Government Waste, National Debt & Your Retirement Plan (Episode 16)

This is 93 Million with Doug Andrew. My name is Greg Duquette, your host, facilitator, IUL specialist, and lover of pancakes. And in today's show, we're talking about trust in government. Where will future tax rates be? Does IUL really work? And what's the reality of real estate? And we're joined by the OG of properly structured IUL, New York Times bestselling author, the author of The Laser Fund, Doug Andrew. Welcome, Doug. It's great to be here as always. I know that guy. Awesome. Awesome. Co-author of The Laser Fund, IUL mastermind and creator of the tax-free tools, Emrin Andrew. Welcome. Welcome. Excited to be here with everybody. Also co-author of The Laser Fund, the IUL Einstein, and the top IUL specialist in the world, Aaron Andrew. Thank you. Excited to be here today. Don't say I never say anything nice about you. All right. And our featured host for today, a treasure trove of wisdom and one who's never lacking for a comeback, Scott Reynolds. I'm going to come back at you all day long. All day long. And also top IUL specialist. Okay, gentlemen, some of my favorite topics to cover and get into today. So let's just dive right in. First, a fraud in government. Is trust at an all-time low? So according to a Fox News article, Doge has uncovered at least $160 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse. I don't know, that doesn't sound like very much, right? Just $160 billion. Here's just one example. This is a feature from The Jesse Watters Show. One of the crazy things with regards to the treasury is that when a payment is made and the computers at the treasury actually pay about $5 trillion per year, like crazy amounts, there was formerly not a budget code on there. So if not a payment was made, you didn't know actually what it was for. It could have been for anything. There was a $4 billion COVID fund in the Department of Education, and there was no receipts required. So people would just draw down on it. And when people looked into it, this wasn't us, this was before us. They found that money was being used to rent out Caesar's Palace for parties, rent out stadiums, et cetera. And so the one change that Doge made with Department of Education is we had the simple requirement that if you draw down money, you must first upload a receipt. Thank you. That was the only change that was made. You must upload your receipt. And upon doing so, nobody drew down any money anymore. And listen to that. Yes, but we didn't say that we'd check the receipt. You could send a fake receipt. You could send a picture of your dog. Anything. Anything. Anything. And as soon as we asked for anything at all, suddenly the requests were like, oh, we don't need it anymore. That is absolutely astounding. Have you guys been tracking this? And what are your thoughts? Now, I heard that you two are personally responsible for some of that fraud. Is that true? What's the story on that? My school district. I mean, the one they're talking about renting out Caesar's Palace, that is my school district. I was reading the article and it came up. It was like, Grant, I'm like, oh, I wonder what other school district's named. Granite. No, Granite School District in Utah. I'm like, no way. No way. I mean, I don't even care if it was for a conference that you're sending whatever administrators to. This was completely unnecessary and irresponsible. That's something you got to try to find a place to just spend that money. You know, it's like, yeah, at least my school district went to Circus Circus. They saved the money. That is wild, isn't it? I mean, it's like, well, we have this money. We got to spend it. We can't just not spend it. So we got to just spend it on something. And then I've got all of our teachers in our district, you know, complain that they're underpaid and they are underpaid and that these administrators are still just wasting money. Wasting money. Pay these teachers, take that money and pay the teachers some more money. It's amazing the people, though, that are upset that this is being exposed. And that's the other thing I don't understand. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's your money, actually. It's not the government's money. It's your money. So stop complaining. So that's amazing. It's just amazing how much, like, it sounds like I've read some stuff, too, that we've been following it. And it's like, there's been a lot that this has been going on for a long time. Yeah. A lot happened during COVID with, you know, the money, like we just said, and other things. But it's been going on for a long time. It's just people are starting to care. People are starting to, like, realize, OK, people are starting to care, to realize and pay attention. And everyone's like, wait a second, my money is being spent how? Yeah. And it's like, you can talk about the money that's saved kind of from this. But