How Does a Real Estate Investor Use Whole Life Insurance?

What is one thing that you've learned since being in the life insurance space that you once believed but now you don't believe anymore? Everything that we're taught is just a big lie. Like, save your money, put your money in the bank. That's not what banks do. They put it where we now know is the best place to store capital: bank-owned life insurance. That's what they do. Billions and billions of dollars.

I just started really learning how money actually works. It like pissed me off when I actually learned. I think I'm up to like $40 million in life insurance, which is crazy when 5 years ago I didn't think I needed it. I just believe 30 years from now the savings account dwarfs the benefits that life insurance can give you. I'm young, I'm healthy, I don't need life insurance. Doesn't make any sense. I'll get it later when I'm older, which is the worst way to think, because then it's more expensive.

Almost every dollar I make flows through a policy. Put all your money in a 401k. Like, I would do that, and as I realized how they really work, it's probably the worst thing you could do with money. You just give up total control of it until you're 60. Basically, me in my 20s, that's 40 years of not having access to money. Becoming the bank, what's that all about? I listen to it and I'm like, that just makes so much sense.

Insurance is simply a storehouse for capital because there's no taxes. That's almost like, I had 40, 45 million in assets at my death, my family sells it off, what's left after the taxes, they get 30 million bucks. That's crazy. What else can you do where you put money in, you can use it right away for whatever you want without interrupting the compounding? It's protected against lawsuits and judgments, so no one can steal it from you. And when you pass away, it's guaranteed to give you a multiple of what was in there tax-free. There's nothing that does that.

If you don't value other things, don't do life insurance. If you don't value more options, if you don't value the tax benefits, if you don't value having a death benefit, if you don't value these things, life insurance is probably going to be average or maybe underperform a high yield savings account. That's a thought crime. Yeah, your car is valuable, your house is valuable, but if you look at our lives and our ability to create income, if we were just a machine, if you just take my input, output and just say I have a money printing machine, that would be the first thing I would insure.

You probably have insurance in your car, but there's no guarantee you're ever going to wreck the car, right? You probably have insurance in your house. There's no guarantee you'll ever have to use it, right? You probably have insurance on your phone. There's no guarantee you're going to drop that phone. Yeah. You're guaranteed to die.

We did two hours on your show. Yeah, one of my favorite conversations, because we didn't just jump into like, Caleb, what do you do? Let's talk about life insurance. Like, you asked me about my journey, my upbringing, and for the first hour, I don't think we even talked about anything life insurance related. No. And we just like, it was very therapeutic for me. So thank you for that. I've never actually had you on my show.

We reposted the second part of that clip on our YouTube channel. It has over 20,000 views. And the beautiful thing is, we were talking about our disagreements. We were talking about infinite banking. We were talking about all these things. And what people loved is, it's like, wow, it's refreshing, people that are talking that don't always have to agree on every single thing. And so I got a lot of great feedback from that. I know that you have as well.

And so what I wanted to do is have you on this show, get a little bit of your backstory, because I would love our audience to get to know you a little bit more. But before we get into your backstory, I want to know, because we talked a little bit about some of the things that we've learned in this journey of selling life insurance. You've been very, very successful. You're Mr. Brrrr on social media and you have millions upon millions of views and like tons of subscribers and you're doing a lot of things. What is one thing that you've learned since being in the life insurance space that you once believed, but now you don't believe anymore? I know I'm coming out with like a banger. We're going to get into your story, but I'm just wondering, like, what do you know now that maybe you thought were true when you first got started, or maybe you haven't changed your mind on anything?

I think right when I got into life insurance, I didn't think I needed it, right? Because I was young. I was 34 and my wife was like, "We need to get life insurance." She started thinking about it. My wife's super smart. If it wasn't for her, I probably wouldn't be where I'm at. Like, I got to give a lot of credit to my wife, and anyone who has a good wife can attest for that. But she started saying, "We need life insurance." And I'm like, "I'm young, I'm healthy, I don't need life insurance. Doesn't make any sense. I'll get it later when I'm older." Yeah. Which is the worst way to think, because then it's more expensive.

Yeah, you know, so I just learned that like I need life insurance. I need as much of it as possible. So now I literally just get every dollar, I shouldn't say every dollar, almost every dollar I make flows through a policy. I'm working towards every single dollar goes through. So now I think I'm up to like $40 million in life insurance, which is crazy when five years ago I didn't think I needed it.

Right. So we're going to dive into all of your teachings, what you're doing with your money, and we're going to maybe rehash part two. We don't necessarily have a whiteboard. We will still give the people what they want as it relates to whiteboard, but we'll go back and forth and I think people really enjoy that. But before that, I know you have quite the inspiring story in itself. So let's go back. You obviously didn't come out of the womb selling life insurance and this is something that you were kind of converted later in your life. Yeah. Talk to me about who Devon Burr is, and while we don't have two hours right now, I would love to get like a

Five minute summary of like, okay, your story, because a lot of times we understand how people think and a lot of times it's because of the trauma or the victories and insights that we've gained in our story. So with that, tell me a little bit about who you are and why you're doing what you're doing right now.

Yes. So, youngest of three siblings. So I was always the baby growing up. I have an older brother and an older sister. And me and my brother are polar opposites. Like he's 6 foot, 230. I'm like 5'6", 170. He's got blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm dark complected. Like I look just like my mom. Little Mexican lady. He looks just like my dad, like super white guy, you know what I mean?

So, but growing up, like we were just a scarcity mindset. Like my parents didn't make a lot of money. My mom, I think the most she's ever made is like 30 grand before taxes. My dad 80 grand. So, just we didn't grow up with a lot of money. It was hand-me-downs. And I remember I'd get one pair of shoes per year. And now I love shoes. I buy way more than I should because I couldn't when I was younger, right?

So grew up with a scarcity mindset. Realized like at a young age that I had the ability to sell. I had a job in telemarketing selling long distance MCI.

So I kind of Long distance what? This ages me a bit. So this is before there was cell phones. Oh no. And everyone had long distance. So you had your local service and then you had your long-distance service. So we would just sell long distance and like give people instead of 5 cents a minute, it'd be 3 cents and convert them over from AT&T to MCI. So that was my first sales job as, gosh, I was 17 in high school.

