Think Like a Bank | Sarry Ibrahim

Sarry Ibrahim is a financial planner and member of the Bank On Yourself Organization. He helps real estate investors, business owners, and full-time employees grow safe and predictable wealth, regardless of market conditions, using a financial strategy that has been around for over 160 years.

Sarry started this journey when he was in grad school completing his MBA. He worked for companies like Allstate, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna Healthspring, and Humana before founding Financial Asset Protection, a financial services firm that focuses on one idea: the Bank On Yourself Concept, also known as the Infinite Banking Concept.

https://thinkinglikeabank.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarry-ibrahim-mba-ltcp-bank-on-you/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwasIgJYLJwnyANE1iWN3XQ

https://finassetprotection.com/

Sponsors:
https://powerfulcreators.net/
Promo: MENTOR96

https://nw-recovery.com/
Promo: JBolton 

Transcript

Josh Bolton: 0:04

Josh, how you doing? Good yourself. Thank you. So, what I'm gonna say how many interviews do you have going on so far? Oh, um, this is my third or a fifth for today. So I have five total. This is a third one. So I literally only got to an hour, huh? Yeah. All right, cool. Um, I just want to check with the way your receptionist is talking to me. I'm like, This sounds like a busy busy man. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was just listening to your episode right now your podcast. With the German startup guy. That's the ratio, right? Yes. Okay, perfect. Yeah, I like your show. I like the episode was actually just I was about to be late to this podcast, because I was listening to this episode. That's awesome. That's an excellent compliment. Thank you. Yeah, it was just me and him. We're just having fun. So what is it you do? Specifically real estate, right. So I'm a financial planner, and I help clients and all throughout the country pretty much solve financial problems. I help a lot of real estate investors. It's kind of the primary one of the niches we have. And yeah, and I'd like to just kind of just go in as a general money problem solver. Working with clients throughout the country, and I also have a podcast called thinking like a bank. And the show was just like, how it sounds thinking like a big how to, like, spread more awareness about okay, too big would do. Cool, cool. I'll have to look yours up after this. Honestly, I'm loving this energy already. Can we just get a quick intro, who you are, and then pick up? I actually want to talk to you about the the main part. That is perfect. Okay. Is the show live right now? Are we going live? I don't do live. Oh, it is recording? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So just kind of some background about me. So I'm from Chicago, Illinois, I run a company called financial asset protection. So financial services firm, we can operate in all 50 states have the podcast thinking like a bank, and I just wrote in a book, it's more of an e book. It's called thinking like a bank. I give it away to listeners for free. And yeah, I live actually, in the suburbs of Chicago, married my wife and I have a son. And yeah, that's that's pretty much my background kind of was to kind of a curve. I wanted to be a criminal defense attorney. So I got a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. And then I was gonna go to law school. But comment, like the last minute, I changed my mind, I got my MBA, instead, I then went down the path of financial services and insurance. So it's kind of like wrapped together. Today, I'm a financial planner, slash insurance agents that we kind of do holistic planning for clients that might involve real estate might involve insurance might involve debt management. So kind of we take an unbiased approach and see how we can help clients. Awesome. That's sad, sad to say, a lot of financial people. They're very biased. So if you don't have this, we can't work with you. Which. So you're so right. Yeah, exactly. So like one problem in financial services right now is a lot of planners are like captive to one concept or one company. So like, they can only do that, for example, mutual funds for this company. And if you're not going to do that, they just skip you and go to the next person. They can't provide any more advice because there's licensing restrictions, right? This this kind of a problem, but we are we have, we were completely independent. We're not tied to any companies or concepts so we can really talk about anything with clients. Can I get your name because I don't want to butcher it? Oh, yeah. Siri Ibrahim. Okay, he said it. It's hopefully I get it. So um, uh, now I'm curious about you, because I actually had Stephen Corrado from UBS Money Monday on the show, and that was one of them. He even said he's like, it's sad to say when it comes to finances he's like, we offer a free no strings attached consultations, maybe give you a quick lowdown how to get rid of your debt kind of thing. But he's like, yeah, he's like, we're kind of tagged more to the accredited investors, like dentists, doctors that then make a lot of money. But they don't have time to learn the market kind of thing, but they want to retire. He's like, that's our niche. But he's like I was you try to help those who are at least close to credit investors that we can, but he's like, follow the rules. accredited investors pretty much the only one we can take up. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, an accredited investor is somebody who like has more than usually a million dollars in net worth, or makes more than $200,000 a year or is joint married makes $300,000 a year for the last two years. So yeah, that's a it's a smaller group of the US not the majority don't are not accredited investors. And that kind of leaves a lot of a lot of people without financial support. And that's to something like that. A lot of the mentality of financial planning is like if you don't have enough money, work on yourself, pay down debt, make some more money, and then I can help you out. When reality is kind of counterintuitive. It's like I'm coming to you so that way I could get there faster. So I can, you know, kind of identify how to, you know, position some things to grow faster. Yeah. And that was the biggest one he's like I mainly because our hands are tired of rules, which shows you creditor fest around a mic. So you mentioned something within Real Estate aspect, as do you for so do you advise on like stocks but also REITs? On top of investing in properties? So yes, so not necessarily REITs but more so of syndication. So the difference is like interesting, okay. Yeah, the difference is is a REIT is more of like a stock portfolio type, like, a lot of the apps out there for real estate investing, those are typically REITs. It would be like millions of users, they would invest, you know, 