also there's an intangible, in my opinion, of when you shine a spotlight on like a rat's nest, you know what I mean? That it does something. People recognize it. And it kind of, like, prevents future. Does that make sense? Like, I think that's a good thing. All you had to do is upload the receipt and then it stopped. Which just tells you everything you want to know. And how do you quantify those savings? What did we stop from future? You know what I mean? If anything, it's going to stop this going forward. Yeah. And that's a good thing, even if we can't quantify it. So, Doug, what are your thoughts on this? Well, USAID, United States Agency for International Development. Now, when I started hearing some of the reports, and we don't need to get into some of the stuff out there that really drives you crazy. Let's just let's use the example of Afghanistan, OK? So they're allocated $63 billion to help improve and develop what their industrial complex or whatever, right? OK. Well, right off the bat, they identified $19 billion, nearly a third that is unaccounted for. It's lost. It was it was it was fraud. OK, the money went not towards the development. Now, right. This is what drives me crazy. We hear these numbers. And if you remember in Trump's first term, he was trying to get $5 billion approved by Congress to build the wall. Yeah. $5 billion to build a wall. And Congress is going, we can't afford $5 billion. We can't afford $5 billion to protect our border. And yet we hear these numbers of $160 billion of waste. Yeah. $19 billion they can't even account for. And yet they're telling, you know, the president of the United States, well, we can't afford. We can't secure our borders. We can't secure our borders because it will cost too much money. I think we have a hard time as Americans. We hear large numbers and we just kind of go, oh, that's nice. Like it's a large number on a page. You know what I mean? But we can't our brains can't really comprehend that, especially when it comes to the government. People get billions and trillions mixed up. That's how bad it is. Okay. So according to a Pew research, trust in government is at all time lows. I can't imagine why. You can see in this graph going back from the 1960s to today. And when you hear about things like fraud and abuse and the stories are countless, they just kind of go on and on. When you hear about these things, how does that affect people's trust in the government? And does that matter to retirees? So Doug, you see this graph. You can see the last few decades on the far right. That's the last few decades. And look how low that is compared to kind of historicals. Why does that matter to people, the trust of government and maybe retire? Oh yeah. I'll just use one example. In a previous podcast, we talked about the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that was started in 2012. And Musk is trying to say, this is a waste of money. But one of the hidden agendas with Richard Cardray, the original director, was to, during the next crash, convince Americans, we as the government want to protect you. And so we're going to require 15, 20, 25% of any fiduciary who manages IRAs and 401ks, that 20% of that goes into US treasuries. Why? Because there's 29 trillion in yet-to-be-taxed IRAs and 401ks, and the government wants to get a piece of that now. And so they wanted to demand that maybe 20%, 25% be invested in US treasuries. Would you trust the government to give you a good rate of return on your IRA or 401k? Well, then you hear this and you go, oh my heck. Because people do not trust the government because we keep uncovering this irresponsible government spending, the printing of money, and the things that they do. And so it's like, why do I want to have my IRA or 401k be required to be invested in US treasuries? Those are the hidden agendas. Okay. Other than that, he doesn't have any strong feelings on that subject. I think also the problem is that the USAID and organizations like that had an important role, or there were good things that they did. The intention was good, but then it just, government spending, people just, hey, there's no accountability here. We've got to increase our budget, otherwise we'll lose out. I mean, all of that has created this point where taxes have to go up to pay for all this stuff or we cut it, which would be better. Yeah. Good point. Emrin, what are your thoughts? Oh, I don't know if you want my thoughts or not. It just seems, you just keep on following the money. My greatest fear is you continue to follow this money. It seems just like this political money laundering scheme where they can funnel money over to this organization. That organization can come back and then put a bunch of that money back in that politician's campaign or pocketbook or anything like that. I mean, when you hear about these politicians and they come in, they're supposed to be representing us. They're