When Paul Atkins was nominated to chair the SEC, his ethics disclosure listed 54 life insurance policies held with his wife and family, and the financial press asked why anyone would want that. In Episode 034, Luke Tatum, Nicky P and Rob Brayton explain what the wealthy and the banks already know about cash value life insurance, who really coined the "buy term" slogan, and why you don't need 54 policies to use the same idea.
“There could not be a more perfect example of trust me bro economics than this.”
There could not be a better example of trust me bro economics. Paul Atkins, the new SEC chair, has spent years in the regulatory world and is about as financially sophisticated as anyone in Washington. His disclosure shows a big stack of permanent life insurance, and the headlines treat it like a puzzle. We think the answer is pretty simple.
What We Covered
Why so many policies? Rob's read is quality over quantity. Cash value is a safe place to store capital, it gives you a buffer when markets fall, and it can fund trusts and estate plans. Some of the policies may be on other people. The disclosure doesn't say why he holds them, and we can only go by what's public.
Banks do it too. The person at the bank who tells you life insurance is a bad deal works for a company that holds a lot of it. Banks report their life insurance cash values in their financial statements, and you can look them up on the FDIC website.
Advice that ignores time. Dave Ramsey likes to accuse anyone who asks about whole life of selling it. Nicky calls his advice devoid of time. Rob adds that once you're out of debt, you're at zero, and all the money that flowed through your hands to get there is gone.
“You are your most important asset.”
Everybody has to finance things. Nelson Nash made this point constantly. You can pay cash and watch your savings sit, borrow from a bank on its terms, or borrow against an asset you own. Wealthy people pledge assets for loans all the time. With a whole life policy, the asset and the loan come from the same place.
Where the buy term slogan came from. The line credited to A.L. Williams, whose company became Primerica, comes with products to sell, just like a whole life recommendation does. Neither one is neutral, so judge the idea on what it does for you.
$14, or $14 plus an asset. Pay everything off from your bank account and you might end up with $14. Pay it off through your own policy and you have the $14 plus an asset that kept growing the whole time. Rob calls that thinking like a banker: when you repay a policy loan, you're rebuilding your own capital.
“Everything breaks down to assets.”
Closing deals without asking a bank. When Atkins wants to buy a property, he can walk in with cash and close. No bank has to approve it. That's the position we want our clients to build toward.
You don't need 54 policies. Rob is clear that it takes time to capitalize a system, but one, two or three policies, depending on what you need, can do the job. It's possible for the average person, and it benefits the next generation too.
Why universal life doesn't fit IBC. Some of his policies are universal life, which is a different product. The cost of insurance rises as you age, and borrowing from it can put the policy at risk. For infinite banking we use properly designed whole life, where the cash value growth is a contractual guarantee and the policy keeps working while you borrow against it.
Key Takeaway
The people with the most financial knowledge in the country, from the SEC chair to the banks themselves, hold a lot of cash value life insurance. They're not confused. A properly designed whole life policy is a savings tool you control, a place to store capital and borrow against it on your terms. You can start with one.
Key Moments
[2:00] Why Would Anyone Want 54 Policies?
[4:00] Trusts and Estate Planning
[5:00] Dave Ramsey and the Sales Pitch Accusation
[6:00] Banks Own Life Insurance Too
[9:00] Debt Free Still Means Zero
[12:00] Everybody Has to Finance Things
[14:00] Where the Buy Term Slogan Came From
[18:00] Think Like a Banker
[22:00] Why Universal Life Doesn't Fit IBC
[25:00] Looking Up a Bank's Life Insurance
“We’re not thinking like a banker in that case because what is a loan to a bank? It becomes an asset.”
Related Episodes
Episode 017: Are Life Insurance Companies Safe? Mutual vs. Stock Companies, Reserves and Private Equity
Episode 026: What Does It Mean to Think Long Range With Your Money? Lessons From the Nelson Nash Institute Think Tank
Episode 040: The Five Roles of Banking Nobody Taught You (And How to Become the Bank Owner)
Want the full conversation, including how to look up a bank's life insurance holdings yourself? Listen to the full episode and grab the free toolkit at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast.
