Debunking Viral Financial Myths and Misconceptions

Financial myths mislead people into risky strategies, like relying solely on leverage for wealth-building.

### Debunking Viral Financial Myths: The Truth About Wealth-Building Strategies
* 💰 Not everything on the internet about finance is true, and many popular financial myths need to be **debunked to help individuals manage their money better**.
* 📉 The first myth is that **borrowing money is the key to becoming wealthy**, often illustrated through the use of **home equity lines of credit (HELOC)** to invest in multiple properties.
* 🏠 While leveraging debt can help build wealth, it is not the only or the safest method, as it can lead to **significant stress during economic downturns** when multiple financial pressures can arise simultaneously.
* 💳 The second myth revolves around tax write-offs, where influencers suggest that many personal expenses can be deducted, but in reality, **only legitimate business expenses qualify**, and deductions do not equate to **free money**.
* 🚗 The third myth is that life insurance, particularly permanent insurance, is a great investment; however, **term insurance is often a better choice for most individuals**, providing necessary coverage at a **lower cost**.
* 📊 Many financial influencers promote complex insurance products that may not serve the average person's needs, leading to **confusion about the true benefits of life insurance versus investing**.
* 🔍 Ultimately, individuals should be cautious of financial advice from social media and ensure they **understand the implications of leveraging debt, tax deductions, and insurance products** to avoid **costly mistakes**.
* 📚 For more detailed insights and resources on financial literacy, viewers are encouraged to explore **comprehensive guides and educational content** available on trusted financial platforms.

Financial lies that are going viral part [Music] Deuce Brent. I am so excited about this because I don't know if you know this; not everything on the internet is true. So, and there is so much stuff out there about financial content, about the financial world, that is just absolute hogwash. So, our hope today is we can walk you through some of these big myths and put them to bed once and for all so that you can actually do money better. And even if they're not lies, they're partial truths; they're only like a little bit of truth in there wrapped up with a bunch of, as you said, hogwash. So, let's jump right in. But what is myth number one? Myth number one is that the way that you become wealthy, the key to becoming wealthy, is you have to borrow your way to wealth. Leverage and borrowed money is the way that you get there. But don't take our word for it; check out these clips. How to buy another property if you can't currently afford one. Everyone would live by. They would

all wind up multi-millionaires. It's called a home equity line of credit. Here's how you can start investing in real estate using a HELOC (home equity line of credit). When you buy a house, the moment you have enough equity that you can pull out of it while living there, you should. And on your next property, now you have two properties that are going up in value, that are both getting paid down because you live in this one and you rent this one out. Well, guess what? You just wait a few years, they both go up in value. What do you do? You go back to that, I want a bigger home equity line of credit on my first house. I want to set one up on my second house. Let's go buy three or four more houses. And all you do is you just recycle the money, and before you know it, 30 years has gone by, and you own 40 or 50 or $100. And that's how everyone becomes a multi-millionaire. This last is, That's how everyone becomes a multi-millionaire. Br, we are feeling.

advisers. We have hundreds of clients that work with us on a day-to-day basis. Would you say that for all of our millionaires owning 40, 50, 100 homes, that's the way that they did it? Is that true? No. Here's something, Chris, 'cause look, without a doubt, you can use levered debt to build wealth. I don't want to downplay that, but let's talk about how that works. But the thing that I find interesting is I think about my own journey towards success. The more success I have, the more complicated my life gets, and I just crave more and more simplicity. If you're going to be stressed out when the next downturn happens, 'cause remember, when it rains, it pours. It's not only that you lose your job, it's not that interest rates go up, it's not just that the stock market gets crushed, it's not that houses you can no longer refinance or even sell them. This stuff all happens at the same time to hear. I'm going to have 40 of these. It

really does make me get a little nauseous, but you said there are glimmers of truth in this, so let's explain for you. Here's sort of the idea that these influencers are laying out there. Let's assume that you go buy a home and you put $50,000 down on the home, so you have $50,000 of equity in the home. Well, then let's assume that you renovate it and you put some money into it because the renovations are pretty valuable. It increases the value of your home by $100,000, so now you have $150,000 of equity in that home. Well, according to these guys, the only way that you're going to become wealthy, the only way that you're going to be able to scale to millionaire status, is that then you have to convert that equity to cash. You have to go borrow against the equity in the home, and then you take those proceeds and you go deploy them elsewhere. And while some people do this,