supposed to be like us, not like way above us. I mean, people coming in and all of a sudden their net worth goes from nothing to $20, $30 million in a matter of one or two terms. I'm sorry, but you're not like a genius business individual that just created a startup that just skyrocketed. The top third of politicians outperform Warren Buffett. Yeah. It's just ridiculous. I mean, that's why the trust is so low is that we know this is going on and the problem is, is we've got to say enough is enough. Yeah. Term limit. Enough is enough. And it seems like people, for every headline they do see, you got to wonder what else am I not seeing that exists out there? For every mouse I see, every cockroach I see, how many more cockroaches are there? A lot. Yeah, exactly. Aaron, wrap us up on this topic. I would say that the thing is, it's about 20% right now. With that, it's too high. It's way too high. Those are the people that are 120 year old collecting social security. 20% of our population is employed by the government. Yeah. It's not just one side, it's both sides. It's a bipartisan thing. It's bipartisan. On both sides, people have distrust into the government. Yeah. Okay. Great. Well said. All right. I can talk more about this if we want. I'm sure you can, Scott. Well, coming up, we're going to talk about the reality of real estate. But first, just a reminder that if you enjoy this content and want to see more of it, please like and subscribe and ask us a question or comment. Hey, we may use it in one of our next shows. Okay. Death and taxes. Lots and lots of taxes. Benjamin Franklin once said, nothing is certain in this world, but death and taxes. Well, according to Investopedia, the income tax code was first started in 1913 when Congress ratified the 16th amendment to the constitution. Don't fall asleep, Scotty. However, less than 1% of Americans had to pay the tax and the rate was only 1% of their net income at that point. Can you imagine? I can't. That's so nice. And it's just, it's just so like politicians, right? Now we're going to start this income tax, but don't worry. It's only, it's only 1%. And it's, and it's only 1% of your, of your net income at that point. Not your gross, not your gross. It's just amazing. So, um, well, and then, and then actually they kind of raised it to 6% very shortly after that, you know? So, so in fact, here's a graph that shows the highest marginal tax rate from then until now, it's a classic meme of how it started versus how it's going. So even though the highest tax rates have been in the 40% range in recent decades, the highest marginal tax rate on record was 94%. Why even make money? That was why it came down. I had to, it's just ridiculous. Good thing you said to me, it started at 6%. Like how many years it lasted? You can hardly even see the left side of it. I mean, yeah, they get their foot in the door and then the door just swings wide. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. So, well anyway, so I, I would add to this, the saying, the phrase, the only thing certain in life is death taxes and politicians that lie. You disgust me. How can you live with yourself? Just cool it Zippy. You sit on a throne of lies. Well said buddy, the elf. Well said buddy. So we just talked about trust in politicians being at an all time low. Our national debt is 36 trillion and growing. Most people think that taxes are going to go up. Emrin, do you think tax rates will be higher in the future? And what does that mean for the average person planning for retirement? Based on the current trajectory and what's been happening for the last, since 1913. So unless, unless we change the current trajectory, yes, tax rates have got to go up. Right. I mean, you look at it, they met, we might be able to maintain them. I know we're trying to pass a bill that's right to maintain them for a period of time, but that's only maintaining them. You go straight to ssa.gov, go to social security.gov. They post it on their website that they are not going to be, they're going to be out of money by 19, I think it was yeah. Yeah. We did a set 20, 20, 20, 30, sorry, 20, 34, 35, whatever it is. Yeah. Medicare's before that Medicare is going to be out before that these programs are in. And so if, if we're going to want to maintain them, yeah. Taxes are going to have to go up. They have to, I mean, the economics around it is just, is just simple. We, we, the taxes are going to have to go up. Okay. Aaron, let me ask you this. Is there any kind of a scenario where taxes don't go up? No. If the government ceased to exist. Yeah. So yeah. The only way really, which they talked about, which, well, they don't talk about, but they do right. Yeah. Is if they, we'd have to restructure it. Cause you guys, if you look at the national debt and everything, the biggest problem is not cutting, like doge has done a good job with a few things here and there, right. Right. The