FAQ
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His disclosure doesn't say. In Episode 034, Rob Brayton points to the common reasons wealthy families hold permanent life insurance: a safe place to store capital, a buffer when markets fall, and funding for trusts and estate plans.
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Yes. Many banks hold cash value life insurance, often called bank-owned life insurance. It shows up in the financial statements banks report, which you can look up on the FDIC website. Rob Brayton found a regional bank near him holding about $7 million in cash values.
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Luke Tatum points out that it's credited to A.L. Williams, whose company became Primerica and sold products for both halves of the advice. It's a sales pitch too, so it's worth asking what each approach does for your money.
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We don't recommend it. In universal life, the cost of insurance rises as you age, and loans can put the policy at risk. We use properly designed whole life, where cash value growth is contractual. Policy loan terms vary by carrier.
Show full transcript
Between The Lies: Episode 034 Transcript
Nicky P: Do as I say, not as I do. What every great politician is hoping you know innately. So it's no surprise when the SEC chair is outed as carrying more than 50 life insurance policies. Shh, gentlemen, don't tell anyone. Welcome to Between The Lies podcast, your weekly lesson on how to approach an uncertain world with positivity and balance.
I'm Nicky P. Here with my good friends and money brains, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, as they help us navigate the snares and pitfalls in a world of trust me bro economics. Stick around till the end of the video for their free toolkit, and be sure to like and subscribe if you enjoy what we gotta say.
Gentlemen, feeling a little vindicated?
The SEC Chair's 54 Life Insurance Policies [0:00]
Luke Tatum: Yeah. I mean, gosh, there could not be a more perfect example of trust me bro economics than this. Yeah, Paul Atkins, the new SEC chair, he was sworn in on, in April 21st, I believe. And so he's got 54 life insurance policies. How do we know this? He's required to do kind of a disclosure of all of his assets and stuff for things like potential conflicts of interest and whatnot as he's coming in.
And this is a guy who's been in the regulatory kind of space for quite some time. He was in the SEC back when, George W. Bush was president. And this is just such a, as you said, do as I say, not as I do kind of a moment for us. And I... There's so much we could do with this episode really, but the, all of the articles, like the main article, the Yahoo Finance, the Forbes, the Fortune magazine, all those articles, they're all basically titled the same thing, and that is, "Incoming SEC Chair Paul Atkins and His Wife Have 54 Life Insurance Policies.
Why?" And it goes in a very kind of misinformed kind of a way into the details of this, questioning what on earth you could want a lot of life insurance policies for. Now, the people on this podcast, we like life insurance policies. I got no problem if you want 50, you know? But, I don't have 50 yet, but maybe I'll get there someday, right?
But this is just th- you know, the absurdity. How could you utter such a phrase or such a sentence as to say that you want all these life insurance policies, right? It's this insane level of skepticism. So, okay, that's a frame-up of what we're dealing with, but Rob, I mean, what's your, what's your first take on this one?
Why Would Anyone Want 54 Policies? [2:00]
Rob Brayton: Yeah. I mean, I was actually pretty surprised. I mean, 54 is a lot of policies, right? I think from my angle, and, and I think yours as well, Luke, is it's not always about the quantity of them, but the quality of them as well. So like what are they? How are they structured? That sort of thing is important.
But regardless, it's either that, life insurance is a bad place to have your money, or Paul knows something about life insurance that other people don't. And I ve-venture to guess that Paul knows something a lot like what we understand and know, that there is a value and there is a purpose to utilizing life insurance as part of a overall portfolio mix.
You know, it's a great place to obviously store capital in a very safe environment. But at the same time, when if you are heavily leveraged into the markets or you, do have a lot of mo-money invested, it is a great way to buffer down cycles, and that could be a portion of why he has so much there as well.