Were people excited to get telemarketing calls back then? Like was it one of those or was it still like, oh yeah, you're a scam, please? Yeah. You're like, if you could do that, you could sell anything. Yeah, it was. Dude, it was. But it was a part-time job. Yeah. After school, and I was getting paid weekly, making like 1,800 a week. Wow. I was making more than my teachers. Like, just cuz I learned how to sell. And selling is nothing more than just

So, at 17, you were making more than what your dad was going to make. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Continue. Sorry. That's incredible, though. So, yeah, I started buying everything that I wanted. I'd buy all the nice clothes, the shoes. I started upgrading things on my car and everyone thought I was like this rich kid, right? That I came from a silver spoon. So, I got a lot of hate in high school.

I went to a predominantly black school and yeah, like long story short, I got jumped outside of my car one night by like three or four guys and I drove home. I parked in my mom's driveway. I got out of my car to go ice my face. I'm in the house for maybe 30 seconds. So, I've been out of my car for maybe a minute and I just hear pop pop. So, they came and shot at my car outside my mom's house and one of the bullets went through the headrest. So legitimately, if this was 2003, if nowadays I had my phone, I probably would have stopped, maybe checked a few text messages that I didn't respond to when I was driving, I wouldn't be here today, you know?

So that opened my eyes and I realized that I was just rolling with the wrong crowds and I was trying to be someone who I wasn't. So I up and left. I moved in with my sister who lived in West Virginia and yeah, just kind of got away from all the BS that I was into and came back a year later and everything kind of died down.

And that was an eye opening experience though cuz dude, how old were you when this happened? 19. 19 years old. And you got jumped and then you got into the car and were they chasing you or did you think you just got beat up and Yeah, I just thought that Why? And they were just jealous? Like that, people don't shoot up a car because of jealousy, do they? So there's a backstory. I found out later on. Okay.

I can't help myself. I know. But I just can't, I'm too curious to be like, you don't shoot up a car because someone's buying nice things and you're jealous. Maybe you do, but that was part of it. So, like everyone again, they thought I was just this rich kid, but I was working for everything I got. Like, my parents weren't giving me anything. Yeah.

So I was at a party one time and they broke into my car, stole my stereo. I got a new stereo like the next week. So, that probably rubbed them the wrong way that Oh, this rich kid. Yeah. And then they messed up my car one time with a cinder block in the front windshield. This is all before I got jumped. I'm like, who is doing this to my car? But I'm like, I make good money. Let me just fix it and get a new one. Right? So that was part of it. And I found out later on it was a gang that I hooked up with one of their girlfriends.

And I didn't know the truth. I could have Write your freaking book. Yeah. I knew it was something to do with a girl. It was. But here's the thing. I didn't know. She didn't say that she had a boyfriend. And that's some information you should probably let me know. Especially if he's in a gang. Yeah. Hey, he's a gang leader. They'll kill you. But, you know, maybe that was her grand plan in the end.

So, yeah, I found that out later on cuz I'm like, what are these guys? Like, who is doing this to me? I had no idea what was going on. And then, yeah, got jumped outside the car. It was the same guys. So, I'm just like, what is going on? Like, I went home. I was pretty pissed off. Yeah. Iced my face. And yeah, the car got shot up. And I'm just thinking to myself, one, I could have died. Totally. Two, what if, let's say my mom's outside like in the garden or whatever and just she dies. Totally. It's super scary. What, are these people in jail? Do you call the cop? Like

What were you not afraid of? Like, it's like pattern, there's a pattern here. Yeah. What keeps you safe? Like, what happened as we put a bow on this?

So basically I didn't know who it was. I didn't know who they were. So I couldn't be like, "Hey, cops, go see these people." I didn't know who they were. I just knew it was a gang called Oak Street. Yeah, that was the name of the gang.

So friends of mine, they were like, "Dude, let's retaliate." And I'm like, "Dude, I haven't, I don't 5'6", bro." [laughter] Not only that, but like I didn't know what I did in the first place. So I'm like, if I don't even know if I did something, they're doing this. If I retaliate, I'm like going to be... You're done. I'm done. Yeah. Like, I'm just going to move.

So I literally the next morning that I got jumped and my car got shot up, I think it was like a Saturday morning. I'm walking to the convenience store to get like 2 liter of soda or something. On the way back, I get shot in the back with a paintball gun, and it just, it scared me because paintball guns hurt. I didn't know if I really got shot or not, but I see the paintball gun coming back into the truck, and in the back of the truck was my stereo system they stole the night before. So I was like, they have eyes on me. They know when I'm leaving my house. I've got to leave the state.

So I just, I think I called my sister when I got back to the house. Told my mom. I have like a picture of like the welt. And this again is dating me. It's not on a phone. It's actually a printed out picture. We had to take the film in and have it printed.

But yeah, so I just literally drove to West Virginia in my car. It was like a two-day drive. I had to get the window fixed first cuz there was the bullet holes and everything, but I think I left. You kept driving that car. Yeah, I left on like a Monday, like a Monday afternoon, cuz I was figuring they're probably just at school. These were kids that were at my school. And yeah, I left. And dude, it was a scary time, bro. Scary, scary, scary time.

When did you fully appreciate you not dying, the gift of life? Was it right after that happened, or did you have another story like since being 19 that you look back and were like, "Wow, I don't think I fully appreciated what I went through."

Hey, it's Caleb Guilliams here. I'm just interrupting this video quickly to invite you to check out our AND Asset vault. You may have been there. We're actually revamping it. And if you are somebody that wants to learn more about, is life insurance the right fit for me? Does this AND Asset make sense? Like, 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 AND Asset, different setups and designs that we use. And then we have an AND Asset vault that gives like 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 andasset.com/vault to learn more.

Yeah, I didn't appreciate it until probably 31, so like 2016. So like that was kind of my low in life, and then I just kind of brushed it under the rug. I was like, whatever. Went on with my life. Throughout my 20s, I just stumbled through them. I had a daughter at 22 and just kind of was in survival mode.

I had three jobs at one point. Legitimately probably 50 jobs throughout my 20s, just trying to find myself, trying to survive, trying to pay for this, yeah, this little human to grow up. You know what it's like. Yeah. So throughout my 20s, I was just stumbling.

