fees exist besides the interest rate. All right. I will go first. We did say we'd go back and forth. So how much do you have to put into a policy and how long before you can borrow against your cash value? Okay. So for us, we usually tell people around 30 days is a good number to think about before you can start using your policy funds. And sometimes it's shorter. Sometimes it may be a little bit longer, but that's a pretty safe conservative timeframe for us to go about. Now, it's specifically, it's only if you have cash value. If you're funding a policy and it's maybe an all-based policy, there won't be any cash value in it, maybe in the first like year or two. So when you're funding it for liquidity, control, higher the cash value, wait about 30 days. And that's through the whole process, right? That means looking at illustrations. That means going through the underwriting process. getting an approval for the health rating, getting an offer for what your health rating is, actually paying your premium dollars. And so once you pay your premium dollars, the insurance company receives it. Think about 30 days from that standpoint, right? So that entire process can take anywhere from 14 days to all the way to six months, depending on your health really at the end of the day, right? So that's how to think about it from the time perspective. Now, how much do you have to put into a policy that's also going to be different depending on the individuals that you work with, depending on your philosophy, depending on what the insurance companies will allow. Some have limits on how high you can do. Some have limits on how small you can do. For us, we really try to base it and focus around the individual, their goals, what they're trying to do and accomplish, right? Somebody that's maybe a little bit younger, you could put a little bit smaller amount, somebody who's a little bit older, you know, probably maybe want to do a little bit more for it to actually make a difference and for stuff focusing on the cash value. If we're looking at the death benefit piece of it, it's a whole different conversation because now we're doing planning purposes and estate planning purposes and tax strategies around it versus just like, how big can I get my cash value to go? Um, there's literally a lot of ways to answer this question. I know people in the industry that will say, Hey, whatever your age is, uh, add a zero to that. And that's what your monthly premium will essentially be. We've done it at point in time. So it's like, if you're 30, you put a zero at the end, it's $300 a month is like what they'll allow you to do. Um, you know, for kids policies, you could do $50 a month. I, they could go on and on in regards to like the actual dollar amount for us. We're usually on the, like, if we just had to say on average, were probably like allowing and saying, Hey, if you can't say maybe close to $15,000 per year, then maybe from the cash value specific perspective, we maybe want to talk about like, is there ways that we can save more money, decrease expenses, improve cashflow, increase income. So that way we can make it more advantageous, especially if you're a little bit older. And so it's a loaded question and hopefully that helped, um, at the end of the day. So, uh, and then the last question is, is what other fees exist besides the interest rate? So I want to be very clear on what you mean by the interest rate, because the interest rate is not a fee. That's actually a benefit. That's the compounding growth that makes the policy. I think they're meaning loan interest rate. Yeah. Yeah. I could imagine as well. So, yeah, if you're talking about the loan rate specifically. So, yeah, loan rates right now, they're typically around five to six percent, depending on the company that you're working with. What other fees exist besides that? Well, when you're looking at a whole life. to be honest with you, they're not super transparent. You can't like open up a, an illustration, like, okay, well, here's the, the fees and here's what they cost. You can, in an IUL, they actually have other fees that you can break it down of like surrender charges, expensive charges, cost of insurance. Like they actually will break it down specifically. So it's a little bit more transparent in that way. But when it comes to either side, whole life, IUL, et cetera, you can kind of gauge out like what the fees are, at least from the cost perspective. Because you'll see how much cash you actually have available in the very first year. So for instance, if I put in $100,000 and I have $85,000 in the very first year, well then that $15,000 Delta that you don't have right away is likely somewhere in the ballpark of what the fees will consist of. And I don't even want to say fully fee because that actually will add be part of a cost of insurance. The piece that you're paying for that actually goes to the death benefit so that you can have the protection for your family. The thing that comes tax-free for generations where you can do other planning. There's a lot of really cool benefits to have for the death benefit. But there is a natural cost of starting a business slash working with the insurance company that come with it, whether that's the cost of the commissions, the cost for the life insurance company to stay in place, to do policy loans. Not specifically yours, but