If you're highly, leveraged into different markets, maybe not leveraged necessarily, but if you're involved in a lot of volatile markets, having insurance, life insurance as a buffer on the downside is really helpful. So it fits into a larger strategy as a whole, whether somebody wants to do all, a lot of market-based investing, or take more riskier investments, it's a great way to buffer that risk.
Trusts and Estate Planning [4:00]
Rob Brayton: But at the same time, it's also a great way, and from what I was reading, it looks like he has a fair number of trusts. And if you have trusts set up, a great way to fund a trust is to have a life insurance policy that funds the trust upon your death, someone else's death, et cetera. And some, again, some of the reading or some of the follow-up I was doing did appear that not all of these policies are on him and his wife, but they're on multiple individuals and potentially even contracts that he purchased that other people were trying to get rid of.
So it's a, it's a, it sounds like it's part of a big plan that he has, and a well-devised one from what it seems like. But regardless, it's, you know, I think the way Nick opened it up to begin was a great way to do it, is, you know, we have all these market people telling us one thing, yet when we actually dig in and, and see what's going on and, you know, you pull up the hood on a bank even, it's the same process, right?
There's a lot of insurance at play for very specific reasons.
Dave Ramsey and the Sales Pitch Accusation [5:00]
Luke Tatum: Right. You know, you just recently did a great video where you're taking apart some of Dave Ramsey's arguments on this front. And Dave Ramsey, what does he always do? He accuses the person who is inquiring about life insurance as a potential place to put money of selling whole life policies, right?
He, it's, he never waits for a response on this kind of stuff. He just, "You must be selling this stuff," you know, and he just kind of cuts people down. And this is sort of the same thing that you encounter with a bank or with a financial advisor, a guy who wants to sell you mutual funds, a guy who wants to sell you know, whatever other financial product.
It's, well, h- that guy at the bank, that guy in the financial services office may have a bunch of life insurance, but he doesn't want to tell you that. He doesn't want to talk about that. He wants to talk about the product he wants to sell, you know? The bank is gonna give you a savings account. The bank is going to give you a loan or what have you.
Banks Own Life Insurance Too [6:00]
Luke Tatum: They're not gonna give you a life insurance policy. A, they're not in that business, but B, that bank has a lot of life insurance. And we haven't done it on the show or anything, but in my book, Between The Lies, there's a walkthrough of how to look this up on the FDIC website. You can go to any branch of any bank in the entire country, and you can look at how many hundreds of millions or even thousands of millions of dollars of life insurance cash values that the bank has.
So they're doing it. They just won't wanna talk about that, right? So it's very interesting that this is kind of pulled into the public eye, and people are like, "What? This guy must be some kind of moron." It's like, are you sure? I mean, this is a very well-connected person. You know, they're very knowledgeable on, I mean, at least ostensibly, very knowledgeable on financial products.
Why don't they have all their money in S&P 500 index funds since that's the main way that everyone gets rich in the world? That's sort of what I've been told, you know? So it's interesting. It's real interesting.
Advice That Ignores Time [7:00]
Nicky P: Well, I don't want to kick Dave Ramsey hard enough, but, ah, you know, while I'm sure he can say he's gotten a lot of people out of debt, one thing I'm certain he can't say is, "I have helped a lot of people become truly financially solvent," because so much of his advice is completely devoid of time.
Sure, you may not owe anybody any money, but you're not, you're not creating any wealth for yourself in any, following any of his advice. I love his pay off your house as quickly as you can because, okay, well, it's literally one of the most affordable loans you're ever gonna get in most cases b- based on interest rates.
So why would you possibly, you know, put money there, all, put all of your money there- That you could be using to do something else to create, occurring at a much higher interest rate, things of that nature. He just, he completely avoids thinking of these things. So when you, when you, when you sit there and tell me, "Oh, yeah, Dave's shitting on us again.
They're doing that," it's like, yeah, of course he is, 'cause, you know, e- everything he does is to convince you that he's a guy who's got the solutions. But what he is a guy who's got a program to sell you.
Rob Brayton: Yeah. Right, right.
Nicky P: Just like he's accusing you of doing.