and this is a strategy that can be employed. I disagree that it is the only way to get to wealth or that when you do this is all sunshine and rainbows. Well, and you heard several of the videos talk about home equity lines, and look, a lot of people are leaning on home equity lines because look, properties have gone up in value post-pandemic. We had this inflationary environment, so a lot of people have equity, home equity lines, easy way to get to it. But you should be aware, interest rates have gone way up, and for you to assume that the real estate marketplace is going to appreciate at the same speed it has during that inflationary period is just, there's a lot of optimism that you're building into your structure. Yeah, you can see that mortgage rates have gone up, and they're as of this recording somewhere around 6.5%. So, a lot of folks that are locked into low-interest mortgages at 2.5%, 3.5%, 4.5%, they're not

going to do a full cash-out refi. They're going to go try to tap into the home equity line. What home equity lines right now are like at a prime rate is at like 85%. So, it is very, very expensive money. But a lot of people like using it because it's easy. You can use it like a checkbook. It does not have the same closing costs as mortgages, but it's not all good. There are not all benefits associated. There are some cons you should know about when it comes to home equity lines. Yeah, let's, and this is why I think Bo's going to let me take the reign of sharing my own blunders with home equity lines and the fact that, look, these things are great. Banks will throw them at you because you have all this appreciation, you have all this equity in your house, but realize you are talking about typically your house. It's something that can be taken back. It's collateralized, so it's a secured loan. It's cable. This is where I told you guys

Now, I wasn't doing this to layer up a portfolio of real estate. I did this on my primary residence instead of keeping cash. I was just using a home equity line, and I got caught, meaning that in 2008 to all the way through 2011, when we went through the Great Recession, it was not uncommon for banks to send you a letter saying, Ho, hey, that $150,000 home equity line that you thought you had, we're now freezing it. We're taking it back. You can no longer have access to it because we don't think the market value of your house is worth what it was when we set this up for you. And that caught a lot of people. And this is what I was saying: when it rains, it pours. When people are doing lever debt, it is dangerous. Not only that, when it comes to home equity lines, there's often a limit term. People like the fact that early on, you can make interest-only payments, and it'll create a liquidity for you at a relatively low carry cost.

but at the end of that term, there's often a balloon payment. There's often a time where you'll have to satisfy that outstanding amount, so you have to be aware of when your term limits exist. And then a lot of home equity lines have fees, not just in terms of closing costs, but there's a lot of annual maintenance fees associated with some home equity lines of credit. So you need to understand it is not this panacea, it's not this just magnificent opportunity to get access to liquidity. There are costs associated with it, and it's risky. If you're not afraid of debt, you're doing it the wrong way. Well, this is the part I already kind of alluded to. This is that levered wealth building is extremely dangerous, and let me explain this to you. I think for all the people out there selling their system using their lever debt principles, you have to ask yourself, What happens? Am I the prey in this, or am I going to be the shark in this situation? What I have experienced with a

a lot of my clients, and even ourselves, Bo, is we've used real estate and even lever debt to build wealth. This is an opportunity. Whenever markets get crushed, there is this disconnect between the intrinsic value of the assets and then what the market value, meaning the prices that you can buy and sell this stuff. You want to have a five financial assets underneath you, liquidity, and financial resources so you can take advantage of this disconnection. If you're the person that is right now in these high prices, high-interest rates, going out there and having because you don't have a financial foundation underneath you, you haven't gone through the financial order of operations, you're using the debt to be the bridge to build this, you're going to be the prey. You're the one that when things go bad, when the real estate market goes bad, when the stock market goes bad, when all these things that create this disconnection, you are the reason that disconnection occurs, is because you're going to get crushed by the banks, you're going to get crushed by

your investment. Don't be the prey. I want you to be the shark that actually builds your financial assets up underneath you. That's why when we're talking about investing in real estate, it's step eight of the financial order of operations. That's exactly right. So when you think about using debt, you need to recognize that it is like a chainsaw. It can be helpful, and it can be valuable, and it can provide opportunities, but it can also harm you. It can be devastating to your financial well-being. And Brian, you already said this before. You begin to try to use this as a wealth-building tool. You need to make sure that you're in the right place in the financial order of operations. If you want to know where you can get your free resource, you can go to money guu.vn step eight. Step n. I don't think using leverage as a wealth-building tool should be something that you're thinking about. I don't want luck to be the driving factor of your wealth-building journey and for you to use this lever.