10 or $20,000 in it, and they collect, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars and they go buy properties and invest in property that's more of a REIT. And then a syndication is like, for example, there's a self storage place or a mobile Park home was a really popular for syndications. And then a group of investors will get together, there'll be like a general partner slash sponsor, like the general manager of the deal. And then he or she will have limited partners, people investing in the deal. And it can vary. Usually, it's a minimum of like$50,000 per person. And however, they structured the fun to take on as many people, then they would all go together and then buy that property or that self storage place. And then every month they would like collect rental income, and then they would distribute that to the limited partners minus like their expenses and things like that. So it's kind of a syndication. I think, from a financial planning perspective, it's really hard to say like, this is better than that, because it's very difficult to do that in financial planning. But I think overall, I like syndications, a lot more you get to deduct, you get some of the depreciation, it's almost like us. So it's almost as if you actually own the real estate, you literally you're a part owner of their real estate property or the fund, whereas in a REIT, it's almost like you're investing in the stock market. Yeah, we have for me, I got involved with Fundrise. If you know that, just and I was just the small like, $3,000 account. So I didn't I got to my 1099. But I didn't get my k one case, they said, essentially, if you have 10k, or more than you are a full on partner with us, and I was like, okay, cool. I didn't want to deal with the k one this year. Kind of thing. Yeah, we have fundraisers, I think the biggest it's the biggest, publicly open REIT. Yeah, it's like a REIT company. But they're also like, a lot of what they put me in was like development. So they were buying land. They just needed a cash kind of thing. Yes. But yeah, that was fun. But then that's where I thought because I didn't read their contract, which was like 200 pages. Not many have time to read that. But I was like, oh, shoot, I'm going to get a key one. That's right. Like I pulled my money trigger to short term tax capital gains event, but I only made like, 100 bucks. So Mike, what 40? Like I have to give the government 40 bucks Can I think? Yeah, that's a problem. So yeah, typically, it's more long term, like five year hold. And yeah, that's kind of the only downside I think, is I've read a lot of stuff on, I've researched a lot of Fundrise. And I've heard constant. That's one of the biggest, not just Fundrise, per se, but other companies like that is that it's typically a five year hold time. And you really don't make money unless you hold that time. Yeah. Same with syndication. Syndication is the first thing they tell you when you could be part of a syndication is this illiquid money like you're putting in, for example,$50,000, you'll get back probably monthly or quarterly returns. But at the same time, it's not like you can have all that money back right away, unless there's some situation where they refinance in the middle to give you your money back, and you're out of the deal. Yeah, then they catch you from everything. And then good luck trying to get back in. Yeah, yep, exactly. So then, what is the biggest problem you see with all the people you help with? Money Management? Like its biggest trend, you see? Is it that people don't understand the cash flow? Or they're crazy in debt? Yeah, so the biggest thing is hard. There's a lot of problems. But one problem that the biggest one I see is that people don't know what they want. Exactly. Like. So sometimes clients will call me and say, Hey, I heard there's this fund, where if you put you know, whatever X amount of dollars over the next 10 years, your money will double. And then like, it's like, that might be true, right? That That could be true, the qualities of that fund or that investment could be true, but what is it that you want to accomplish? And then when I ask that question, it's like, well, I want to I want to double my money in 10 years? And is it like really that? What is that what you literally want to do? Or is it that the product is very appealing, or the object is very appealing? So I think that's one problem is that it's like, you are following the product or the shyness of the product, but not necessarily the back end functions of what that could do for your life. So I think if you focus more on that you actually understand more of how to invest how to pay down debt, what you should do. And then the second problem is that people put themselves into a conventional lanes where it's like, alright, you should own a house, by the time you're 35, you should own the business by the time you're 40, you should have passive income coming in by age 50. So like they put and those aren't true, those aren't hard rules. Those are just what, you know, normally more a lot of people might say is true, or normal. So I think that's another problem is that you don't want to put yourself in these conventional lanes. Think kind of like freely like, what is it that you want to do? What do you want to accomplish? Why are these things important to you? There's no right or wrong answer, but why is it Is it important to you and identifying those wires and like really getting down into them? And understanding like your purpose of why you want to do everything? Oh 100% That is the biggest one. Like for me as I've talked to different people, and I'm good with numbers to try and solve the problem without ruining them. Yeah, and as the biggest one is like they get all these shiny objects rack up stupid amount of debt, and I just told Mike, but was it really worth it? Cuz like, there's sometimes debts really worth it like, you go buy a house? Yes, if you rent it out, you can make it you can make the payment on your for your loan, it may be an extra 300 bucks a month. But I'm like, buying a random doodad off the internet. Is that like, is that gonna make you money in five years? Exactly. Yeah, there's a distinction between Yeah, like you mentioned good debt versus bad debt. That is distinction, I think, like to clarify, like good debt helps you make more money. Like if I go out and buy a rent or investment property with like, 4% interest in our 4.5% interest? It's gone up a little bit, it's gone up a little bit, not yet. Yeah, you know, and then you borrow, and then you earn, you know, let's just say 8%, then your, your split is 4% profit, you know, you bought money at 4%, you sold it and theory 8%. And then that's your split, it's like buying something for, you know,$1 and selling it for $2. That's kind of the mentality of good debt. This is what banks do, right? They buy money at a very low cost from point A, and they sell it sell at a much higher cost to point