And at 31, I was a full-time dad at that point. Her mom and I split up. She moved to Minnesota. I won full custody. So I was a full-time dad. I couldn't afford the apartment I lived in, which that's probably a full-time interview. That's probably an hour interview that we won't go down, but like not a lot of dads get full-time custody. So there's things that probably went on there as well.

Yeah, there was just, I wasn't ready for it, though. I wasn't ready to be like a full-time dad. And like I was already stumbling through life. So I just kept stumbling and kept getting further in debt, and just I had no money to my name. We had a one-bedroom apartment. She would sleep in bed with me. She was 9 years old. Wow.

I couldn't afford that apartment anymore. So I had to move out, break my lease, have a friend of mine rent me a room at his house for like 400 bucks a month just to be able to afford to break the lease and all this stuff. I had to sell my bed, most of my belongings. So like me and my daughter are sleeping on a mattress on the ground at my friend's house. I'm 31 years old. I'm thinking I'm at rock bottom.

And then, I wear my heart on my sleeve. That's just like who I am. And I thought I was at rock bottom. The woman I, I swear she was the one. She broke my heart. And I'll never forget this moment, man. I'll never forget, I even know the day. It was October 22nd, 2016.

I'm sitting on this bed with my daughter. I got my elbows on my knees, hunched over. She's playing like with a game or something. And I just start bawling. Just bawling, dude. Like ugly face crying, whimpering. My daughter's like, "What's wrong?" She's crying cuz I'm crying.

I get emotional just like, that's my little princess, you know, and she's, I'm super dad. I'm supposed to be strong. She's not supposed to know I'm struggling. And I just lost it. I couldn't hold any of the tears back. And I couldn't even talk for probably five minutes. And she's crying. She's hugging me. I had thoughts of suicide. Yeah.

And I asked this little girl, I said, "Am I a good dad?" And no joke, she saved my life, because if she would have said anything but what she said, I probably would have taken my life. I was in that much pain. She lifts my chin up and she says, "You are the best daddy." She saved my life, bro. It started making me

...realize like, I've got one chance at this thing and I'm failing. She thinks I'm super dead. I'm not. I need to be the person she thinks that I am. From that day forward, I started working on me every single day, watching videos, listening to podcasts, reading books. Within one month of that, I met my wife. Now I've been married for five years.

And it's not just this podcast. Every time we talk about your wife, you're like, best human all time.

Yeah, she's my best friend. She's my everything, man. But again, I never deserved her until I started working on me. I started working on me. Now all of a sudden, I deserve this woman. I'm worthy of her, right?

You're putting in the input, you're putting in the work. Because a lot of times people have their dream person, but then you ask, is that dream person wanting to be with someone like, what's their list look like? And is that list mirror or even match at all of what you're doing, right? Question for you. So we talk about inputs. You're 31 years old, you've... I mean, at 17, dude, you're making more money than your dad. And so you've had some ups and downs, that you've gone through things I can't even comprehend or think about. But at the end of the day, what you were doing wasn't working. I think it's fair to say that. What were some of the things, what were some of the inputs? What were some of the lies that you were believing for the first 31 years of your life that you had to put to death to on this next season of your life?

Oh, dude, I've always wanted the things that money buys. Right? Money is just a means of exchange, the fact that it's a dollar bill. It could be...

You like the status of buying nice things.

I like things. I like to have things and money buys it. So how do I get more money? That's what I always wanted when I was younger. So I would work to get more money. And I realized that I'm trading my time for it, right? So that's a big lie that I was always taught, was like, work real hard, work extra, you'll get paid more. So I did that. I had three jobs at one point, and you can only work so much, right? You've only have so much time in the day.

So that's one thing I had to really start realizing was like, it's not about how much you work, it's about how much value you can give in a certain time frame. You're paid for your value, not for your time, so to speak.

It's good, right? It's good.

So I started changing that. I was taught about 401ks. Everyone is, right? Put all your money in a 401k. Like, I would do that, and as I realized how they really work, it's probably the worst thing you could do with money. You just give up total control of it until you're 60. Basically, me in my 20s, that's 40 years of not having access to money. When it's worth the most, inflation devalues it. So in 40 years, it's going to be worth less than it is today. So why not use it today? Don't pay taxes today when you know what taxes are, defer them to when you're 60 when you have no idea. But then everyone says, "Oh, you'll be in a lower tax bracket." That's saying you're planning on being broke when you're retired.

Welcome to America. That doesn't make any sense. That's what we're taught, though. And then, to their credit, by the way, they're probably not wrong if you look at statistics, but that should not be the goal. The goal shouldn't be, I want to be broke. But the reality is most people are going to be broke because they're not saving, investing. That's a whole another episode, but I continue.

Yeah, right. So dude, I just started realizing everything that we're taught is just a big lie. Like, save your money, put your money in the bank. That's not what banks do. What do banks do with money? They put it where we now know is the best place to store capital: bank-owned life insurance. That's what they do. Billions and billions of dollars. So I just started really learning how money actually works. And it like pissed me off when I actually learned. And it wasn't until I was about 34.

Okay, so about three years of your personal development journey. What was the biggest insight that first month? Because I think some people are watching that and I don't want anyone to get discouraged being like, "Hey, I've been working on myself and I haven't found the love of my life." But like, what were some of the first things that you learned? And then what we'll do is transition into your money journey and life insurance and all that good stuff. What was like the first thing that you learned in that month? Because obviously it's a journey, but you learned enough to start attracting the love of your life.

The thing that I learned is like, legitimately, the more I work on myself, the better my life gets. You know what I mean? I was beating my head against a wall for 30 years trying to find like the one. Again, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm a lover at heart and just, I could never find it. But it's like, I wasn't working on me. So I was attracting the wrong people.

Well, when you say working on you, unpack that a little bit, because sometimes that comes across selfish and I know that's not what... and sometimes it has to be, like, you have to selfishly work on yourself. I have a different definition that I'll share in a second, but like, when you say working on you, like what does that actually mean? Is it just thinking about Devon and saying, I deserve more, I deserve more? Or is it saying, is it looking at like where I can improve? Like what's your framework on working on you?

Just becoming more valuable.

Okay, there you go.

That's it. So, and I look at that almost in a selfish way. Because I think about when you get on a plane, every single time they say, if in case of an accident, do your mask first and then help others, because if you can't breathe, how are you going to help anyone else?

It's good.