just high level for the business to actually function. Hopefully that gave you a decent answer, but it's another loaded question as well. Yeah, I would just say when you look at the illustration, you get what you get. So if you're seeing like the illustrations, especially the guaranteed illustrations, that's assuming no dividends, like that's what you get. There's no fees on top of that, if that's the question. And so what I love is, especially in whole life, you're really able to see transparently this is what this thing is going to look like. And with no dividends, which is... Not likely. And then with the current dividends, which, you know, whether you talk to that might be conservative, might be higher or lower, but it gives you general ideas. If and when you want to utilize your money, there is an insurance. There's that interest rate cost because you're not using your money. You're using the insurance company's money. That's not a fee. That's actually a benefit of the contract. And and and overall, outside of that, there's no no new things that you're going to get hit with that are like, oh. We're taking money from that in whole life. And in IUL, they can be, quote unquote, a lot more transparent, but you potentially could feel more nickel and dime because you see like these things coming out. So overall, I thought that was well said, Dom. And I can read this next question. Amazing. People talk about borrowing against their policy to invest. But what happens if the investment goes bad and you still owe the loan? It's a great question. And it's a question that more people should be asking when they're taking out loans. The short answer is, and I'll just use this as an analogy, if you put money into a savings account and then you withdraw that money and you put it into an investment that goes bad, the investment goes bad and you're out your money. In this case, the same concept is you put money into a life insurance policy. Instead of taking that money out, you're loaning against it. The investment or opportunity that you put your money in goes bad. now you have an outstanding loan you you have two options if you fully leverage your policy The worst case scenario is you just lose the policy. You're not going to get an outstanding loan from the insurance company saying that you owe extra money. You just lose your policy. Now, if you lose your policy and there's gain in that policy and you end up canceling it, there will be a tax bill that is required to get paid on the gain of that. But if there's no gain in that policy, if you cancel it in the first couple of years, then there's no tax consequences. and it's almost... It's very similar to what would happen if you put your money into a savings account and lost it. It's not ideal, but it's not like you're going to get hit with a, now the insurance company is coming after your money. Because the whole definition is you're only playing with the money that you have available there. And that's why insurance companies can think super long term. We know some people that have had this happen. And they've kept the loan outstanding. If I were in that same boat, I would keep the loan outstanding. And then, yeah, just like your... you're paying that back, but you're getting all the benefits of your money in your policy from day one. And so if you look back and let's say over 10 years, you're trying to dig yourself out of the hole, you'll actually be way better off in the insurance company, having your life insurance versus canceling it and either starting over or just doing it from the same account scenario. And so definitely not ideal. And that's why when taking loans, you have to do your due diligence. And I just can't stress that enough. on how important it is to not just see this is going to be free money, but to really look at all the areas that you could lose money. An experienced investor is not just looking at the growth rate and compounding. They're looking at all the risks that are associated with this, and they're trying to get a market rate return with reducing their risk in the situation. And so that is a very good question. And I think more people need to be thinking about that before they use their money to know that the... the consequences. Losing money anytime is a bad idea. That's a, that's a clip right there. Well said Caleb Williams. Well said. All right, let's go to the next question. That's all that needs to be said there. Okay. For someone designing and assets out policies, which companies are the best to get appointed with? Okay. So this may, this sounds like it may be coming from an agent because it says to get a pointed with. And so I will just start by saying that you really need to start with what we call even when we're working with clients and consumers is like your DNA. Like what do you really want to do and who do you want to become in the space of being an advisor? And the reason why is because if you really want to go with a practice that feels a little bit more like at home, you work with one company, you get a little bit more support, right? Then you maybe want to go down the career agent side. And there's a lot of career agents that are like the New York Life, the Big Four, the New York Life, the Guardians, the Mass Mutuals, right? Those are... more of the career side of things where you get some maybe more support. Now, if you want