debt. Yes, you might get lucky, and that if this works for 10 years, meaning the stock market and the real estate market rock and roll and all good times ahead, then you'll make a lot of money. But if there's any hiccups, it is catastrophic TRC failure, and that's the part that they never tell you. I want you to have a wealth-building strategy that works rain, sunshine, winter. You're going to be okay. All right, Brian, let's talk about the second myth. So that was myth number one. Myth number two, and you have heard this, no doubt, if you have been on any sort of financial content or maybe if you've just been at a cocktail party, you've heard this one: just write it off. I got to have deductions. I need write-offs. I need, I need, I need deductions. I need write-offs just for LC. Just do that, and it's going to be okay. Again, if you don't believe us, check out these influencers. What's the things, the top things that people won't even have a

clue that they can write off. Did you know you can write off your birthdays? Here's how you can write off your vacation. How to make your vacations tax deductible. Your wedding expenses are a tax write off. I can write off the private chef in the food that went into private chef. Getting massages is now tax deductible. Event any clothing that you wear on your lashes. The lashes like her ideas on the car. Guess what? Tax write off, baby. Who have to go get this money? All right, so there, so there, tax write off, tax R. Well, first off, let's talk about what a tax write off is. A tax write off is an expense, generally a business expense, that can be deducted from your taxable income. So, a tax write off is an actual thing. If there's an expense that you incur to do the business that you do, you can get a deduction based for the expenses that you incur. Now, all this stuff that these folks were talking about seems a little great to me, and I think there's a

common misnomer about how tax write-offs actually. It doesn't mean it's free. I mean, I'm always shocked. All that really a tax, even if something is legitimate and it is deductible. Your tax rate is kind of just the deduction or the coupon you get off of it. It's not a tax credit. Tax credit can be dollar-for-dollar offset your taxes. A deduction just means it's going to lower your taxes. If you're in the 35% tax bracket, you're basically getting a 35% deduction because of it comes in. But don't, it doesn't mean it's free. That's something that I feel like a lot of people let that tax tail wag the entire dog. But see, I know people out there and they say this all the time. They say, Hey guys, guys, guys, guys. I got this figured out. I've got an LLC or I'm going to establish a business. I'm going to establish Bow Hand and Holdings, and I'm just going to run all these expenses through Banson Holdings, and

then I'll be able to write them off. I'll be able to decrease my taxes. It's just that easy, right? Well, that's where the IRS, they're not fools. They are very smart, actually, and they have what's called hobby loss rules. So, that's why when you have a business, that's why all the content out there just saying form an LLC. I'm like, Well, there has to be a business behind this that's actually viable, that you can sit across the table from the IRS and feel comfortable describing what it is. And that's why there were just so many things that were described there that just, if it doesn't pass the sniff test, if you're not keeping good records, if you're not showing income that you can even offset those expenses to, you're probably going to get red-flagged and even audited pretty quickly. So, let's talk about some of the mistakes that we heard that were mentioned in there. And again, you said this to kick off the show, Brian. You said the difficult part about these financial

lives that are going viral is that there are glimmers of truth inside each one. Well, what I love is that as we sit here, you happen to be a tax expert. You're a CPA for the last like 45 years, and so you get to tell us, Okay, what's the letter of the law? How's this actually work? And what are some common write-off mistakes that we see? And the first one, personal care. This is what the lady said. She said, You know what, uh, if Theo, the clothes that you wear, or the makeup that you wear, or the massage that you get, all of that, if you're doing it for business purposes, it counts as a write-off, right? Well, and I don't know if this because we all know that you see out there on the surveys that most people want to be on YouTube, and they think this is their thing, but if you never make money, you can't even monetize, and you can't, you know, create enough income, it's going to be considered not a true expense. I mean