So same thing is like, if you're not helping yourself to the point where you have a ton of value, you can't help anybody. So I look at it as like, fill yourself up with value until you're overflowing with it, and then it affects everyone around you.

Yeah, it's good. And then

How can you amplify who's around you? These things right here. Yep. Social media. Like, that's how I've built my entire business, is just getting uncomfortable making videos that millions of people can see. So now all the value that I'm overflowing with, it's not just affecting me and my family, it's affecting millions of people just by the power of a free platform, which is super cool, which is a form of leverage and it's just going to amplify the message that you have, right?

And so, yeah, I love the whole working on yourself, focusing on value. I think of this as like everything that happens, I think, is a form of what am I putting in and the output is just a result. It's just an equation and at the end of the day it comes down to our stewardship of value. And it's like, if I'm not making money, that's a reflection of there must be a misconnect between what I'm doing and what the market believes what our services and businesses are worth. So it's just, I become less emotional about it, but in that it becomes, I feel like it's way more, you can be more stoic because you can be like, okay, I'm not going to get emotional. I'm not going to be like, I deserve X, Y, and Z. Just going to look at the facts and numbers will lie. It's how you interpret them, but they're a scoreboard.

Mhm. And they can tell you certain things and a lot of people want to lie. A lot of people, what you're doing is not working. Like, look at your financial situation. What you're doing isn't working. And so maybe have a little bit of humility and say like, am I willing to make it, take a step back?

Let's talk about money now. Let's talk about life insurance. When was the first time you heard about the concept of whole life insurance becoming your own bank? Like, where were you and when was the light bulb moment for you? Because I know, like, even when you got into it, you just said like, "Hey, I undervalued the life insurance component for myself." But you at least had an epiphany to say, "Hey, I want to get into the life insurance space."

So, my wife talked about life insurance before I even got into the space. She had mentioned it like six months, a year before COVID happened and I just thought nothing about it. Didn't look into it any further. And then, like the universe saying something to me, COVID happened. I was in my house like everyone else was, just trying to do something, pass some time. So I'm like, let me work on myself some more. Let me go down some rabbit holes, see what I can learn. And I heard a podcast with Chris Naugle.

Yep. So you know Chris. He was on Steve Trang's podcast out in Phoenix and I knew Steve Trang, so I'm like, let me listen to this one. Becoming the bank. What's that all about? I listen to it and I'm like, that just makes so much sense. Like, it just makes sense. So then I just started going down the rabbit hole. I'm reading every book. I read your book. I think it was the second one I read. I read R. Nelson Nash's Becoming Your Own Banker. Then I read yours and I'm like, who's this 13-year-old talking about finances?

This was pre-beard. Yeah. But like, yeah, I just read your book and I was like, that makes sense. Then I read Garrett Gunderson's What Would the Rockefellers Do? I started reading every article online I could find. And it dawned on me. I'm like, I just need to do this because if I can become the bank with what I'm doing with real estate. I started doing real estate investing. I'm like, I'm crushing it in real estate, but if I can do this and that, I'm making money in two places. I'm making money as the bank, but then I'm also making money as the investor.

So I got on the phone with Chris. I DM'd him, slid in the DMs, and I'm like, "Hey, I heard you on a podcast talking about infinite banking. I want to learn more." So, and what were you doing at the time career-wise, real estate? So, full-time real estate investor. So yeah, I was doing flips, the BRRRR method. Yeah. Coined myself Mr. BRRRR because my name is Burr. So yeah, just started getting policies. I got four that first year. And they were good-sized policies, so I could really start doing some stuff with them.

A lot of times people are like, "Well, can I start for 200 bucks a month?" And I'm like, "Yes, you can. Just know you can't do much with it yet, right? It's going to take time to like build up that cash value." I was fortunate enough to have money because of real estate to dump a good amount in. So I could really start turning those dollars into different deals and start multiplying it. Four policies in after the first year, I was like, this is incredible. I need to tell more people. That's again me becoming valuable, learning this, becoming almost an expert within half of a year because I was so obsessed with it.

Mhm. And I'm like, I got to tell people. Mom, dad, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, everyone's looking at me like I've got three eyeballs. They're like, "That's not how life insurance works." Everyone was telling me that. I'm like, "Well, then how am I doing it?" You know what I mean? Yeah. So yeah, I just started telling everyone. Someone told me to get on social media and talk about it. So I got on TikTok in December of 2020, made a couple videos. One of them blew up. Like overnight, I had 20,000 followers.

Wow. And then just everyone started wanting policies. I wasn't even licensed. I'm like, "This is just what I'm doing." Yeah. And everyone's wanting policies. So I'm like, "Yeah, just go to Chris." I'm sending Chris like 50, 60 people a day. And it just dawned on me after like a week. I was like, well, this is dumb. Why don't I just be Chris? Yeah. I'm basically selling the policy. Yeah. On how it works. I'm just not getting any credit for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I became licensed March of 2021 and it's just been a fun ride ever since.

Lot that we could unpack there. Want to go back to the being your own bank and the original message. What was the insight? Because we'll dive into the weeds in a second because people on this show like details and stuff there. Your policies, I know enough about the insurance companies that we work with. Your none

...of your policies have actually even broken even quite yet.

Yeah, a few of them have. A few of them have. They're at efficiency point. I don't think they've broken, they broke even from an annual standpoint, meaning like you put in, but from an actual like accounting, the first couple years accumulation, right?

What was the insight? Because again, one of my biggest epiphanies was life insurance is a huge asset for the future, understanding how it could be a bond alternative, understanding the protection aspect, understanding. But to be honest, I don't think there's arbitrage. I don't think there's like, it's not like from a cash standpoint, it's not like this magical thing. So I'm curious what your insight was, because you could do the same thing with a high yield savings account. You invest in things that you want to do. I just believe 30 years from now, the savings account dwarfs the benefits that life insurance can give you.

Mhm. But what was your insight of like you being the bank? Because I sometimes find that that message gets diluted. You probably see it all the time on TikTok. They're like, "Oh, you're like, maybe I'm the issue," because you were one of the people that like started this whole movement. And then people are watching your videos and they don't know a thing and they're like talk. And so I kind of go like, "Man, like we're almost like over pitching this thing." And I don't know if people fully get it.