fraud and abuse, but we have to restructure social security, Medicare and Medicaid. That's the biggest drain on our, you know, over $120 trillion of unfunded, right. $120 trillion that they owe. They owe this. Right. And they don't have it. Yeah. Right. So it's like politicians are not going to touch it with a 10. Yeah. Nobody wants to talk about it or even have a discussion on it. Nope. Cause they're like, they try to hit Trump on it of course. And he's like, I'm not Trump ran on not touching social security, Medicare, Republicans and Democrats. No one's going to touch it. No one's going to touch it. Yeah. Because they know it's political suicide. So they're just going to let it collapse and then be like, and then the panic is there. All the Americans are going to be panicking. He's like, Hey, this is it. It basically it's COVID all over again, but financially. Yes. I mean, it's just going to hit and it's going to be, it's going to be tragic. And that's how they're going to have to deal with it is, is it's going blow up or hyperinflation of some kind, right? We try to print our way out of it, which would be really bad. Scott, what are your thoughts? Oh boy. Um, so many thoughts. I mean, term limits that this isn't really our topic, but term limits would definitely help out. Cause you get these politicians in there forever and they want to be there. They don't want to lose their our own Senator here. You know, he, he ran on voting against the guy because he was in term or in office for 18 years. And then he ended up being in office for 42 years. So once they're in, they're comfortable, they don't want to do anything to rock the boat. So, um, yeah. And, and the sad part is, is we're at the mercy of the government. So whenever those dollars need to be increased, guess what they're going to do? They're going to raise taxes. So I think we're going to talk about it here in just a bit, but our tax rate's going to go up, down, or stay the same. That's a very good question. Government stop letting them vote to give they do. And there's no reason why you, if you're in there for six years that you get a comfortable, a very comfortable six-figure pension for the rest of your life. You've only been there for, I mean, come on. I can work for six years and now I don't, and I get a six-figure pension for the rest of my life. It is absolutely. If you have a net worth of a million dollars, it sounds nice, but it's not sustained. I know. I know exactly. All right, Doug, wrap us up on this topic. All I have to say is if pro and the con are opposite, Congress is the opposite of Prague. Amen. Amen. Yeah, that's great. Okay. I'll vote for that. I'll allow that. All right. Hey, if you're enjoying this content and you're wondering how to take advantage of these ideas, Laser Financial helps individuals and families like yours implement proven strategies to grow and protect your wealth. One of our most powerful tools is the Indexed Universal Life Policy or IUL. It's not just insurance. It's a tax-free retirement strategy, a way to grow your money with compound interest and a safety net against market downturns. Imagine being protected from market losses while still participating when the market goes up and having tax-free income that allows you to keep more of what you've worked so hard to save. Go to laserfinancial.com or call 801-505-0409 to schedule a free consultation and see how these strategies can work for you. That's laserfinancial.com or call 801-505-0409. Don't wait. Take the first step toward a brighter, more secure financial future today. Are you a financial professional wondering how you can expand your business working with Indexed Universal Life or IUL? Are you leveraging IUL to its full potential? That's where IUL Insiders comes in. In the upcoming weeks, they're hosting the IUL Challenge. It's a free three-day event designed specifically for financial professionals to help you build a thriving, scalable business that sets you apart from the competition. You'll learn proven strategies to market, design, and sell properly structured policies that deliver incredible results for your clients and for your bottom line. If you're ready to elevate your practice and scale your business, visit iulchallenge.com forward slash 93 to save your seat. Spots are limited, so don't wait. That's iulchallenge.com forward slash 93. Take your business to the next level. All right. Does IUL work? This is one of my favorite segments. Thank you, Scotty. Yes. One of the most common criticisms of Indexed Universal Life or IUL is that the costs are too high and the policy essentially just doesn't work, among others. Aaron, let's go to you first on this. Can you give us some examples on does IUL work and why and why not? For sure. I can do that. I can do that. Okay. So, yes, we get a lot of people, other advisors say, oh, it doesn't work. And it's like, well, what do you mean? And they just say that