B and then even point C and it keeps going on in different products, different banking products. But yeah, and then bad debt, you can't, you know, it's there's no value to it. Like, for example, if I have a credit card with like, 16% APR interest, I can't like sell it to somebody else for like, 18%, no one's gonna buy 10% It's not a good business move, there's no collateral strong collateral behind, it's not a good business decision. But sometimes, you know, credit cards, you have to, there's some advantage really paying off getting points and paying them off. But in theory, like there's a distinction between good debt and bad debt. And this is where like, no financial situation is gonna be the same. So like, you might have one investor, who like, the only they do certain things certain ways, like they buy properties at certain ways. They borrow against them in certain ways. They pay them back, they invest them in the stock market, like they have their own form. And that's really important, too. It's very difficult to tell somebody, here's the blueprint for financial success that doesn't exist. What does exist are core principles that you can match that you could duplicate amongst people, just basic things, and basic principles. But not the overall strategy. No way. It's impossible. Oh, 100%. That's, that's what I explained people. There's is the analogy, like, there's a million ways to the top of the mountain, but there's one that's guaranteed, but the rest, they all make it to the top. Yes. So that's a big one for me. Essentially, it's just like, one person was asking me because I'm learning, trading and stock markets and all that they're like, Oh, so you're gonna be like a billionaire by you. 35. And what? No, I have a good chunk of change. But I'm not just stock market does not grow that fast. I wish it did. But it doesn't. And that's really kind of like sit there and look at me. And like, this is a really, really slow burn. And it's one of those the mic, I might not fully be out of the rat race until like, 38. Because then finally everything is at that point, it makes more sense to just let it do its thing and I go, travel kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. The book the psychology of money. Have you read it? No, but I'm gonna have to look it up now. Yeah, the psychology when it's a really good book, the author starts off talking about Warren Buffett and how I think he's worth like 85 billion now. And he made like, 83 of the 85 billion after the age of 65. So like, that's kind of it because people don't really know that they just think that he's a billionaire, he's always been a billionaire. You know what I mean? So are that much money. So it kind of like it gives you an idea of like how the stock market works as a long term game. And then vice versa, like if you are looking for like, quick, I think that if you're looking for quick returns anywhere, I don't think that's a good place to go with the stock market or any anywhere passively. I think if you really wanted like super fast money, the best way for super fast money is active involvement in a business like you start a business some sort of niche or industry that does have fast cash flow or faster cash flight. And that would be there's still risk involved. There's time and everything like that. But I think like if you really want it, that's probably your best option is to do something some sort of work related industry actively investing because really, there's two ways to invest your money right actively or passively actively. It's like you're like you start a business, that's an active investment, you're actively involved in it. And then passive is like, you go to Robin Hood and buy stocks or you go to a REIT or you go to a syndication you're not doing anything but moving money from point A to point B to kind of like, um, you know, just kind of identify those two things. 100% That's the biggest one for me as I've been studying. And learning is like the Oh, use like, like I said, the passive will eventually kick in to the point where they're not like it's no worries. I guaranteed like to that $1,000 a month dividends so I can work if I want to. But it also if I want to take off the month they can too. But that yeah, that's pretty much tell people Mike like analogy of like a five gallon bucket under a sink. And like the first few jobs, you're not gonna even notice it. But if we walk away for a couple hours or that would be a couple of years in this analogy and you come back Sunday things overflowing, you're like, holy shit, what happened kind of thing? Exactly, yeah, the book, the psychology really talks about that, too, it talks about how the smallest things eventually could, you know, could be a problem like this leaking sink, even the drops, when it overflows can be an actual problem that you need to solve, you need to stop that leakage because it's creating this problem. And then vice versa with success, right? It's like you built it takes so long to build something up. I see this a lot with business, right? Like you like, for example, you're starting a professional service firm, or like a real estate agent or mortgage lender, or an accountant or a lawyer something, just for example, I work with a lot of those professionals. So I kind of see how their operations are and you start this firm, right? And then you're you're looking everywhere for clients, you're calling people, you're calling businesses, you're going to business meetings, and then you're trying to build up your book of business, your referrals, you know, and then all of a sudden, you can't even take on more people like it's getting to the point where like, you have to like just turn people away or refer them to somebody else or hire people. So yeah, I like that analogy. You mentioned a lot. It's very true. And this is one of those because like, a lot of them were more gambler mindset, like oh, we just throw everything on Triple Zero. Unreal, I don't think even that exists, actually. But we'll just see if the for some reason triple zero exists. And then we'll just make our money. I'm like put the odds of that actually working out is saying like, you're better off winning on a scratch here than you are with that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Then then the second question would be is, let's just say that does happen. Like are you going to take your money all out? And you know what I mean, and then a lot of people would get, here's the problem. A lot of people would get addicted to that, like if they want $1,000 in 1000 turned into 20,000 I think the majority of people will not sell and take their money out though car that's 20,000 could potentially become 400,000. And this is how people end up like falling for these traps, you know, these casino like traps. And then having a gambling mindset, like you mentioned. Yeah. So I'm just curious, expanded on for especially right now, in these interesting times, if Ukraine