so personal care and then in close remember we even reacted to this guy who just swed the name of his business on the inside and he said now my suits are deductible now look the glimmer of Truth was if you go run if you have a real business like if I if I did a run of money guy shirts and we had a merchandise store I gave it to every one of the team members here at the money guys show yeah that's probably a deductible expense but that doesn't mean that you you know just like on Toy Story you write Andy on all your toys it doesn't mean that that's now a deductible expense so you just there has to be a viable actual real business purpose and it also means that you can't be super aggressive with how you do it hey I right now I'm on YouTube and I'm wearing this shirt well if it's required also just for the job it's not deductible that's the thing that's the

part that everybody the government is smart. They don't let you just deduct it if it's part of the requirement to even go to that job. Like clothing is most of the time. It's not. Now maybe if you have a specialized uniform or something. Yeah, you can probably play up some of that. But just because you put a camera in front of you for YouTube. Not necessarily a deductible. How about this one, Brian? I decided, you know what, I'm going to do. I'm going to take out some of my buddies and we're going to go out. We're going to have a delicious meal. And while we're there, I'm going to explain to them what a Roth IRA is. Surely if I do that, that means that meal must be deductible, right? Without a doubt, there are some once again partial truths here. Is that and first everybody needs to know outside of what happened post-pandemic meals and ENT Mills. It's not even entertainment anymore. Meals are 50% deductible. So

already the government is like, No, look, even if this is a true expense to your business, you don't get to take 100%. You get 50%. The second thing is, it really does need to be viable. So, I would encourage you, it's going to be all about the record-keeping. Can you show who you went out to to have the meal with? What was the business purpose? I wouldn't do anything on my tax return that I'm not prepared to sit across the table from the IRS for. Okay, well, what about this, that same group of buddies that I want to take out to dinner? You know what I'm going to do? I think we ought to go on a trip, and we're going to go on vacation. We're going to go down to the beach, and while we're down there, we're going to hold a meeting, and we're going to spend an hour talking about personal finance, and that way, that whole long week that I'm going to be at the beach, I am going to deduct because that's a ride.

off for that vacation once again. I mean, look, if you had just like we've done Team Planning sessions where we go to a different city, we rent conference rooms, we have moments where we're doing team building and other things, that's a deductible expense. But if I just load up my family of four, you load up your family of five, and we all go on a vacation together just so we could have the company pay for it, and we never cover business, we never do anything that actually shows the viable interest, that's fraud. I mean, that's just not true. So once again, glimmer of truth, but it's not something I'd feel comfortable sitting across me. That's why we showed the clip of the private Chef. Who would have thought that was going to be our first 5 million view? The problem with that is that he was talking about how it's with his family members, and I made the joke that you yell at your daughter, Hey, don't call me father, I'm CEO, as you hit past that Parmesan bread. The problem

is is that it's not going to be a viable thing, especially every night of the week. The IRS is going to be like, This sounds like personal that you're trying to make deductible, and that's a no-no. All right, BR, let's talk about this next one. This next one is, I think this is, in my opinion, the most egregious and the one I see the most often abused because, again, there are glimmers of truth in there, but I think people really go deep into the gray on this one, and it's automobiles. Well, once again, very likely there are a lot of people who use their vehicles, and they can be business expenses, but are they doing everything that's required? Have you actually looked at what's required? First of all, is it 50% for business use? You can't do. Everybody's always talking about, Hey, go buy a 6,000lb vehicle, so because if it's 6,000, now we can 179 or take accelerated depreciation on it, but I have to ask you

Are you backing the mileage and don't count the commuting expense? Commuting expense doesn't count if you're driving to the same office every day. Do you reach 50%? Do you also know? Are you keeping a travel log so everybody knows your mileage and you're able to show this to the IRS? I think a lot of people aren't using this appropriately and they could be setting themselves up for a big oopsie when the IRS writes a letter as a cautionary T. Brian, as someone who has sat across on behalf of clients from the IRS, is that a situation you want to be in? What is it like when they come and ask you these questions and there's something gray that they uncover? First of all, you ever get in a full audit with the IRS? Don't represent yourself. I've told you guys I've had business owners, I've had salespeople who were just too dagam cheap to hire me to represent them at the time, and then they call you crying because the IRS can mushroom out any of the questions that