Luke Tatum: Like anybody else. Yeah.
Rob Brayton: You know, I think it's interesting, right?
Debt Free Still Means Zero [9:00]
Rob Brayton: Because Dave's big focus is get out of debt, then do all this stuff, right? But it's missing the point of w- all that capital flowed through your hands just to get out of debt, and once you're out of debt, where are you at? You're at zero. So Mary Jo Irmen does, she says it great where she says, "The homeless guy down the street is also at zero."
So you're starting at the same level, but w- look what flowed through your hands in order to get there, and you have nothing to show for it other than maybe you have a house and he doesn't. But, you know, it, that being said, it's what could you have accomplished all along the way if you would've maybe thought of a different approach or, you know, weren't pushed into thinking that there's only one way to get out of debt.
And, I mean, obviously that's a side topic to this, but I think the other part of it is, just so frustrating that we have this big stigma, particularly that comes from the investment community about life insurance as a whole. Insurer, they'll tell you know, buy term, invest the difference, do some of these different things.
You Are Your Most Important Asset [10:00]
Rob Brayton: But there's, a, you know, when you think about your most important assets, and you are your most important asset because you are the driver of all future income for you and your family in most cases. So if that's the case, why wouldn't you want to have that insured? And can you do that with term? Sure.
But at the same time, you know, one of the things to be thinking about is if your home's paid off, would you stop insuring it? I mean, I wouldn't. So just because you're debt-free or you have investments, does that mean you shouldn't insure your future income and your future life? I think that's kind of a very irresponsible thing to do, quite honestly.
But, again, that's, you know, whatever. We can, that can be debated, but-
Nicky P: Well, that is, it's something that I want you to y- you keep in mind, because even when you're having these conversations with somebody new, that's something that comes up. Even someone who's, like, initiated, kinda gets it, follows it.
We had a conversation a couple weeks ago, Luke and I, with a policy holder and somebody that we've kind of introduced to this world, and You're listening to him ask the questions to this guy, they're talking about it, and he clearly is completely missing the fact that, well, but you still have an insurance policy, and just 'cause you've pulled the scaffold from doesn't mean that you've wiped the whole thing out.
It's still a standing insurance policy that exists. Like these... Because it is such a unique device, people innately just don't understand how to categorize it, 'cause it's almost two things at once. They're being treated as two things at once the way that it's being utilized in the IBC method.
Everybody Has to Finance Things [12:00]
Luke Tatum: What do the wealthy have that make them wealthy?
It's assets, right? And I was thinking about this morning actually, but, you know, it's not that they're out of debt. Most, you know, a lot of people have a ton, a ton of debt. But it's also not necessarily that you want to be in a ton of debt. Like I'm a big proponent of paying off debt, right? I'm a big proponent of that.
But you have a need to finance things. This is something that Nelson Nash would always, you know, harp on. It's like everybody has to finance stuff. You're going to ma- need to make large purchases that don't fit into the size of your paycheck every two weeks or every month or whatever, right? And so you have to find a way, one way or another, to spread out that cost over time.
And you can save up and just have a huge pile of money that barely does anything, it just stays liquid and available. Or you can go into debt. Or you can kind of sort of do both of those things at the same time and let your asset work for you while you take a loan against the asset, right? And so Elon Musk, I always bring him up because he's got such an incredibly high net worth, right?
He's got a lot of assets and he can say, "Hey, I'll earmark some of these assets. I'll pledge them if I don't pay back this loan. Give me a loan." That's what he's doing. But even better than doing that with a regular bank and having to subscribe to whatever terms the bank will give you, is to have the asset and the loan be from the same place, right?
And that's what we're doing with the life insurance idea. They have to pay me in the future or pay my beneficiary in the future when I pass away. They have an obligation to me now. And on the basis of that fact, they're also willing to extend financing to me, and that's a pretty cool place to be in. We're talking about the buy term and invest the difference and all that.