Yeah. I asked a ton there, but like what was the insight there? And like why, like help sell me on this concept of being your own bank? Because I still don't get the message as maybe as much as I, like I see it as an asset place to store, protect, grow my money. This whole like being my own bank has never fully resonated with me as much as it's resonated with you, Chris, Brent, and others who they're all going to be on the show. And so I just like, that's just my push back and challenge, but I'm seeking to understand of like what is the concept and what is like the aha.

Because I find that a lot of people use it as like a technique to sell, but like when you actually drill into the numbers, they're not as good as we might think they are. And I'm a big proponent, like I overfund life insurance. That's what, that's our main money maker. So we're on the same team. I just don't necessarily use the same language.

Yeah. So for me it was, when I realized every dollar that we spend, it's got one use, right? So if I buy this phone, 1,500 bucks or whatever it was, you're taking money from your account. That 1,500 I'll never get back. I got the phone.

Right. The phone can make me money. Or it can cost me money because it'd be a distraction. Totally. But the opportunity cost of that 1,500 is gone forever. I'll never make another dollar off it.

And I started realizing that, okay, if I fund this policy, every single dollar that goes in, I'm never losing the opportunity cost. It's guaranteed. It'll continue to go up, guaranteed, tax free. Then I can borrow against it, right, and use the money to buy the phone, or use the money to do an investment, use the money to go on a trip, use the money to do whatever. And then as long as I treat my money like I would treat the bank's, pay myself back with interest, right, I'm making a spread just like banks do. Because if the insurance company charges, let's say, 5% and I charge myself seven, I'm making 2%.

So we'll unpack that in a second. So let's put a pin on that about the spread, because you're intentionally paying yourself more, right? Which I think sometimes confuses people, but you're literally getting a spread because you're literally paying yourself more because you don't want to steal the peas, as R. Nelson Nash talked about in his book. So you are not going to devalue you, your number one asset, right? So you're going to intentionally pay yourself more.

But that gets people confused a little bit, because it's like, but it's not paying yourself more. It's paying yourself what you would have paid the bank. Okay? So like, let's say if I can get a bank loan for 3% and I take a policy loan at five, that doesn't make sense, right? You'll just pay yourself back at 5%. Right. Or I'll just use the bank's money. It's a thought crime at 3%.

Yeah. Right. That's not happening right now. But if I could get money at 3%, I'm going to get that all day long. Totally. Instead of getting it at five from a policy. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And I agree with that.

Yeah. So I started realizing like, okay, if I put money in a policy, it will 100% grow. And then I started thinking more long term. Like, right, I think this is a problem that most people have is they can't see more than five feet in front of them. Agreed. It's a huge problem people have, not because they have lack of vision. So it's like they don't think of a year from now, five years from now, let alone 10, 20, 30 years from now.

Yeah. But I've been lucky enough to not have to like mourn any deaths in my family, like of anyone that I'm really close to. I've had grandparents die, but I wasn't really close to them. They all died in their 90s. So I'm thinking, okay, I live a healthier lifestyle than anyone in my family. I'm probably going to live a long time. Yeah, God willing.

When I started looking at illustrations of when I'm 80, 90, the compound interest is silly. You put in a dollar, you get like 30 back. While I could use that money while I'm alive at the same time, which is, that's the key. Yeah, that's the key. Because people will comment and say, "Guys, the stock market will get way better." And they may be not wrong, but life insurance is not an investment.

And the whole concept of when you pulled out your phone, it's like the epiphany, I can do this and this, right? Over 30, 40 years, that's depending on you as your track record as an investor, right? It gets pretty exciting. Yeah. And then we can definitely go into the whole, oh, but the stock market does this. But that's looking at an investment, right? Insurance is simply a storehouse for capital. That's what I look at it.

As. I want to store as much there as I can. Couple reasons. In a policy, it's protected against lawsuits and judgments. In most states, if I've got millions of dollars in the stock market, it's not protected, right? Could this do better? Probably. But there's actual returns and average returns, right? Everyone just mentions average returns. What's the actual? So, is it actually better? Yeah.

It's not protected when you pass away. Everyone does. It's guaranteed to happen. If you've got all this money in the stock market, your family's going to get that minus the taxes. They're going to get taxed on it. You put all this money into whole life insurance with a mutually owned company that pays dividends. When you die, again, guaranteed to happen, they're going to get a multiple of that. Yep. Tax free. Yep.

So, as of right now, I'm about 30, $40 million of death benefit. Wow. Right. On your life or your family's life? My family's. I think me alone it's like 29. Wow. Something like that. You're like, make your wife happy, dude. She might. 100%. But like, let's just say just on my life, let's say 30 million. If I was to pass away tomorrow, god forbid, because there's no taxes, that's almost like I had 40, 45 million in assets at my death. My family sells it off, what's left after the taxes, they get 30 million bucks. That's crazy.

Like, what else can you do where you put money in, you can use it right away for whatever you want without interrupting the compounding? Yeah. It's protected against lawsuits and judgments, so no one can steal it from you. And when you pass away, it's guaranteed to give you a multiple of what was in there. Tax free. There's nothing that does that. You articulated that better than almost anyone I've ever talked to. And that's where I need, I think that's where the conversation needs to go.

Yeah. Think about life insurance as a wrapper, a protection first. I think we get in trouble if we like, life insurance is a protection vehicle. We can structure in such a way that is a great storage vehicle, cuz there's people that probably use your videos, people that use my videos and book, push their crappy agenda. I'm sorry for everyone that gets ripped off by that. I'm sorry. At the end of the day, a lot of times it's bad actors that will take concepts like life insurance but then not structure it properly. Right.

Everything that you said is amazing. And I actually think that needs to be the message, to say, hey, listen, one-dimensional, maybe the stock market, well, real estate, investing in business, like I'm not trying to say that life insurance is better than those things, right? I'm just saying one-dimensional, multi-dimensional, and with the AND component, you can do both. If you love the stock market so much, do both. Do both. But if you actually start realizing what's going on, you might find that there are other assets including yourself that you maybe shouldn't invest in because it would be a shame for you to have a high stock portfolio but be broken inside. Right? We could go down that road a different time.

But it's multi-dimensional versus one-dimensional. And the multi-dimensional goes back to creditor protection, goes back to death benefit, goes back to the some of the tax advantages, goes back to this chronic illness and critical illness riders, which essentially, I'm not saying it's a long-term care alternative, but I'm saying you get extra options in the future. God forbid things happen to you. Even if you don't die, god forbid things happen to you, you have options. So you have one road with fewer options, you have another road with more options. That's, I think, needs to be the message.