they have, but that's the problem. I've dealt with these situations. I've represented clients before the IRS, and that's why you just always want to be on solid ground. Look, the government wants you to maximize your deductions. There is nothing wrong with that, but they need to be legitimate. They need to be real expenses. If you're out there doing all these crazy schemes and you're drawing a red flag to your personal situation, don't be surprised when you see that the teeth of the government is a pretty scary thing. Remember, tax avoidance is highly encouraged. There's an entire tax code built around you figuring out ways to avoid paying taxes in an illegal manner. Highly encouraged. Tax evasion is illegal. Not paying tax that you owe is against the law. You don't want to find yourself on the wrong side of that equation. So, if you're in the gray, your red flag Spidey senses ought to be going off. And if you're getting your tax advice from a 30-second TikTok video, perhaps you're not doing it.

the right way. You probably just heard right there. There are a lot of nuances to all these tax rules. You want to make sure before you put something on your tax return, you actually understand the letter of the law, what is allowed and what is not allowed, so that you don't make a huge mistake. All right, bro, we've talked about two myths. Let's talk about the third one, and this one, uh, you know, this one really cooks the goose too because this one I get so frustrated about, and this will be the one that we get the most comments on, that the most people will dial into, that the most people will hurl rocks at, or they'll just say, You don't understand, you don't get it. Myth number three: life insurance is a great investment. Check out some of these clips. Oh gosh, that one hurts. Noe, why would you want cash? Oh, it's only the rich. Now, there's one secret I could share that the wealthiest people in the world do. It's something called infinite banking. Regular people

buy life insurance for the death benefit while millionaires, billionaires, banks, and corporations. They buy life insurance for the life benefit. It's called life insurance, not death insurance. Let me show you why. Oh man, this stuff breaks. I mean, and what's funny is like I have somebody in my neighborhood that deals with these super complex life products that are appropriate for very wealthy families, businesses. Some of that's once again a thimble of truth, but the vast lion share of Americans out there, you don't have the same financial risk or concerns that a millionaire or billionaire has. You just, you're trying to get the basics covered. You're trying to, hey, what does life insurance protect my family from? And that's catastrophic loss. It's not to game or cover a risk that is something with a tax plan. There's just so much nuance that Bo, you sold life insurance out. Love for you to jump into what do we tell the average person how they should look at this. And then by the way, don't miss here, we love life insurance, don't

don't miss here that we do not like life insurance. It serves a very real purpose in the lives of most people, but where we differ is we like term insurance as opposed to what's most often sold as permanent insurance. And if you don't know the differences, term life insurance provides coverage for a limited number of years. It might be 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, whereas permanent life insurance guarantees there'll be a death benefit paid when you die, so there's no finite term to it. Term insurance is Pure Insurance, meaning what it the only thing that it provides is a death benefit. That is the thing that you're paying for. If I die, then this will pay out. Permanent life insurance has a death benefit, but there's often Associated some sort of cash value benefit associated with it, and that can be in different forms and functions. And term insurance is significantly cheaper 'cause there's lower premiums, lower fees for the cost of insurance. Permanent insurance is a lot more expensive. Well, whenever you watch the Tik Tok videos, very rarely are they

ever saying go by term, go by term, go by term, go by term. It's always wrapped around permanent insurance, and I think that they are mixing a very small segment of the population, would that make sense, and applying it to the broad population where most people probably need term insurance. Yeah, let's think about this in broad terms. You're building your wealth, you have children, you have a spouse, you have a mortgage. Your broad risk is you die prematurely before you've actually can self-insure, meaning you haven't built up enough assets. That's what term insurance is going to protect you from, is because it's going hopefully to give you the margin so affordable that you can use the margin or the extra money to start building up your assets in the background to build permanent insurance. And by the way, I have referred permanent insurance for clients because they're usually for very specific concerns that you need to Ure, and you need a permanent solution, and this person has enough resources that they can pay the premium, the much higher

premium for this very unique risk and need. The example I had was I had a very, I'll say, eight-figure multiple real estate net worth but had very little limited liquidity. And this is back when the estate tax exclusion was a million dollars, much lower than today. So, we needed something that if they died tomorrow, that would be because they have a bunch of illiquid assets, real estate. They didn't have a lot of cash to pay the estate taxes. That was a perfect case for permanent insurance, very unique ask and need. And that's the part that I think that a lot of people miss out on, is that don't let somebody just because, yes, a millionaire or billionaire needs this exotic or fancy complicated product, doesn't mean that the lion's share of the public needs this exact same setup too. But some people will tell you, you might hear some influencers or insurance say, Well, paying for term is just throwing your money away. You're going to pay for it for 10, 20, 30 years, and it goes away. What did