because it's just their answer, but they don't know what they don't know. So, basically, if you go to, I've got a couple of websites I'm going to show here on the screen. So, basically, we got our website, laserfinancial.com forward slash IUL performance watch. That's IUL performance watch. Right here, you can see it. That sounds kind of nice. Yeah. Nice ring to it. Emrin did a good job with this one here. Let's know what they're talking about here. So, you can actually put in like a S&P index and you kind of run it yourself. Let's look down here below. So, we are constantly adding. And sometimes if the market crashes, you guys, we'll show some zeros. Zero's the hero. Zero's, yeah. Because in this, you'll see some- But what about when the market crashes? Yeah, you get zero. You don't- We won't show any negatives? Yeah, no negatives. No negatives. We'll show zero. Zero's the hero. Okay. So, right here, you see on here, a bunch of May statements that Emrin has put on here. We got a 34%. Some of these, we have what's called a multiplier. We can get some higher returns. Well, there's one right there. This is actually my client. It's 111% return that's highlighted. That's a five-year S&P account with no cap. Wow. So, over five years, they earned 111%. No cap on the S&P. Still guaranteed zero if it went down, but that was just recently. Then you got just all these others. 34% here. Here's one back after the tariff dropped. The market dropped a little bit. We had a five, a seven, and a six. Here are 5.35. So, those are when the market's down a little bit. Three, five, seven, six. So, the market was still up a little bit, right? Right. It did crash, but over a one-year period, one-year point-to-point, the market was still up. Some of these accounts had a higher return than others. What's that? Still positive, yeah. Yeah, still positive returns. Nine. You got all these others you see down here, where some with multipliers, 24%, 19. You got April, 14, 12. You got 16, 30, with some multipliers. We don't have time to go into multipliers, but we can multiply the return and get these high yields inside of these IULs. That's in chapter six of the Laser Fund, by the way. So, you see March of 2025. You just keep going. Look at all those. These are actual statements. Yeah, this is why you can see they're real statements coming from the policies. So, there's a 20-percenter with some multipliers, another 20. So, it's safe to say this strategy does not work. Unless you want five to 35% returns tax-free. If you don't want tax-free. If you're not looking for that solution, then no, it doesn't work. Okay. And so, what's happening, you bring this website up again. We can repeat the website, IUL Performance Watch, but it's under laserfinancial.com. And you have all of these. And what you've been doing, Aaron, you've just been touching on each of those, and then it automatically enlarges for the person. Yeah, you can see them. And what's cool is these returns, clients get these returns, and if the market crashes this next year, what happens to those returns? Do they lose it? No, they're locked in. Gains are locked in, usually annually, and reset. So, if the market crashes, it goes down negative 40, clients get zero that year, but they don't lose these returns they got the previous year. And they reset. And you get to take advantage of that drop for the next year, so it can do this all over again. Yeah. Now, another thing, let's look at this other website. So, most of you are probably watching this on the YouTube channel here, but right here, you can see on Doug's YouTube channel, we got the podcast here, of course. But if we look here at the playlist, you look right here, and on the playlist, okay, it's glitching out here a little bit. We need to get this to 200,000 subscribers by Doug's birthday. We're close. We're 187,000. So, right here, does IUL work? So, right there, you see there, does IUL work? You can see all these videos that Emrin and I got to add a few more here, but we've got a bunch of videos of going detailed into policies that have been around for what, Emrin, 10, 15, 20 years? Some of them have been around, yeah, for 10, 15, and 20 years. And these videos talk about how these policies have been working, where they're at right now, and all that great stuff. We haven't touched on a ton here, but in one of our last shows, we talked about costs and fees, and we kind of went into detail. We've done that on other shows, but this kind of accounts for, these statements do have costs and fees, and we touch on that concept as well. We show the fees and expenses, show all that. It's all in there. It's pretty cool. I love this, because for years, especially when IUL was new, the whole kind of wording was, oh, it just doesn't work. It's a scam. It's a fraud. It's just agents trying to make a commission or whatever the argument was. And this kind of shows it is real. It's been around for a