I think my pushback to this whole being your bank is like, when then we get into arbitrage and we're like, we use dividends, like you're getting this, and at the end of the day when I zoom into the numbers, could there be arbitrage on what you're earning versus what you're borrowing? Maybe in 20, 30 years, things, if stars align, that could happen. But I find that it's like we're missing the point because we're almost like going, we're comparing to the one-dimensional when we don't have to, right? Over here, what do they got? Whereas if you understand creditor protection, if you understand the $30 million in growing death benefit, like you value that. That's another thing. It's growing. It's $30 million, but you value that.

That's the thing, is like if you don't value other things, don't do life insurance, right? If you don't value more options, if you don't value the tax benefits, if you don't value having a death benefit, if you don't value these things, life insurance is probably going to be average or maybe underperform a high yield savings account. That's a thought crime. But it's like when you start valuing other benefits than maybe just rate, I can't think of a better asset. Right? So this is where it's like, this is maybe the thing that I wanted to just discuss on, because again I think the people that talk about being your own bank and all that, they almost make it sound like there's just like this magical thing.

And the magical thing is you give your dollars more wrappers, more jobs. And over time that's really good. But when you look at the internal rate of return and the cost of borrowing over time, it's kind of a wash, but we're discounting all the other benefits. I'll let you talk, but this is therapy for both of us.

I agree 100%. If you really dive into my content, I talk about becoming the bank because I truly believe the bigger this asset gets, the more you put into it, the more you can truly be your own bank, right? Like if you've got a thousand bucks in there, how can you really be your own bank? Right? I've put over $2 million in. Yep. So, I've got a good amount of money that I can use to be the bank, buy cars, do investments, whatever.

So, I talk about that, but if you look at my videos and really dissect them, I'm not talking about arbitrage. Yeah. I'm talking about creditor protection. I'm talking about death benefit. One of my videos says, I'm like, I bet you have insurance on your house, and it shows a house. I bet you have insurance on your cars. It shows your cars. I bet you have insurance on your phone. Yeah. Crazy. But then you don't have insurance on your life. Yep. Another one I did is, which is, can I just double tap that? If you think about it

Unemotionally, yeah, your car is valuable, your house is valuable, but if you look at our lives and our ability to create income, it's like if we were just a machine, if you just take my input output and just say I have a money printing machine, that would be the first thing I would ensure, cuz I'm like, if that machine stops working, everything that I'm doing falls apart, right? And yet a lot of times we don't get it, or we're selfish and we're like, well, if something happens to me, it's other people's problem, and we're not unemotional about saying, listen, if I have an asset that's worth 50 million, I probably shouldn't insure it for 50 million.

I think part of it is the fact that nobody really wants to think about dying, right? Yeah, like no one really wants to think and no one can comprehend it. Like you can't, no one can really comprehend, no one really knows. Like, you're a believer of Christ, I am as well. Yeah, I have beliefs, I have faith, but nobody really knows. So it's like most people just can't comprehend, like, why am I going to... That's not a fun thing to think about, right?

But I think the older you get, especially for me, I start realizing that this thing called life has a expiration date. My runway is going to stop at some point, right? I just don't know when, right? So how can I give the most impact while I'm here? How can I have my money have more uses while I'm here? It's to first put it into this asset, because again, it gives you all those other things.

Like, I have a video where I'm saying you probably have insurance in your car, but there's no guarantee you're ever going to wreck the car, right? You probably have insurance in your house. There's no guarantee you'll ever have to use it, right? You probably have insurance on your phone. There's no guarantee you're going to drop that phone. You're guaranteed to die, yet you don't have insurance on that. It makes no sense.

Right. And we can get into like really, really ninja moves, what I know you do and I do, where you can take this and put it on another level where death benefits are paid out tax free, right? Income tax free. Income tax. Not estate tax, but income tax, which I think, states anything over 21 or 22. It will probably change depending in the future, but yeah, family single. Yes. Income 100% tax free.

So I think about it like, if right now my family got 40 million bucks or 30 million if I die, do they know what to do with it? Do they know how to protect it? Do they know how to multiply it? Do they know how to grow it? Probably not, right? Especially if me and my wife die and my daughters get that much. Yeah, they're probably broke before their life is over. And if not, their kids, my grandkids, would be broke.

So what did I do? I set up a trust. So now the trust dictates as a succession plan when I die. When that happens, what happens? Money goes into the trust because that's the beneficiary. What's the trust going to do with the money? The trust dictates it has to go into more policies built like this where you can use it. The family can use the money, but the trust gets wealthier and wealthier because everyone's going to die at some point.

And the trust dictates money can't just be spent on anything. Has to go into a policy first. Yep. Then policy loans can be taken, and it's just a road map of how I would use money even when I'm gone. The trust will use it the same way. It's interesting. Love that. Rockefeller's very much inspired a lot of that mentality.

It's interesting because in planning you always want to look at, like, what are the points that we know are going to happen, and death is one of those points. So if you know that's going to happen in the future, it's like, how do we optimize an event that is going... We don't know if we're going to get hit by a tornado or hurricane, just like what you said, but we know this is going to happen. And I think that's where having someone else that's unemotional about your situation, being like, okay, I'm unemotionally looking at your situation, how do we optimize? How do we make it better? Versus being like, hey, I'm going to... It is hard even to think about, like, hey, I'm setting things up, I'm planting trees that I will never be able to eat from.

That's a different... I mean, that's a admirable way of thinking, but I do believe it makes you richer and wealthier while you're alive because you show up differently knowing like, hey, I'm worth 30 million bucks. Like, I literally like my time, like I'm worth that. I think there's something really special about that. I think it's 100%, it's the same concept of like flying first class and all those things. I know you probably get that more than I... maybe I'm less immaterial, but like you feel different driving a sports car versus a regular car. Same thing. It's like, you know when you're worth that much, like, you show up differently.

Let's move on to, I'm curious about your portfolio. You're in a lot of interviews, but I don't think people ask you these deep questions because of a lack of, you know, how life insurance works. So do you know how much cash value you have on your just your life insurance policies, or like the ones that you're responsible for? You have ownership, you know, as of right now. Yeah, as of right now. Not much. I don't keep a lot in there because I want to deploy it.