and Russia in the stock market? How would you advise your clients or anyone just listening in to invest in this extremely volatile market right now? Yeah, exactly. That's a good point that that's definitely a hot topic right now. It's something that should be considered very well, like, and I think, like, from the top of it, like, yes, a war in Europe could affect find it Americans financial here, that is a possibility we see already with gas and inflation and things like that. And I think to advise and recommendations, you know, it goes back to the whole objective, like, what do you want to do? Like we, we have a financial analysis with all our clients, right, we understand the financial situation, we know where they want to go. And then from there, we would like, identify, like, their goals. So like, if you want to be in the market for the next 20 or 30 years, you know, that's one option. The other option is what if we can grow your money still predictably, outside of the stock market and outside of the control of what could happen around the world in places that we have absolutely no control over? Right? Like, you know, that that's, that's a problem? Because it's like, what if you are very good with money, you are very good with investing, you are very good with numbers. But something you know, across the Atlantic Ocean happens, and it's gonna affect you financially. It's like, not fair for you, you know what I mean? So like, what if there's a way where you could still grow your money, and still still grow your money and still not be affected by these external economic conditions? We actually just did an episode today on my podcast thinking like a bank on episode 51. So check that out. It talks about this talks about how to grow money, even when things when there's chaos, and in a way kind of outside of the hands of other people. So I'm just curious, it seems like you would be thinking like this, too. Have you recommended people to invest in art? In art? Yes. So good question. And are you also including like NF T's in there too. When you say Rs, I don't consider NF T's much more than a Ponzi scheme, but Okay, good. Somebody else is on my side. Yeah, so, um, are I know nothing about just full disclosure, I know nothing about about it, about how to invest in it, how to grow it. So talk to somebody who does, you know, you can talk to me and I can look through my referrals and see if I can find somebody trusted, that knows about investing in art, but I don't you know, I don't it's it's definitely outside of my scope of expertise. But yeah, definitely. So that's another thing I wanted to mention on your show, is that one of the ways and I deal with a lot of high net worth individuals, right, so I see a lot of their habits and the things that they do and the things that they the way they Think. And a lot of it comes down to their support system, right? Like who's supporting them, their coaches, their business coaches, life coaches, their accountants, their lawyers or financial planners, they take their advice seriously. And it's almost like they almost in a way, like lean on them for that support. So I guess if there's one thing you want to take away from this podcast is, make sure you have like a support system who's actually like, like supporting you, and giving you insight on certain things. Because you might see, you know, it's completely like for me to come up with a business idea right now in my head, and think, Okay, I'm going to do these steps. And it's going to be a trillion dollar idea, which a lot of entrepreneurs do a lot of visionaries, do, they have the ideas in their head, but then the second, you verbally express the business idea, sometimes as you're expressing you're like, oh, wait a minute, this is actually a terrible idea. You want that. And that's good that you've thought of that idea. You've expressed it, you've crossed it off your list. And now you go on to the next idea. I think that, you know, when we look at like Apple and Google and all these large companies, I think that the product that actually hits the market comes out. That is, that is probably the 1,000th project they've worked on. That's probably the 100th thing they've worked on. It's not the first and they worked on, it just made it through all the steps. So have a support system, work with people who can screen your ideas and give you feedback to not just say yes, do this or no do that you're ultimately making that decision. But you have feedback from other people around you who are have a vested interest in your success. 100% I've just learned that through. Be especially doing the show and talking to great coaches, and guys like you. So I actually have my own like, business coach and strategist, he mainly just does it to give back to the community. It's like 30 bucks a month for a weekly group call. Yeah, he's like, you're literally just paying for my electricity and my weird experiment. In my overarching bill, he's like, I only make like, three grand office, so you don't want to, but uh, it's but that's one of them. He says he's like, if you know, another coach, if they're not gonna be as cheap as me, but they're willing to work with you. He's like, it's valuable. Take it kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. I've started, you know, I started my business, I failed a couple of times until it actually became profitable. And it was entirely because of coaching and mentoring, like, I wouldn't be able to just the things that I've learned. And again, it's not so much of here, do this idea. It's more of you tell me what do you think is good, what is bad, and then all of a sudden, you start thinking like this on your own, you start to kind of analyze things properly, you sharpen your your thinking skills, because you've practiced in that way. You've practice elaborating and expressing your opinions and your thoughts to the people they've listened. And then it creates a support system for you. So go out and talk to coaches, you know, talk to, you know, we provide clients with free financial coaching, you can talk to us, Look, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of ways to hire coaches almost for free or pro bono, where they only get paid after you get the results. So I definitely recommend that if you're in the middle of a business, you're struggling or you want to start a business, or wherever you're at, you want to invest, talk to somebody who can help you with that. Well, 100% Yeah, that, and it's one of those like, to tie back to the art for question. My coach was, he's trying to do like a whole crypto group, you know, and that's really like, oh, yeah, just $1,000 for the year and I told him like, This better not be a, you pay me 1000 bucks, and I just say, Buy an NF T and a ton of Aetherium. And you're good to go, man. Yeah, and that's exactly what turned out to be a wallet. But I made a deal with him on the site. I said, Okay, I don't have the cash right