while, and it has a track record. Yeah, there's billions of dollars in IUL. It's very popular, growing a lot. Yeah, market share. This goes, though, I mean, this is all the way back in May of 2025, so I mean, it's- Yeah, it's a long time ago, depending on when you're watching this. And I remember what motivated us, because we have advisors that say, show us any IUL that has outperformed the original illustration. We went on immediately and showed a policy in his 13th year, and the client was projected to have like $63,000 of cash value. He would have been thrilled. Yeah. And we under-promised, we over-delivered. He had $110,000, and his average return for 13 years, average, was 12.88%. Show a different one, though, than that one. Yeah, where was the apology note? That's what I want to know. Where's the apology letter from that person? Wow, it never comes. Hey, Scott, what's the most common myth with IULs, or what are your thoughts on this? Oh, man. Does IUL work? It doesn't work. I think the biggest problem is, or the biggest thing with this is just people focusing on the insurance part of it, and they get lost on that, and not realizing that this is actually a place to put money. And in case something bad does happen, there's still that death benefit component. So I think a lot of times people just look at life insurance and think life insurance, when in reality, this is a great place to house money. And the death benefit is important. It is, for sure. It is primary, but you can structure it for these things you're talking about, which is awesome. Let's see, Emrin, what are your thoughts overall? I know you shared some. Any other additional thoughts? You know, you look at this in the sense of the biggest myth with IUL, or with really anything. It doesn't even have to do with IUL. I mean, you hear Doug all the time talk about, you've got financial tools, and is that what is the secret? It's not the secret. It's how you use the tool. Yeah, IUL is just simply a product. It's a tool. Just like my golf club is a tool. Now, just because I own a golf club, I can go out there and buy the most expensive golf club in the world, but do I know how to swing it? Yeah. And that is really what it comes down to. So if you're looking for like, hey, what is the swing? What is the step-by-step system I can follow to get these results? That's Doug's swing. That's what we teach. That's what you can get in the Laser Fund. So if you follow step-by-step, you're going to get the results. You're going to get the results that we're looking for. Because again, it's more in the system. It's more in the process. And that's where the myth comes into play is that, oh, yeah, it's all on its own. I can either use it right or I can use it wrong. Yeah. And when I use it right, can I get these results? I mean, the funny thing is some of the clients we attract the most, ironically, in our industry are the financial advisors are the ones that people hate, don't want. And that is engineers. Yep. People that like math. Laser Financial loves engineers. Right. They want to know how it works. Well, then why in the world that we track? You think back in class when you were in school, like all the kids that were math wizards. Those are our clients. I hated those kids. But now you love them because they're all your clients. You actually don't have to sell them on it. They sell themselves. They just need the data. Because they come in and they see exactly how it works. And that's what it is. We can show you exactly how it does. Because the attacks on IUL are usually kind of emotionally based or anecdotally. When you actually dig in and you understand the numbers, it's a different story. But again, if it's not done right, it won't work. And we totally agree with that. Okay. So that brings up a really good point. So let me come to you, Doug, on kind of this. And then any of their comments too. But Doug, everyone brings up a great point. What's the difference between an IUL and what you would call a laser fund? Oh, very good. Because people say all the time, what's a laser fund? It's an indexed universal life. But the vast majority of IUL sold in America would not be deemed a laser fund. A laser fund is a property-structured and max-funded indexed universal life in accordance with the IRS guidelines. And it turns into a tax-free cash cow when you set it up that way. Unfortunately, there's a lot that are not structured that way. And so these myths come about. Four major myths. Oh, the insurance is too expensive. The policy is going to crash and burn as you get older. The truth is that it gets cheaper as you get older. Oh, IUL is just money inside of a permanent life insurance policy, where the cash values are invested in an indexed mutual fund in the market. Absolutely not true. Right. It's linked to the market. You do not lose. When the market goes down, you may not make anything, but you don't lose. Your money's not actually in the market. The third is sometimes people understand the banking concept, and they think that somehow whole life is superior. Oh, my heck. The truth is indexed universal life blows whole life out of the water when it comes to the banking concept. But the fourth one is, oh, you should only use a fee-based fiduciary because they'll be looking out for your best interest. And they only charge like 1%. 