you actually get well. First of all, you didn't die, so that's worth celebrating. When you run out of a term insurance policy, but this is no different than renting a home versus owning a home. I do not believe, and our view is not that renting a home is just throwing your money away as opposed to buying a home. What it is giving you is it's giving you maximum flexibility. Brian said term insurance. There is there to cover a catastrophic loss event, so you want the greatest amount of coverage at the lowest amount of cost, and with that margin, with that difference, you can then use that to fund your other financial goals. Well, term provides a fantastic mechanism to be able to do that. The problem is that when you move into permanent insurance, when you move into these other types of insurance solutions, they are not the same. Look at this illustration. If you look at the annual life insurance cost for a healthy female for half a million dollars of coverage, wow, at 30 years old, a term policy would

cost that female $188. The same amount of death benefit coverage for permanent life insurance is over $4,000 a year. Fast forward to someone who's a little bit older at age 50. A half a million dollar policy of term insurance for a healthy female is about $644 a year. That same amount of coverage for permanent insurance is almost $10,000 a year. So before you go out and buy the permanent insurance, you need to really understand what is the opportunity cost associated with this and what could my dollars be doing better for me. I always think about this in terms of like a typical 30-something. They're in the messy middle. They're short on time, they're short on money because they got kids, they're trying to make it in their careers. You just don't have a lot of excess money laying around. So that's why I love term insurance is because yeah, you have a need, you have a risk that you need to protect your family from. Fortunately, it's really cheap to cover that when you're in

your 30s because there's just not a lot of 30s somethings that are falling over and dying. So, you, the insurance cost, the actual cost of the insurance is very cheap. That allows you to have tons of margin to start building assets in the background for that self-insurance. The reason permanent insurance is so expensive, it's not just the cost of the person that's selling, and it's not just the administration, it's that it's permanent insurance, meaning that the cost of it has to take into account that the cost of insurance when you're 75 years of age is going to be substantially more expensive than it is for somebody who's in their 30s. So, they have to build that into the premium. Guys, this is why buying term, investing the difference is not throwing your money away. It's because if you do this right, you can self-insure at some point in your life, and you don't have to buy insurance for the 75 or 80-year-old version of yourself. But the insurance

companies have gotten smart to this. They've wised up, said, Hey, no, no, no, that okay. I hear you. You need to be building wealth. You need to protect against a catastrophic loss. We actually have life insurance policies that can track the market. We have index life insurance that can do that. So, if you like the S&P 500, we have a product where you can buy permanent life insurance, and you can participate in the movement of the S&P 500. Well, on the surface, that sounds great. I mean, if we look at the growth of the S&P 500 for September of 2014 all the way through September of 2024, some fantastic years in there. We saw 133% rate of return, 14%, 177%, 20%, 28%, 14%, 25%, and that sounds amazing. However, what often happens is when you buy an insurance product, they don't let you just participate full bore in the market performance. They might do something where there's like an annual point-to-point cap where you're going to

not lose any money if the market goes down, or we may have some sort of buffer in there to protect you. But when the market goes up, we're going to cap your upside, and instead of getting what the market's doing, you're going to get 5%. So, it sounds great. I can't really lose money. The account won't go down in value, but I'll still make 5% when the market goes up. That sounds like a win-win situation until you compare the two against one another. When you look at if you had money invested, actually participating in the ups and downs of the S&P 500, versus some sort of indexed product that has a point-to-point type assessment that caps you at 5%, you can see $10,000 just put in the S&P over that 10-year period has the ability to turn into $28,000. $10,000 in an annual point-to-point 5% capped insurance-based type growth product still grows, but it only