now. Well, how about if you actually can deliver me results, because he has a yacht and he's all about fishing. Getting money while he's fishing? I said, if you can give me the 40x you claim you got on your last year? I'll buy you a tank of gas for your boat. Because if you go 40x 1000 bucks to $3,000 from Philippos. Nothing for me. The exact Good point. Yes, he's ideal. He's actually not many thought of doing that. I'm like, I was raised by an Armenian master of martial arts. Can you think I know how to sell? You want any monkey and extra $20. But the Aarthi knows when me and him were talking about? Because I said, everyone's like, Oh, NFC is a new art. I'm like, Well, no, there's masterwork.io. I'm invested in three paintings right now. I just took one stimulus check and threw at it. But I said, but yeah, I technically own of this. I forgot the one. It's like two snakes yelling at each other than a pumpkin and then something else. I said, I don't even know the art or what it says it just says it's gonna annually appreciate 25% a year. That's all I need. I don't I don't need to understand the technical or the art. It says 25% a year. I'm good with that. Until I'm like, I never was like But NF T's and like, again, like my art. They say it's guaranteed pretty much like this rough percentage. Tomorrow the NFT could be worthless. Exactly. Yeah, I still don't understand. You know, I've been in financial services for like seven years and I still don't really understand NF T's I kind of have a very basic idea. You're buying like digital art. And then people are like backing it up like I Celebrity will buy in and all of a sudden, like quadrupled in value. And then some other celebrity will buy from this celebrity and go out even like more invaluable. Really, like, what's the value of it is just who owns it. Like, it's the hype and story. There's nothing else. Exactly, yeah. And it's like the same with crypto, like, I it's going to stay whether we like it or not, but I don't think it's going to like bitcoins going to be the thing that dethrones the the dollar and IRS will only accept crypto. And I think I'm like, I don't think that's gonna happen. This is the OG is like gold, kind of, even though it's very energy inefficient, but it's not going anywhere anytime soon. But um, like a digital dollar, though. I could see that essentially, like a Google Pay version. Yeah. of crypto. I could see that happening. Yeah, I think there are some places you can actually do that right now. Like you could buy things probably on with crypto digitally. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I have some bitcoin better. I don't know exactly of the technical things. But you're right. I think we're gonna get to that point where she's like, you just buy things on Bitcoin? I think so too. And there's like, in that group, I was essentially was in the like the chat saying, Okay, well, you want to do this, you want to do this? And, oh, you must be like a crypto enthusiast. I'm like, I'm anti crypto, actually. Yeah. It's like those atheists that point out every flaw in your argument. Yeah. See, the one saying this is a very bad idea and why? Yeah, exactly. There's some things out with crypto, like they say that the government can get involved with it. No other corporation can get involved with it. It's completely neutral. I don't necessarily believe that. More has proven otherwise already. Yeah, exactly. are ways that the government could interfere with especially Bitcoin, they could you know what I mean, they could regulate it. They've regulated like centralized parties, right? Like coin basis, it's going to coin base and bottom buying Bitcoin is the same thing as going and buying stocks through another platform, right? It's regulated, you get a 1099 form at the end of the year, if there are gains, short term gains, long term gains. So yeah, the government is powerful enough throughout, you know, the the world they could each government could do certain things to restrict and impose sanctions and laws and regulations. on money. That's the most important thing for a government is to control its money. Oh, 100%. I learned the hard way. When the war first started, it was just I'm very contrarian by nature. So they're like, Oh, this is bad Russia, whatever. So I'm really hopped on my retirement, my Roth IRA, an option on whatever the Russian eats. I think it's Rs X. I bought you bow in like January 2024. I didn't suddenly like two days later. TD Ameritrade like, yes. So Russia says you can't trade that anymore. So you can use yours. It's liquid, but you can't sell it. And I'm like, Oh, well, why? Well, at least I plus a 2024. Hopefully it works out by then it was it was it would be a very expensive experiment to find out. Well, yeah, that is one of those obviously, again, oh, like America saying, No, you can't buy a stuff. And that's where I asked the rep. And he's like, Oh, no, Russia said no, no one other than Russians can buy this. And I'm like, well, that sucks. Fine. Okay, whatever. Glad I got in early. So I would say do you have a strategy involving options like covered calls or buying long dated s&p five hundreds? You know, I wish you know, as you're talking, I'm sitting here thinking like, maybe I should get more into this. Like, maybe I should get into more of these things. These intricate, like, sophisticated tools. I don't full disclosure, I don't know that much about options and, and calls and things like that. I have a very, very basic idea of it. Like you could either profit from the gain of a stock or even from the the the loss of the stock, right? Yes. So it's almost like an insurance policy on a stock. It's 100% insurance policy. So you buy calls and you're just going long, or you buy put thinking it's going to be put down. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. That's what happened, right with like, was AMC Yeah, everyone was buying long calls on AMC. And then it suddenly went crashing down. Okay. And a lot of that had to do with a Reddit group, right. Or multiple read. Yeah, the Wall Street bets. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, I kind of understood what that meant is that as it went up in value, people who were buying who were in it for, like, long, like, wanting to go up made money. And then hedge funds, which typically short right? They could typically short them. They want them to go? Yeah, yeah. So what happened is the guy who for the Wall Street beds, the guy who did it worked for a money like management firm. And the funny thing is, like a hedge fund manager figured out that his name, his username, and Reddit was Broeren. Kitty. So he figured out roaring Kitty was his guy, so he was whispering in his ear. i Oh, I think this is going to go up kind of thing, knowing he'd say it on Reddit. Oh, whoa. So it's one of those. One of the guys because they know I'm good at charts. I screwed Hold back. So they started talking in December about AMC. In October, I noticed a huge spike of buying activity. But the price didn't move. And I was like, that's a whale getting in. And for some reason the pond didn't move. And this spread whenever when I pointed out and showed everyone I'm like, This is why don't trust things on the internet. Well, I said, so you think like you're sticking it to the hedge fund managers know they, they got to find a few in this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, do you think that something like that could happen again? Oh, it's still going on. That was just the biggest one. We all know. This is how this whole market works is the big whales come in before everyone else? They hype it up, and then they sell you get out before everyone else notices. You just got to know. Yeah. It sounds familiar. Sounds like crypto, like a lot of crypto is. That's why a lot of hedge funds are just buying random coins. Because no one of them is going to go up. And the only guys who sell one of them and they'll make all their losses back. Well, okay, we got to start a hedge fund. Seriously. Let's talk after. But yeah, it's just it's crazy. The the amount of stuff that like one of the I tried to do going on dating app during the pandemic, I realized that was a terrible idea now. But uh, it was one of them, because they figured out what's good with money. And they're like, so what do you think about it? Do you think this one's either the next or whatever? And I'm like, No, it's a really bad idea if everyone's talking about is when you should be selling it. Yeah, you're right. Exactly. If if there's this hype going on, right, where everybody's gonna buy into it. Everybody thinks you buy into it's already too late at that point. Once the hype is out, and everybody's talking about it. It's exactly that's it's too late. You're You're relate. And like my martial arts instructor. He's all worried like, oh, inflation, the government bond yields his net like, Biden's trying to crash the economy. I'm okay. Biden is single handedly trying to crash the economy. Let me put it that way. Yeah. But I said, cuz he said, all prices only go up. And I said, Well, I said, cuz you just said that, guess what's happening to oil? And he's like, it's going up. It's going down, isn't it? I'm like, Yes, it is. Well, I think that's where he's like, prove it. So I pulled out my phone. I showed him like, look, it just dropped$10 In our conversation alone. And he's like, she's like, so that's your, your whole contrarian thing really does work. And like, Yeah, I'm not gonna go around boasting because then I have to just stop posting because I'm contrarian. So. So, for you what else, let's say, half of all that, let's say someone's eyeball steeped in debt. I know actually a few people. I'm thinking of them. Yeah. Yeah, like 20k. But they're on a minimum wage, how would you help them structure a plan to get out of that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Glad you asked. So we do this all the time. And we have a lot of proven success with this. So what we do his first step is pay why and know your numbers. Okay, so what that what that means is like, know exactly how much so I have something called like a personal financial tracker. And I give this away for free to people. So it's like line one, for example, today's date, and then it'll have like your, you have a checking account savings account, like a 401k, you put in the account balance for each one of that day, as of that day. And then you have another column income earned. So it's like how much you earn, or it could be like inflow, like if you raised money, or you borrowed money, like how much positive money came into your account that day. And then description of it. And then more towards the right is how much you have in debts, like credit card ending in 1234 is 5000, credit card ending and 5555 is 8000. And all the way until you come up with like, for example, in your example,$20,000. And then now what you do is, you look at it you you have a clear, like idea of what to pay off first and what you need to improve on. So if like if you're self employed, you can say alright, you know what, if I make a little bit more money here, I can pay off this credit card, it gives you a visual, it's happened with me like I, when I started my first business, I had about $40,000 in credit card debt I had because I couldn't get a business loan, I was a brand new business, I was going to qualify for a loan anywhere, I couldn't go to investors and raise capital, I didn't have a proven track record or a strong enough business idea that was going to get me in front of investors. So I really didn't have any other option. I didn't have that much savings. So I had to fall back on credit cards, which is bad. It's a form of bad debt, of course, but at the same time, in my opinion, it was better than not started the business at all. Right? It's kind of my thinking. So yeah, so it's, it's called the personal financial tracker. And that helps you a lot. And then the second thing is you identify your objective. So one thing that people do is they say, Would you pay off the, I think pay off the smallest debt first, like chop it off. Like if you have a debt that's $100 and you have another debt, that's$30,000 you know, chop that $100 off and then and then really exit out on Excel sheets, like get rid of that. And then what happens is psychologically you start building this momentum that Oh, I like doing that. I like chopping off that hold that and then just go racing that credit card. That helps. Now another thing too, that helps too is that you have to be careful with this, you have to be cautious with this. But let's just say you have a credit card with like a bank, right, and it's 18% interest, you can call the bank and say, hey, you know, the pandemic, you know, minimum wage, or I lost my job, and then they might be able to maybe they might be able to renegotiate the interest from like, 18% down to like one or 2%. And then that'll save you a lot of money on the monthly payment. So you pay off their debt quick, quicker, there's no guarantee behind it. Also, there's no system behind it's on are usually on. On a one time, like they each deal is different. So like the person you're speaking to has to evaluate the deal, they might have to get a supervisor well, but it helps I've seen better success with bigger banks, rather than smaller banks, because bigger banks, they obviously have more money money, so they could take on more of those those hits. But the reason why not like now you're probably listening, like, why would the bank go from 18% interest to 2% interest? Why would they why would they accept less money? And the answer to that is because there's a less of a chance that you will default on the loan. And if you've got a thing, and they get nothing, exactly. So they would rather get something consistent. The most important thing for banks is the income coming in the door for them, that's the most important thing is if you have they're going as long as you can have that happening for the bank, you're on their good side, you won't affect your credit, you know, things like that. So reach out to the bank, and then figure that out. And also do this with the guidance of some professional helping you out. Oh, 100%. That's one of them. So my mother actually works at a bank. And I knew about that, too. And that's one of them, I've always considered was I was I was bad and dead. But she helped me out of it. But that's one of them. She said like you can technically call them tickets per diem, like, per day, like per situation. Yes. Sure. But like you said they'd rather go from 18 to like, 6%. Yeah, because at least they know, you'll pay it off. They're not gonna make as much. Yep. But it's better than you think. Sorry. I'm going to go bankrupt, and then they lose everything. Yes. I'm sure they'd rather do that. Hands down. But then she's like, but they don't market that. They don't want you to know about this, either. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yep. Because if you didn't mark it, then you know, they would probably just give it to everybody. And then the guard. If you want to file for bankruptcy, go ahead and do it. You know, we haven't you know what I mean? So yeah, it's definitely something they don't want to market. And again, it's not guarantee. So somebody you know, might get away with that get away with it. But don't wait granted for them, and then not for you. So try, I guess the biggest thing is, the wishing is a no, but you're not going to like they're not going to slam the door in your face. Yeah. And then it brings me to another point that sometimes and the topic is that sometimes banks will say, alright, you know, we can't help you, but this credit agency could, and then they refer you out to them. And then what happens is, is that this agency, again, be careful with them. Because fishy real quick, yeah, they'll say, Oh, I stopped paying the bank did intentionally default on the credit cards, pay us up until we can build out an account of like six or whatever, $1,000, like a quarter of it, then we would then we would negotiate with the bank, we'll call that bank and say, Alright, do you want to take 50% or 25% of that? Or we file bankruptcy? And then they'll say, okay, whatever. But then when you do that, you end up getting all these like negative inquiries on your credit, first of all, because you defaulted on them. Second, because you close the accounts. And then third, because you negotiate and you settle the debts, or they could just it can be almost in a way as bad as bankruptcy when you do all three of those things. Yeah, you know, that's a big one for me. Like I haven't filed bankruptcy, thankfully. But my it's one of those for a long time. My credit score never went up, but it never went down kind of thing. Yeah, actually, I think it went down one time because of shady credit card plays. I was I was unemployed for six months. So I'll just literally go into doors and having a slammed in my face like no, we can't hire you. Yeah. We I went to this one place. So they just they ran my credit. And it was they claimed it wasn't gonna affect it. They're just going to run it kind of thing just to see what they would get. I'm gonna go okay, that itself is not going to hurt me. Well, I guess the intentionally ran it like I was a a buyer. Like 15 to 25 times. Oh, wow. So he dropped me like 50 points. I made it back already. But it was just one of those. I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna tell them if they have to run it like that. Nope, we're good. I'll go somewhere else. Yeah. Well, yeah, there's a lot. There's so many. That's a whole nother subject. And so I'm just a credit bar. Yeah, like, you know, there's a lot you could do. I don't in my opinion, I don't think quick $20,000 Is that crazy? Like if you make minimum wage, what is it 20k A year or, you know, meal plus or minus? Now if at least you're in California, it's $15 an hour? Yeah. And that's so that's 30k a year. So yeah, you can put if you scrounge and scrap food and you could make like six 1000 on the side. Exactly. And then you can also reposition the debt. So that means that if I have for example, four credit cards with$20,000 Total with an average interest rate of like 16% You could probably qualify if you've been making the payments and you have income and things like that you could probably qualify to consolidate or somewhere else, you get a personal loan from, you know, a lot of these apps, the peer to peer lending, there, I've heard mixed reviews about them, by the way, but you could do like, you could do like$20,000 from that, and then you pay off all of them, and then at like, seven or 8% interest, and then you just make monthly payments on that. So, you know, as long as you're making the payments, there's a lot of creative things you could do. And also, you know, and I want to emphasize on this, there's a lot of that professionals can do you know what I mean? There's a lot like one of my friends, he's so we're bank on yourself professionals. And what he does is he all he's got he's a bank on yourself professional as well as a Credit Specialist, which I think is goes hand in hand, you know, like you have the investment stuff. And then you can also do the credit stuff. So like he has a program where if you, for example, paid his agency, like $50 A month or whatever to do the credit reporting stuff, it would get, it would show up as a positive in a positive sign every time you made that $50 payment. And then this is no, there's an app called self, I'm actually I used it and it actually ended up working. So it's like a savings account, you open up you do like$20 a month, and every time that$20 A month goes into the savings account, you started automatically, it shows up as like a payment that you're making. And that helps out the credit. So there's lot of things you could do you know, as long as you have people working with you have people in your money team, your professional team with you, there's a lot you could do to get out of debt and to even get on the positive side and, and beyond. 