1% on the value of your account. If a fiduciary did what we've been able to do for people with IUL, grow 500,000, deposit into an IUL, and it doubles every seven and a half years. That's an average return by rebalancing of 9.6%. It doubles to a million, 2 million, 4 million, 8 million in 30 years. If an asset-based asset manager did the same thing and charged you 1% every year, their fees would have been $980,000. The IUL agent got compensated only on the 500,000 that went in, never made a dime off of all the money that was made, and got compensated less than 3% of that, maybe about 30,000 over the first five years. It is the most inexpensive financial plan you can have. And so I'm adamant about dispelling these myths out there because it's the dream solution. And Uncle Sam gets compensated still in that scenario. That's right, taxes as well. All right. Okay, if you're enjoying, and if you're wondering how to take advantage of these ideas, at Laser Financial, we help individuals and families like yours implement proven strategies to grow and protect your wealth. Go to laserfinancial.com or call 801-505-0409 to schedule a free consultation and see how these strategies can work for you and in your set of circumstances. Don't wait. Take the first step toward a brighter, more secure financial future today. Also, if you're a financial professional tuning into the show and you're wondering how you can expand your business working with Indexed Universal Life or IUL, join us for the IUL Challenge. It's a free three-day event designed specifically for financial professionals who want to master the art and science of IUL. Visit iulchallenge.com forward slash 93 to take your business to the next level. The reality of real estate. Many Americans view real estate as a good option for part of their retirement picture. But how does that reality pair with a retirement plan? According to Investopedia, there are many headaches associated with being a landlord. Among others are broken pipes, pet stains, tenants that want your full attention when the sewage backs up or the cable company accidentally cuts the phone lines, late or unpaid rent, and of course, maintenance costs like a new roof or a driveway. Scott, let's start with you on this. What's your take on investment real estate as a place for retirement money and a retirement plan? Yeah, a lot of times I think a lot of people will say we're going to knock real estate here. Not necessarily. I mean, I have a hard enough time taking care of my own home, especially with four kids. But then to take care of another property with people that don't live there, that don't care about it necessarily, you know, that's tough. But I had a client that I was working with back in 2007. That was a couple. And he was just sitting back on his chair and didn't want to listen at all. And his wife was like, I really think we need to do at least a little bit into one of these IULs. He's like, no, we're making like hand over fist in real estate. I would never put my money in anything like that. What date is this again? 2007. We know where this is going. She called six months later. They lost all of their real estate and they didn't have any more money. And she just said, okay, we're going to work hard. And when we get more money, we're going to come back to you and do an insurance policy because real estate can be great, is a great place to grow. But if you don't have liquidity, you're going to lose time and time again. I think of all the people that had properties, you know, VRBOs when COVID hit. California had clients that couldn't collect rent for two years. So, you know, that was money that they needed to pay the mortgage bill and things like that. So the liquidity and that's where the IUL, I think is a great marriage. If you are into real estate, IUL is a great marriage between the two because it can help with the liquidity. But also if you do take that money out, the big advantage is you still earn growth in the real estate and in the insurance. That's right. And that's a big misunderstanding is that IUL actually has quite a bit of liquidity that people don't understand. Yeah. Emrin, thoughts? You know, lack of liquidity is just simply stupidity. I mean, like Scott has mentioned there, I mean, real estate is a great way to grow wealth. But I mean, as a retirement strategy. Right. I mean, well, let's stop in just a second here. And let's just, what are you trying to do in retirement? Envision your retirement. Are you envisioning your retirement