Okay. So let me ask a different question. What is your annual premiums going in? Almost 700. Okay. What is the base on that? That's like the required premium. I'm not sure. It depends. Like I've got some that are 50/50 design, one even 60/40. So 60 to base, 40 to PUA. That's on my new daughter.

Okay. So are we looking like 350 to 400,000 of annual premium going to base? Probably a little less. Okay. So I'd say average is probably like 30% base. Okay. And 70% PUA. Okay. So 300,000 of base. That's the required premium. Your funding and the way that you think about money is like, hey, you don't want a ton of cash value. So you don't have a lot of cash value sitting. You're borrowing against it to do other things. Okay. Is that fair? And you're

What you're investing in, business, you're investing in real estate. What are the type of investments that you're doing? Again, not investment advice. Don't sue either of us. I'm just, I'm asking you as a friend.

So funny because you just put that disclosure. I was going to say it. Yeah. Yeah. We have families. Please don't sue us. This is not investment advice. It's just what I do. Yeah.

So yeah, all the money goes to whole life first. I've got 14 policies. So as you make more money, you can't put too much into one. So I just got to keep getting more. And what I do a lot of is private lending. So I'll lend to different investors, people I know have a really good track record, and I love their business model. So I always want them to have skin in the game. I want to be in first lien position and I want a personal guarantee.

So I'll lend on those things and then I'll do, that's where most of my money goes because that's a safe. Mhm. I've got collateral. I make 15%. A lot of times 15% and safe aren't in the same, right? That this is, again, backed by first lien position, personal guarantee. The operators put their money up to buy, it's basically a development company. They'll put their money up to buy the land and then they'll raise the capital to excavate and build single family home communities from the ground up. Okay?

And then they'll keep some for rentals, they'll sell some off. So 15% is like their top. It's a ladder. So if you come in at 100 grand, they're paying 12. As you go up, you get over a million, they're paying 15. So that's what I do most of because it's the safest and it's 15%. And then I'll do some more riskier things like I'm about to invest in a cannabis company which could potentially give me like an eight times return on my money in two years.

I'll invest in my own real estate. So I've got some apartment buildings where I'm the bank on it. So I'm pulling the funds from the policy. I'm giving it to do all the construction and all that stuff. And then the back end, I've got a property.

Okay. So when you get the money, are you just putting it back into the deals? Are you putting it back? You're paying back your life insurance policies. How does that work? Because what the next question I'm going to ask you is how much money do you have as a reserve emergency account? Like everything hits the fan. You're making cash flow today.

And I just want to be upfront, like do your due diligence, and when you think you do your due diligence, do it more, right? And I would really be skeptical, 15% debt, like I would really want to know like operators and all. But I do know people close to me who have like really, really billionaires that they make, you know, 9, 10% on debt. Like, so it's possible out there. Just, it's like 2008, you and I didn't, full, like you maybe lived more of it than I did. I just feel like a lot of like the secure safe things hit the fan, right? That I'm all a skeptic when it comes to that. That's why I think diversification is good. But like let's talk about where you're getting those cash flows coming back. What are you actually doing with that money? Is it going...

Great question. So what I'm doing is I'll either, I've got a HELOC, okay, home equity line of credit on my house. It's about 500 grand I have access to. So if that's leverage, I'm paying that back first because it's a higher interest. Higher interest. So it's like 9% right now. Policy loans are like five. Okay. So it makes more sense as I have cash flow coming in, pay it towards the equity line. That's me storing money in that equity line that I can use again, but I'm paying down a 9% instead of paying down a 5% to store the money there. Yep. Right.

And when I said I don't have much in cash value, I still have a couple hundred grand. Okay. I just don't want, I don't want a bunch sitting. Got it. Right. So if I took 200 grand, let's call it. Yep. Lent it at 15%. It's 30 grand a year, right? It's not a ton. Mhm. But it's sitting in a policy doing nothing, right? For the most part, it's a safety net in case anything happens. I've got 200 grand I can access. Yeah. On equity line, I think we've got 300 available. Yep. So 500 there.

Across bank accounts I probably keep 10 grand per account. So we've got maybe a hundred something there. So all together just shy of a million probably, just liquidity. Okay. Because it matters, matters.

One thing that I always touch on, liquidity definitely matters because it lets you sleep at night. If you're totally leveraged, you've got no money in the bank, no money in policies, no money in anything, it's hard to sleep at night. And what I do, and this might be extreme, I try to do a ton of due diligence on investing. And then when I invest, I mentally am like, I'm never going to see that money again. And so I design my financial life that if everything hits the fan on investment side, I can ride the ship. And that's just one of, so I keep quite a bit of liquidity.

Morgan Housel, the person that wrote Psychology of Money, you know, he talks like you should almost have too much. Like you should almost have more liquidity than you're like, "Wow, like I'm dumb. Like I'm losing opportunities here." But I'm telling you, if you just listen to that, and especially if you're an entrepreneur, investor, the Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel, highly recommend that book for all of our listeners. But he just talks about like even Warren Buffett, billions of dollars sitting on cash, and he does it like, he's 20 years from now we'll look back and be like, that's why he did that. And people are thinking like, you're an idiot, you could have this money deployed in the market and all this stuff. But there's like the golden rule, R. Nelson Nash, those who have the gold make the rules.

My next question is, you're continuing to fund more life insurance. Do you ever worry, and I know that we all need to be about abundance, abundance, abundance, abundance, but do you worry that if you hit things in your income that you have such a big nut that you have to fund, and like, does that ever

Like, again, I know it's like maybe we're different people. Like, I'm abundant in one hand, but I'm also like from a cash flow perspective, I would be, you know, I would be hedging, you know? And so this is just me being like vulnerable and asking you questions about like when I look at your situation, I go like, man, this works until you stop making as much money, right? And then it gets a little sketchy if you stop making income. That's where it's like the way that we advise entrepreneurs might be different than the like if you were a W2 employee not having an increase, what you're saying is not possible.

It partly works because you, and knowing you, you're going to continue to make more money, or that's what your plan is, right? If you have a bad years or if you get crushed, potentially you're overleveraged on life insurance, taking a safe asset and making it risky. What's your thoughts on that?