to go maybe more on the independent side, right, the doors are busted wide open in regards to the companies that you work for. There's literally thousands of companies, right? And if you then start looking at products, some companies specialize in VUL, some specialize in annuity, some specialize in IUL, some specialize in whole life. There's literally thousands of insurance companies or maybe hundreds. And there's... There's so many different types of products that you can essentially offer as well. So until you identify the type of buyers you want to be, the products you want to sell, what type of planning you want to do, what type of support do you want, it's really hard to essentially answer this type of question. I'd be giving you probably the not great answer if I just start spewing out insurance companies without knowing maybe what it is that you're looking from a DNA perspective. Yeah, I think that's... Well said, especially political Dom put his hat on. I do also realize you said for designing someone for the and-assist-out policy. So I probably should answer that now that I read that. Probably should read that more closely. Okay. So now with the unpolitical. I'm not going to answer your question, but thanks for that. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. So if it was which companies are the best to get appointed with, that was a good answer. That was my answer. But now that I realize you said design and-assist-out and I know your actual question, now let me be more specific. Okay. Caleb, you're hilarious. And also thanks for calling out on that. All right. So we want to start with companies that are obviously mutual because and assets, the foundational piece of it, it's whole life. Now, when we come to that, we also want to be companies that have been around for a very long time, that have never missed a dividend, that have very strong financial, all of that fun jazz. Okay. And so with that, some key companies that you could get appointed with, if you're wanting to go down the career side, like I said, are Guardian, are MassMutual, New York Life, Northwestern Mutual. Those are four. And Penn Mutual also has a side of a career side that I think could be interesting to look into. Now, if you're on the independent side and you're looking for a hand asset, companies that we really endorse that we like as well are all those same companies from a career side, which again. I will say specifically companies that we use since we're not career and we're independent, more along the lines of like a mass mutual or a guardian. Those fit all the buckets across the board. And then on top of that, when it's maybe not the quote big four mutual, but as like an industry gives it the name, but still have a lot of really great products for and asset when it comes to design style, dividends, et cetera. That's now more of like the Penn Mutual, the One America, the Lafayette Life are some companies that I think are really great companies to work with when it comes to an and asset style policy. Yeah, well said. I would say that if I was talking to somebody, there's a couple strategies. You don't want to be working with one carrier, in my opinion. I do think there's benefits of having at least two carriers because not every insurance company is right for any one person. But the problem is if you're just getting started, you don't want to get contracted with a bunch of people because If you don't write with them in a year, they could easily just like can you essentially. And then it almost makes it even more harder to do business with them. So you want to be like really strategic. And so I would recommend finding two carriers to start out with. And to do that, you want to see like, okay, is there a carrier that I can do that could be really good for front loading or like early cash value? And is there a carrier that I could work with that does really good for like ongoing if people have ongoing premiums? And then if you work with someone online, you want to make sure that you're working with some carrier that can at least work with someone in New York. And so overall, if you're asking this question and you have a group that can train you and you go down the career path, great. But if someone was to come to me and they're like, knowing what you know, where would you start? I would start independently and I would try to find two carriers that you can build relationships with, understand those products. have the awareness to be like, maybe they're not going to be competitive in this scenario. So maybe you work with someone even like us or somebody else that, you know, because I can't stress how much like it might sound good to be like, I'm going to get contracted with 10 carriers. It's like, that's going to be a nightmare. And you're actually going to be an expert at nothing. So you want to find that one to two carriers. And then as you grow, we have, we're, we're, we have like five or six that we're really, really good with. And then we have access to a lot of others, but we're even with how big we are, we're not trying to. contract with every single mutual that might sound good but it's actually not going to serve people well um at the in the end so it's a good question and and dom you're a good person to go to if they want to speak more about what it what it potentially looks like to work even with companies