running around, fixing pipes and unplugging toilets? Is that what your golden years look like? Nope. I don't want to do that now. So, I mean, that's sweat equity. There is something to say about sweat equity. Correct. But it's, what is that? That's work. Sweat means you're working. Right. Yeah. So if you can maintain a real estate. It can pay off, but yeah. Yeah. So if you retire and you own all this real estate, you're going to what? You got to keep working. And if that's what you want to do. Then great. Okay, fine. Yeah. But if you want to retire and actually start enjoying it, you want to travel, you want to actually go do things. I mean, it's so hard to be able to leave. So that's why this is so, even while billing the wealth, having that maintain the liquidity, the perfect marriage, maintain liquidity. And so you've got that security in there and then grow that wealth. But then in retirement, depending on what your retirement looks like, it's why a lot of people exit the real estate as they're approaching retirement. So they get their finances in order. So they can. Retire. Such a good point. Yeah. Aaron, any thoughts on this? Just like what everyone was saying, I've had clients come and they're like, okay, I'm done with real estate. I'm done. I can't do it anymore. I've had a few that like. It's been a good run. It's been a good run, but I'm done. I'm done. I just want to sell this, these properties or all of them. And I want. Everybody's different. Yeah. It's simple. I've had others where, yeah, they're keeping all their real estate, taking some of their earnings and putting into IUL to build some liquidity. But I have some that come like we've been talking about that are what we call property rich and cash poor. That's dangerous. They got all this real estate, all this equity, and they have no liquidity. So some of those clients will start to peel off some dollars from the rents coming in, or they'll sell a few properties to build up some liquidity instead of being. As a safeguard. Yeah. Safeguard that way. It's funny how many clients also that hate taxes so much that they'll sacrifice their entire retirement so their kids get a step up in basis when they die. Right. And then what do the kids do immediately when they die? They sell their real estate because they're like, I do not want to do what my parents did. That is so true. They were miserable. They were miserable their entire retirement. They never got to actually enjoy life. Imagine a tax-free death benefit being transferred to those kids. Yes, that's right. Because all the arguments from estates are usually over real estate that I've seen. Doug, wrap us up with this, the reality of real estate. What are your thoughts? Well, I have a lot of very savvy clients that are real estate investors. Have done really, really well. Yeah. And they use, like Scott says, they use IUL as their working capital account. Yep. And in actuality, they're their own banker. They have their money in IUL. Let's say a half a million dollars in an IUL earning conservatively 8%, realistic, okay? That's 40,000 tax-free. If they have a half a million dollar mortgage on a rental property at 6% tax deductible interest, that's only a net cost of 4% at a 33% bracket. So to service the mortgage, they need 20,000 a year. They're making twice that in the IUL. In other words, there's a lot of them that they can make their mortgage payments even though the unit is vacant. And people say, what, what, what? Because that's the scariest thing, like COVID-19. What happens if the rental income stops or they're vacant? Yeah. And they don't have a resource. They don't have any liquidity that's trapped in the property. Right. What Aaron was saying is incredible. There's so many people that are real estate rich and cash poor. And I think of some of the people we met in California that had a home they built for 230,000. And 35, 40 years later, they sell it for 4.8 million, okay? But all they had was the house. And I'm thinking of one that sold it. They were able to build an $800,000 home in another state that was three times the size, okay, of a home. And they paid a capital gain tax, but they ended up netting 2.4 million that could generate 200,000 a year of income for them, tax-free if it's in an IUL, off of lazy idle equity that was trapped in their property. Because there's a lot of Americans that have, they're real estate rich, house rich, cash poor. And we can help them. Yeah. Great. Well said. Okay. Well, just a reminder that if you're enjoying this content and you want to see more of it, please like and subscribe and ask us a question or a comment. We may use it in one of our next shows. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Become tax diversified, level up your learning, and optimize the three dimensions of your authentic wealth. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time on 93 Million. Thank you, everybody.