Where the Buy Term Slogan Came From [14:00]
Luke Tatum: I kind of want to go back to that for a moment too. That phrase is credited as coming from A.L. Williams, the guy who... Yeah, he, there's a book about him and all this stuff, but he You know, the guy who came up with this, the thing that Dave Ramsey talks about and accuses people of selling whole life insurance, A.L.
Williams goes on to create Primerica and sell financial products where they buy term, sell you a term policy, and invest the difference, sell you an investment. It is the same. It is the same thing, just from a different angle, right? There's no moral difference between A.L. Williams telling you to buy term and invest the difference that he wants to sell you, and a whole life person saying, "Maybe you should use a whole life policy that I want to sell you."
Right? That's the same thing. So I... It's not like A.L. Williams and this idea is this disinterested, you know, philosophized strategy that has come from the ether. It's also a self-interested person who wants to sell a product.
Assets and Trade-Offs [15:00]
Nicky P: Let's go down to first, principles. I'll say, you know, Tom Bilyeu, thank you for getting us always to first principles.
He'll be also the first person to tell you that everything breaks down to assets. That is what makes the wealthy and not wealthy different, is assets. But I wanna talk about somebody else. I wanna talk about Thomas Sowell, and Thomas Sowell, I believe his quote is, "There are no... There are no, good or bad.
There are only trade-offs." And that is where you get deeply into this idea of good debt, bad debt. Neither one is good. It's just what is appropriate at the time. Is it worth wasting all of the cash flow that you have on hand to s- get to zero in the debt world, or is it worth, you know, leveraging that, leveraging, you know, a, one interest rate to get a better interest rate on something and start something that's actually gonna grow simultaneously when you have the opportunity, as opposed to get back to homeless.
Right.
$14, or $14 Plus an Asset [16:00]
Luke Tatum: Right, right. Well, yeah, I mean exactly- I love that... Exactly to your point, you know. You can do the exact same thing that I would recommend in maybe a client interaction without an IBC style policy, without understanding IBC, without owning any life insurance, without doing any of this stuff. The difference is the one who's taken the further steps and educated themselves and taken responsibility for what they're doing and really started to think long term, when they pay off the debts, they're still gonna have a valuable asset and capital that they can access and continue to reuse because they are, you know, using the same dollars multiple times.
I'm using air quotes here. But they're, you know, it's a velocity of money type thing- Where your money is flowing into a sm- it's a smaller system, right? You're in control of more of the process. Or you can just keep making drafts out of your bank account, watch your bank account go down, and it's like, "Well, cool, I paid off my car, and I paid off my credit card, and I paid off my house, and now I have $14."
You know? Or you could have $14 plus the very valuable asset that has continued to grow over the 10 years that it took you to get out of debt, right? And paid you a dividend each year. And, and, and gotten f- you know, better and better at a faster and faster rate over the entire time. The whole time you're getting out of debt, your situation can get better, not just from reducing the debt, right?
And so it's like no question at all that one of these paths is the superior one. It's not hard to see if you look at it.
Think Like a Banker [18:00]
Rob Brayton: Well, in most of the time, the reason why is because we haven't adjusted our thinking. We're not thinking like a banker in that case because what is a loan to a bank? It becomes an asset.
So when we are repaying loans, policy loans, this is not like a traditional loan where that money flows out from my system and it's gone forever. I now am replenishing my own capital at that point, and that, that's hugely different. And you start to look at policy loans different as, "Hey, you know what? I don't mind that I have that out there because when I do pay it back or as I pay it back, I-- that's all coming back to me anyway."
So it's not a big deal. And who's profiting from it all along the way? 99% of the time I am as well. So you're the one who profits in that situation instead of a third party. So that's where it becomes super impactful. And if we kind of scale that back to Mr. Atkins here, he's sitting on, I think he disclosed somewhere near $6 million worth of cash value.
So if he needs to go start something or do something, who wouldn't wanna have $6 million in capital sitting around? And, you know, I mean, that would be a great place to be, right?