100% Yeah, that's like, that's actually very similar strategy for me how i i built mine up so quickly, is I have a credit card and I just have a money market account. I know losing money, but it's just one of those like more overdrafts, yeah, whatever the current amount in my money market, the extra on top, on top of the whatever, 1000 bucks, I have to have minimum. That's all I can let my credit card debt get to. So like it was at $1.3 hundred. But I had to make a payment for something. So the next cycle, when I got money, I immediately pay down my debt credit card to whatever it was the thing and that's where I've noticed just like, like I said, leaps and bounds suddenly like everything's going like to the moon. Yes, yes. So it's just yeah, there's legal and ethical work around you just got to know the system. And you have to you really do like just making enough money or having money is not enough really, to survive, to have good credit to make money to get your financial goals, you really need the additional ethical and legal strategies and tips to kind of to pivot. You know, if you don't have a plan for your money, somebody else will. Oh, yeah, they will. So I'm just curious for you, because you seem like you would think like this too. Would you recommend people if they get to the point, they have a good cash flow, they don't want to be active, they started an LLC and invest in like real estate and just kind of like the they let a property manager handles all that stuff? Is that something you'd recommend to them? Or like putting their spirit money in an LLC for whatever investments? Yes, so it depends on how much we're talking about. But let's say hypothetically, you have an extra 100k sent around for fun. Oh, yeah, 100k. If you're a non accredited investor, I would check out probably do like 50,000 of that in a real estate syndication, and then the other, then I would put the other 50,000 profit 25,000 in reserves, just backup, and then the other 25,000, I would put it into one of the solutions, we have bank on yourself. In the book thinking like a bank that we wrote, you could learn more about it. But that's what I would kind of do. And again, this is just a high superfast financial plan is more in depth. But right. That's kind of how I would do like, one thing to consider is have reserves in play in place just in case like things don't go accordingly. And then also think about that. Think about what if things don't go accordingly. What would you do? Do you have enough to lose that? And then yeah, and another thing too, I would do is I learned this kind of recently is have everything in writing, even if it's just you, even if it's just like between you and yourself, have everything in writing. Because when you write things out, and then you say Alright, what's the plan? What's the anticipated investment or cost? You know, what's the return? When am I going to get it? What's the percentage? What's the ratio? What's the average compared to other people, you start doing all these additional steps in between it, you end up learning more and you might either my either deter you from doing it, you know what this actually not a good idea. Or it might say or do it but do it in this way. So like you end up learning more about it because I remember like, when I was doing my MBA, I was taking this like 500 level finance course. And then the professor was saying he's like he was when he graduated college. He was a financial analyst. He looked at this company. And this is my professor talking he said he was analyzing these numbers. And his job was just to create five year projections for the company as far as income profitability, all these things. And then he said that at the end of year, so they would do the five year plan, they would implement it. Year one was about 80% accurate. Year two was about 50% accurate. And then by the time year three came they had to do a new five year report, a new five year analysis and He would keep doing that all the time. And then I rose my hand right away. And he's like, Let me guess you're going to ask why we're doing five year plans, if we think we're going to have to revise them every two and a half, three years? And I said, Yes. He said, It's because we learn more about the company, the economy, the market, our clients, customers, all of that our investors, as you're going through the analysis, we're finding out more data and more information. It's adding in those extra steps. So that same time, you want to think that you want to think like a multi billion dollar corporation where like, you have this analysis, you're going through this not overthinking not like paralyzing yourself with thoughts. But all at the same time, you're adding in additional steps before you invest in something or implement something. So that way, like you can better screen and better figure out if it's going to be a good decision or not. Because we won't know, right? We don't know the future. But you could implement certain mathematical things in between you and logical sequences to figure out if it's going to be a good fit or not. Oh, 100% Yeah, that's for me. And my biggest one, I've kind of realized I do more like every year and a half. Yeah, I think it's six quarters. I just I do a full like reset and just see what's going on. It's kind of like the guy is like the first year is pretty accurate. Secondly, it's kind of work but if you put your like squint just just right. Yeah, that's for me, I just like every year and a half. I just feel like okay, this where I'm at so much I've grown. What can I do better? Kind of thing. So we're getting close to the closing mark. I got some going out questions for you. Yeah. So other than work? What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during these COVID lockdown times, they're Sudanic apparently, working out a lot. I love I love working. I just keeps me like mentally clear. And reading a lot. I love. Like I read like three or four books at the same time. I read like 10 pages of each book, like okay, a day. So that keeps me really and then plus my wife and I we have a son now. So that he's keeping us busy. Yeah. Cool. So just learning and networking out. Awesome. Yeah, yeah. So what are some tips, tricks or advice, someone that's inspired to be like you, you'd give them the start down that path? Yeah, so work with a professional. Identify your goals, get very comfortable with you doing homework for yourself, right? Like, don't just do no research for your job or your company or your school, but get very comfortable with like your intellectual side, like take notes, you know, I mean, do checklists, write out your goals, revisit them, tag them on a Google sheet or Google, you know, document, go back to it, you know, revise it, like create these as if you're working at a company or as if you had, you know, you were taking a core college course I kind of do that with yourself, you know what I mean? Keep those things document like your life as you go along. 100% then wherever can everyone reach out? Yeah, so everybody can reach me at thinking like a bank.com it's no more a podcast, you could actually download the book, the e book for free thinking like a bank, or there's a Calendly link so you can just schedule an appointment with me if you'd like a free 15 minute call if you're looking for kind of to strategize about what to do with money and how to think differently about it. And kind of just some different situations. If you if you have an open mind and you're looking for different perspectives, go to thinking like a bank.com and schedule an appointment with me. 100% Yeah, they'll be minds very important. It's been an absolute honor and a pleasure to have you on. Thanks, Josh.