like ours if you're curious you can hit dom up at dom at betterwealth.com um so all right any anything else you want to add to that nope uh that uh that is good let's go to the last question I think, right? Last question, what kind of guarantees or options exist for people who are chronically ill? This is a tricky one. My initial gut reaction to this is if you're chronically ill, I want to know more about what that looks like. If you're not doing well at all, insurance companies are not going to want to insure you. I mean, it's just like if you know, like, hey, I am chronically in a bad scenario. Um, that, that could be that, that that's like the definition of uninsurable with, with that said, chronic, chronically ill could be mean a lot of different things. Um, are we talking like Lyme's disease kind of deal? Are we talking about like, so that, that would be like the, we would want to look at your situation. And, and at the end of the day, we're trying to get an approval. So if you have, if you're, if you're chronically ill in some areas, we would want to get that disclosed upfront. And what we can do is we can actually go to insurance companies without even applying and say, John Smith over here or Lucy Smith over here, we wouldn't use your name. This is the situation. What what are we doing? Like, is there a possibility that this person could get approved? And if the insurance companies go, yes, but we need to see this, this and this, we make sure the qualifications happen before we go down that process. Because the last thing we want to do is just like not do our due diligence at all. and get you a decline. And then that's just like, no one's better off for going through that. There's work involved. And then ultimately, then you have an insurance company ding. And so overall, it's kind of a loaded question. And we would want to do what's called pre-underwriting to get to know your scenario. And we've had people that did not think they were going to get insurance at all. And we got them insurance, which has been amazing. And then we've had people that, you know, could not get insurance and then then they have to decide okay i'm not insurable at this time do i want to get insurance on my spouse, on my kids, on my business partners, or did I want insurance mainly for my own death benefit? And that's the reality with insurance is not everyone can get it. And that's in a way, like there's some scarcity built into even our space is like, you might think that you can get this at any time. And the people that can't get insurance tend to be the most convicted around why this is why you should get something now. And so that's a plug for convertible term insurance if you're someone who's you know watching watching our content and you're like hey i can't really put in 15 20 000 a year into life insurance but i am sold on the benefits get convertible term insurance now gives you the option to get convert in the future but you're locking in the thing that is could be the biggest variable in the future which is your health. I feel like Caleb's on his P's and Q's today. He's giving some fire answers across the board. It's figuring out why VUL has gone up 41%. I don't have an answer for that. Amazing. I actually love it. I think that's a great way to end it. And with that, you guys also should know that we have, in my opinion, the greatest team in the space that can help answer some of those questions that you guys have asked in the comments. And or also answer some of the questions that Kayla just answered around. illness and critical illness? And do you qualify for life insurance? And if you want some of those questions specifically answered and tailored to you, feel free to talk with us. We'll be more than happy to help in any capacity, even if it's just a quick conversation to answer those questions. And if you're like, Hey, after this conversation, I think I want to move forward with the process. Amazing. And we'd be more than happy to facilitate that for you. So with that being said, thank you so much, Caleb, is there anything you want to end? If not, No, Dom, I appreciate you facilitating this and look forward to continuing to up our game when it comes to this show. If you're someone that has topics or questions or inside information, we want to hear from you. And I do see I'm speaking this into existence here. I believe that there's going to be insurance executives, companies, top advisors that are going to come on the show and share the insights. And so for all of you that are subscribed and listeners, thank you. you will be able to break one day and say you were one of the first listeners to the show. And so we would not be able to do it without you. And Dom, appreciate you. And this was a lot of fun. We've helped people unlock millions of dollars in hidden value just by reviewing their old life insurance policies. Unfortunately, thousands of people do not have life insurance policies set up properly, which could be costing them a lot of money. If you have a policy, the few minutes it takes to fill out our form could be the difference between continuing to waste money or unlocking. serious value. If you qualify, we'll review your policy 100% for free and give you the honest breakdown you deserve. Click the link in the description or take comment below to apply.
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