Closing Deals Without Asking a Bank [19:00]
Luke Tatum: S- let me interject because this is such a crucial thing. When Mr. Atkins wants to do a deal, he wants to buy a piece of real estate, he wants to buy a business, he wants to invest in some company, whatever he's trying to do, he doesn't walk into that deal saying, "Oh man, I got these huge life insurance policies.
Let's do it." He walks into that deal saying, "I wanna invest a million dollars. I wanna buy this for a million dollars. I've got cash. I can close in a week." They don't know. They don't know that he has life insurance unless he tells them Because the fact is he has on-demand access to six million bucks. And he can tap it any time for any reason to do any kind of deal he wants.
The bank doesn't need to approve that. The bank doesn't need to know that, right? He is dealing in a completely different system. We talk a lot about the private banking world and the private credit world and all this. He's operating outside of the regular channels that, you know, you and I are used to.
And so this is... It is not that he's, like, having to go ask permission and structure all this stuff out. He just kind of does some quick calculation, "Okay, I'll pay you back such and such over this much time. That looks pretty good. I'm gonna do it." And he just does it. I-- He's in a really good spot, is what I'm trying to say.
You Don't Need 54 Policies [21:00]
Rob Brayton: He had to capitalize to get there, right? Like, that's part of the game. You have to capitalize. And just like any business owner, their business, they've capitalized that business to the point where it's profitable. We're doing the same thing, just on a smaller scale. We're capitalizing our own system with some of our income, and then being able to tap into that and use it the way that's necessary.
And I mean, that's-- it's, it takes a while to build your system to where you really need it to be able to finance everything that you have. But, you know, is it gonna take 54 policies? No. I mean, you don't have to do that. We can do that with one or two or three or depending upon what your system takes, you can do that.
But, it is very possible and the average person can do it and, and benefit themselves and, more importantly, benefit your future generations in the process.
Luke Tatum: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just think of the premiums this guy is paying, right? It's awesome. It's awesome. Obviously, he sees it. He sees the benefit.
Why Universal Life Doesn't Fit IBC [22:00]
Luke Tatum: And now some of his policies may be universal life policies. We don't have a list of policies, so I do wanna kind of full disclosure, on this for just a second. But, you know, whether it's 50/50 universal life versus whole life, or whether it's 99% whole life or whatever, it kind of doesn't matter. We do know that some of them are whole life and some of them are universal life.
That's out there in the articles that are available. And so his indexed universal life policies, if some of them are indexed, they may be kind of a quasi additional IRA type of thing that he's trying to do. It's an additional, you know, quote-unquote, retirement savings, which is really a retirement investment.
And, you know, tho-those are what they are. That's not appropriate for doing infinite banking for a number of reasons. We could do a whole episode on that easily. But to do the infinite banking stuff, a whole life policy is an excellent place for that, and the reason is you get this two places at once kind of action going.
When you take that money you take a loan against a whole life policy, you're not in any way compromising or risking the whole life policy. You have truly two different things going at the same time. Whereas a universal life, that is not true. If your cash value is taken out to do different things, if you have a lien against it in that way, you have fewer funds invested in the first place.
And so it's not a two places at once kind of mechanism like that. And it's just worth- And
Rob Brayton: You have a rising cost of insurance all along the way too. Right. Right.
Luke Tatum: So different- And he's getting older, you know? So- Yeah.
Rob Brayton: So-
Luke Tatum: Paul Atkins is not gonna be... He should not, if he knows what he's doing, and it sounds like maybe he does, he should not be touching those universal life policies the older he gets, because his cost of insurance is going to be, to put it mildly, astronomical.
But, you know, we'll probably never learn the exact nature of all these policies. It's just he's got a huge system. Why? You know, the outrage, the indignancy that we have on these articles saying, "Why in the world would you do that? It just doesn't make sense." And they have experts that they've brought in to say, "Well, that's just outrageous," you know, and to make it look bad.
A Hit Piece Against Insurance [24:00]
Luke Tatum: It's a almost hit piece. Yeah, it's a hit piece against insurance is what it is, right? And it's like, well, you know, I mean, if you opened up, if you, if you had to have some Rockefellers and Rothschilds and some of these other folks give a disclosure statement on their assets, yeah, you would find something similar, maybe more, maybe more than 54 life insurance policies.