Great question. I don't really think of it because I know without a doubt the value that I have. Again, it's all about building myself up, becoming more valuable. I know without a doubt if I lost it all tomorrow, I can get it all back, right? I know that without a fact. Without a doubt.

And that's part of the battle is just knowing, and knowing you're worth something. Yeah. You're worthy of it. Yeah. Right. Again, going back to my wife, like I never was worthy of having a woman like that. Yeah. And then I became worthy of her. And now, like, I know I'm worthy of her.

Yeah. I know that I make her better, she makes me better. Yeah. So it's the same thing with money. It's like I know I'm worthy of the money I'm making and I'm worthy of more. Yeah. So that's why I keep making more.

And do you also like the pressure? Do you also like, hey, I need to make enough to fund $2 million of life insurance a year? I do like the pressure. Yeah. And it's one of those things where my wife also does really well. Yeah. You know, W2, she's made 700 grand in a year. So it's like there's not a ton of pressure on me because she does well.

Yeah. But today, right now, it's good times, right? The beautiful thing is the right type of people, the right type of killers will make more in bad times, right? She made the most during COVID 2020. 720 grand as a W2 employee when everything was hitting the fan. She crushed it. Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't really worry about that. I just, I think the mind's a powerful thing. And the second you start worrying about things, you're just attracting it to you, you know? So I play the mind game a lot. I talk to myself a lot. I mean, if you really think about it, the only person that you're around 24/7 is yourself. That's right.

And self talk can be very negative and it can be positive. I'm not saying I'm some saint, I'm always in a positive mindset, but I pretty much am most of the time because of the self talk I have. And I can attest, being your friend, being someone who's around you, you're always in a good mood, high energy. That's part of the reasons why we're probably friends. I would like to say I'm similar to that. Like, you know, it's like you have a choice. It's like, why complain? Life is good.

If you complain, most of the people don't care. Yeah. Yep. Or they're just happy that it's not happening to them. Here's my big takeaway. When it comes to life insurance, when it comes to finances, people really really got to understand their situations. People can take inspiration on my videos, my book, your videos, what you have going on. They really got to take ownership.

And like, there's no silver bullets. There's no magical vitamins that will be able to solve all your problems. So life insurance is a tool. Life insurance is a powerful tool. I think we need to make this a clip or like make this like people need to understand how we are talking about wrapper, multi-use, single use. But at the end of the day, you have to understand your financial situation and take ownership of it. And I know that there's a lot of people that are getting insurance on their family because of you, because of your videos, and I'm excited to see what happens in the future. Anything else you want to say? I know we talked about a lot. Time flies when we're having fun.

One thing I just want to touch on that I never really, I never really sell life insurance. Yeah. I don't consider myself like a life insurance salesman. One, it's not sexy. Like, I think you make it sexy though. But like, but think about it, like what do you do? I sell life insurance, right? So I never really sell it. I just teach a concept of how to move money. Yep. It just happens to be the best place to move it through is a policy because of all of the benefits you get.

Yeah. And I've recently started, like, again, I don't like saying selling life insurance. I don't feel like I'm doing that. I'm just explaining it. I've recently started explaining more of the death benefit. Yeah. I never really did. I would always be cash value.

You, cash, by the way, maturity. Every person, the longer they're in the space, have this epiphany of like, listen, when I first got in, I talked about all the living benefits, the death benefit was the thing that mattered. And it usually is because we have a life event. Continue. But like, I can, dude, everyone says the same thing, which there's a pattern. There's a pattern.

Yeah. So I would just talk about living benefits, right? Using the cash now, not interrupting the compound interest, becoming the bank, blah blah blah, do this, do that. And I started realizing, like, I've got $30 million on my life right now, which is increasing. It's an increasing death benefit because the PUAs go to, or I'm sorry, the dividends go to buying more PUAs. So it's an ever increasing cash value, ever increasing death benefit.

When I'm likely to die, if I get no more policies, I'll have like $200 million in death benefit. Crazy. But if I die today, I know without a doubt my family's good. That gives me like this warm and tingly and like great feeling where I can sleep at night like a baby knowing, God forbid anything happens to me, my two daughters and my wife are fine. Yeah.

Like, and there's so many people out there, someone passes away and they're like worried just about paying for funeral expenses.

Right. They become a burden on the people that they... a few thousand bucks. They're like, and then if there's any kind of assets, the family's fighting over stuff. I can sleep at night knowing if I were to die tomorrow, family's not fighting over anything. Trust dictates what happens, but the family's taken care of. They're fine. They're going to be fine for a long time. That gives me like this feeling of ultimate value.

Again, what I've been talking about is a lot of value. Build yourself up. Build yourself up. Build yourself up. Spill over to other people with that value. The value I'm giving at any given time to my family, the people that actually matter.

Yeah. Is insane because of a death benefit. Yeah. That I didn't even think I needed five years ago. Yep. And now I start talking about it more with families and they're like, "Yeah, if I were to die tomorrow," if they've got zero insurance, it opens their eyes. They're like, "Yeah, family would be struggling."

And then here's a little cool tip, guys, is if you're doing a policy, you can put cash on app, which is you pay your first month's premium, and that gives you a little bit of coverage, God forbid you passed away during getting approved for that policy. Yeah. Your family gets, I think it's like 300 grand. So you lock in your insurability. Every company's a little different, but it's something that it's like, life insurance is important and you can get protection even before you're approved, before you're approved, by putting up that first month's premium.

So I've started doing that, cuz I see the value in that. There's so much value in that, and you get people to micro commit, which I think is also powerful. It's like to say, listen, like, hey, this is important. Micro commitment, valuable. And because sometimes the life insurance process can be tricky and some people forget the reason why they're doing this to begin with after it takes two months. Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Dude, this has been fun, bro. Another, this is going to be another banger. I dude, I am grateful for you and this is fun. Like, I just, I appreciate you sharing your story as well and just some of your insights. We could go a lot longer. Next time we have you on, like, let's look at this. Let's look at numbers. Let's do like a illustration deep dive.

I think, like, people, like, trust me, our audience will freaking love that. Whiteboard it out, man. So we'll have your social media links, your YouTube channel and anything more that you give me in the description below, guys. Make sure to go keep tabs on what Devin Burr's doing. And man, thank you and look forward to seeing what the future holds. Appreciate you, brother.