grows from $10,000 to $14,000. Well, that's why when I saw this, I was like 5% cap. And they're like, yeah, but this is the life insurance version of this, so it's got much more conservative assumptions. I feel like it's a brochure marketing thing. They're going to say, Hey, you get the market performance, you get some participation rate, that's to get you all excited about what's going on out there in the financial markets. But then they take out the best part of it. If you go back and look at those years, you had the history up there. There's years where the market's going to make 15%, 20%, 25%. Because those outside performance years will make up for all the volatility and all the other things. If you're only getting 5%, what has happened? And that's the big thing. Don't get confused by this. You need to actually know what your financial tools in your tool belt are doing for you. You know, I

look at life insurance. It is to minimize the risk of you dying prematurely, but then your investments are out there doing the best that they can do and growing in the background. When you try to mix those things together, you get kind of a convoluted and typically not the best of the best at either one of the things you're trying to accomplish. And it gets even worse than that because I love it. I agree, Brian. You want your investments to be investments, then you want your insurance to be insurance. Well, now the insurance companies, again in their infinite wisdom, they've gotten even wise. Hey, not only can your insurance be insurance, and not only can your insurance be investments, but your insurance can also be your bank. You can bank on yourself. So now there's even this other benefit that we're going to loop in called infinite banking, where instead of you having to ed a financial institution, you can now use this insurance product as a mechanism to provide all of your liquidity needs. And how does it work? Okay, well, here's what happens. A policyholder pays premiums.

into a whole life policy. And by the way, it's not just the cost of the insurance; it's not just that minimum annual premium. You have to actually put more money into it. You have to overfund that policy. And with the dollars that you're paying into the policy as premium, some of it goes to pay for a death benefit, and some of it then goes to build up a cash value inside the policy. Well, then, as you need liquidity, you can borrow from the cash value of that policy, and you get to use that money quote-unquote tax-free. And you can rinse and repeat, and that way you have now replaced the bank. But you know what sounds better than having to borrow money from yourself that you'll either have to pay back or die before the policy expires? Just being able to use your money and spend it the way that you want to spend it. We have a case study, um, and because we've pulled this from one of the shows we did on infinite Banking and Bo, it was, and I want to

be. I want to be clear 'cause when we've even had people respond to the infinite Banking and they why this is essentially an alternative to cash equivalence. This is not an alternative to investing, but what I always like to remind people of is I like my liquidity, my cash, to be as easy to access as possible. Any type you get into a structure like this that requires a special type of policies, it's going to require you to borrow from yourself and do all these. You've added a layer of complexity that is so beyond what can do. The other thing that I always think is important is that we say, Why do you guys compare this to investing? is if you have a 30-something, and I talk about that messy Middle where they're short on time, they're short on money. If you have a product that you've created that is now requiring you to pay not $3,000, not $4,000, maybe even $10,000 a year, where's the margin to actually invest? That's right. I don't think it.

gets. That's why you have to actually not only talk about the cash component; you have to talk about the investment component. It's because you sucked up every bit of margin from this person to put their money to work in their army of dollar bills by the requirement for this thing to be such a high annual premium. That's why this is such a small subsection of the public that can maximize our needs to consider this. Meanwhile, it's being mass-marketed to the biggest audience it possibly can. That's just wrong. It's just not right. We actually had an insurance agent send us a policy. Hey, this is how I would do infinite Bing. This is how I construct that. So, we compared infinite Bing Isaac to Manny the Mutant and said, Okay, well, how does this end up playing out? When we actually looked at the rates of return achieved by our two individuals in the case study, infinite banking Isaac achieved in that infinite banking permanent life insurance product a rate of return of about 3.6%. What Manny actually received was very, very

different when you run this through from age 35 all the way out to age 65. We looked at the terminal values they both had available to them. Infinite banking. Isaac had about $532,000 through the infinite banking policy that he was able to use. Mandy the mutant, on the other hand, had $1.2 Million by buying term and just investing the difference. So you have to ask yourself the question: do I want my insurance to solve my insurance need, and my investing need, and my banking need if it's going to be suboptimal, or might I be better off letting Insurance be Insurance, letting liquidity be liquidity, and letting my investments be Investments? If you want to know more about this case study, if you want to hear all the details, you want to dive in, you can actually go check out our show called Insurance Companies Are Lying to You. We actually walk through the full case study and tell you all about it. And so then the question becomes, Brian, well, why are people saying this? Like, why, why