But, you know, this is just a rare snapshot, a rare little s- kind of peek behind the curtain. Hey, wait a minute. What are they doing back there, you know? That's a lot of life insurance. I wonder why. Yeah, you should ask why, but the answer is not, "That guy must be dumb." That is not the answer. Yeah.
Nicky P: For me, that was the, that was literally the moment that it all, like, okay, something's up here, is when I was reading your book and you're going through...
You can go to the websites and look at all these banks and see how much insurance they own, and you're like, "Really?" And you do, and you're like, "Oh my God." Well, so it's valuable in some way to somebody for some reason, so... And since they're trying to tell me it's not, I feel like I have to go that way.
Looking Up a Bank's Life Insurance [25:00]
Luke Tatum: Right. Right. I mean, the FDIC, the website, like it's kind of... I've done this with clients a few times, you know, and it's really funny sometimes because it's like you go look at it and you go to the line item for life insurance, and it's in their capital, you know, assets. It's one of the best, most, yeah, tier one capital assets, right? [Editor's note: Bank-owned life insurance is carried as an asset on a bank's balance sheet. It isn't Tier 1 capital itself; regulators compare a bank's holdings to its Tier 1 capital, as Rob describes below.] And so it's one of the most fundamental valuable things that they could possibly have, right, as far as a cornerstone of their financial wellbeing as a business. And- It's on their financial statement. That's what you do on the FDIC website. You go to their financial statement, and it's public. And so you might look at one of those and see, like, on the life insurance line, you might see a number like 11 or something, and you go, "Well, they have $11?"
No, no, no, no. It's in tens of millions or in hundreds of millions, right? Oh, that's... Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot of money, right? It looks small, but it's not. You have to find whatever scale you're using for this particular branch of particular bank or whatever. And not every single bank has life insurance like that.
But if you look at a Bank of America or a Citi or, you know, some of these really big ones, yeah, yeah, it's there. It's definitely there.
A Small Bank's Cash Values [27:00]
Rob Brayton: Even small banks, I was looking at a regional, near me, and they were pushing $7 million in cash values. And that's... I mean, they only have a few branches. They're not a real large bank in central Wiscon- or I should say someplace in Wisconsin here.
But, it's just really interesting, 'cause... And all that stuff's disclosed. You can go check it out. But it... I mean, it was pushing 7.5% to 8% of their total tier 1 capital. I mean, it's not like it's a small amount.
Luke Tatum: It must be because that bank is dumb- It's sizable... Rob. It must be because they're dumb and they don't know how money works.
I think that's the only explanation.
Nicky P: All right. Well, Luke, why don't you take us out of here and tell people where they gotta go?
Outro and Free Toolkit [27:00]
Luke Tatum: Yes, absolutely. I hope you enjoyed this episode. It was kind of a fun opportunity for us. You know, thanks so much for joining us as always on the Between The Lies Podcast. You know, this is kind of a unique opportunity for education.
Education is great, but obviously you would like to do something in your financial life that is practical and effective and will actually improve your life. We've kind of been talking about that all episode, the kind of strategy that we like to employ here at Perfect Spiral Capital. And so if you would like to learn more about that and, and take some action, because this is the kind of thing that can be immediately valuable in your life.
You can deploy and activate this kind of stuff in no time. So if you would like to get a little bit better handle on that and prepare yourself for the next big financial situation before it happens, then head on over to our website. You can head to perfectspiralcapital.com/podcast, and you'll find a free toolkit there that will have a lot of great resources to get you started.
Book a call with us. Let us know what you think and how we can help move you along on that process as well. Now, one last note that I have, please go over to Rob's other channel. He has a separate YouTube channel here, Rob Brayton PSC, where he's got some great stuff, including that recent Dave Ramsey reaction that I mentioned, which was a lot of fun. So go check that out as well, and, you know, we'll see you on the next episode. Appreciate you joining us.