are there these influencers pitching these products if maybe what actually happens in practice isn't what's sold in the brochure. Yeah, I mean, you see a lot of them say, Hey, DM me for more info. Um, the problem is, look, the technology world is so advanced of where the regulations and the compliance world is at, and they're kind of taking advantage. I look, the SEC and, you know, all of the regulatory bodies are trying to catch up as fast as they can, but in a lot of ways, it is the Wild West out there on social media, is that if you can make some money off of this, why not? And that, that's, that's why we want to educate you so you're not that easy prey because it's all about, are you the shark, are you the prey? And I, I just worry for people who don't know where they fit in that equation. That's why the best consumer for me is an educated consumer, and that's why we load you up with so much abundance of free content. This is the

abundance cycle. You come, learn, apply, grow. I don't ask anything out of you. I'd even encourage you to go to money.com resources, go take advantage of all that free stuff, because you're like, What's the catch? How can you guys do this? It's because I'll give you all the free stuff, because at some point, you're going to get $600, $700, $800,000, and the complexity is just going to start knocking on your door. It's going to be like, Hey, I don't know what to do. I have all this success that's going on. And that's when you're going to remember the abundance cycle. You're going to remember who shot you straight, who gave you the real information, gave you the tools to start stacking that money up and building your army of dollar bills. And then we take the relationship to the next level. It's that pure, and that's why I love the abundance cycle. Go check it all out, moneygot.com. Let your money work harder than you can. I'm your host, Brian Preston.

Financial Lies That Are Going Viral (Part 2)

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The Money Guy Show

Debunking the Myth of Borrowing for Wealth

The common belief that borrowing money is the key to becoming wealthy is misleading.

While leveraging debt can build wealth, it's not the only or guaranteed way to achieve financial success.

Home equity lines of credit are popular for accessing funds, but they come with high-interest rates and potential risks.

The Risks of Leveraged Debt in Real Estate

Leveraged debt, such as home equity lines, can be risky and lead to financial instability, especially during economic downturns.

These lines of credit often have term limits, balloon payments, and associated fees, making them less than ideal for liquidity.

Using debt as a wealth-building tool without a solid financial foundation can be dangerous, and it's important to approach it with caution to avoid being "the prey" in a challenging market.

Tax write-offs are expenses, usually business-related, that can be deducted from taxable income.

They don't make expenses free, but provide a deduction based on the tax rate.

Common misconceptions about write-offs include personal care expenses and aggressive deductions, which can lead to red flags and audits if not properly justified.

Tax deductions for work-related expenses, like clothing and meals, are often misunderstood; only specialized uniforms and 50% of meal costs are typically deductible.

Taking a vacation with friends while discussing business does not guarantee the trip's expenses are deductible, especially without proper record-keeping and a legitimate business purpose.

Automobile expenses can be deducted if the vehicle is used for business, but strict criteria must be met, including maintaining a travel log and avoiding commuting expenses.

Tax avoidance is encouraged by the government, but tax evasion is illegal and can lead to serious consequences.

Getting tax advice from unreliable sources, like social media, can lead to costly mistakes.

Life insurance is often misrepresented as a great investment, but term insurance is generally more suitable for the average person, providing coverage during critical years while they build their assets.

The Role of Term and Permanent Life Insurance

Term insurance provides affordable coverage for catastrophic events, offering flexibility and the opportunity to fund other financial goals.

Permanent insurance, while offering lifelong coverage, is significantly more expensive and factors in the higher cost of insurance as one ages.

The strategy of buying term insurance and investing the difference can lead to self-insurance later in life, while some insurers offer products that track market performance, providing a potential for growth.

The Limitations of Indexed Products and Infinite Banking

Indexed products with a 5% cap on growth may seem appealing, but they underperform compared to directly investing in the S&P 500.

The concept of infinite banking through whole life insurance policies adds complexity and may not be the best solution for liquidity needs.

The high premiums required for these policies can limit the ability to invest elsewhere, making it a challenging financial strategy.

The infinite banking concept relies on high annual premiums, limiting its benefits to a small subsection of the public while being mass-marketed.

A case study comparing two individuals showed that infinite banking offered a lower rate of return and terminal value than investing in term insurance and using the difference.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of being an educated consumer and offers free resources to help individuals navigate their financial success.