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Finance BROs Network (FBN)
Economic Empowerment & Self Development Strategies For All
Finance BROs Network (FBN)
S2 E4 "February Wrap-Up” - Summarizing Insights on State of The Union, Final Expense , and Home Ownership
Get ready to fortify your financial foundations and sail smoothly into 2024 with the dynamic duo, Anton Leftwich and Michel Dupoux, from Finance Bros Network. As change swirls in the air with the upcoming election, we dissect the crucial elements of staying on top in the financial game—meticulous planning, staying informed, and a quick look at future discussions regarding emerging trends into crypto regulation. We don't just tell you why having a final expense plan is invaluable; we show you the ropes, urging you to take the helm and steer your money matters with precision.
Home is where the wealth is, and we're here to map out the territory for you, exploring the nuances of real estate from the sturdy grounds of traditional houses to the soaring heights of condos. The CSI strategy—Credit, Savings, and Income—is more than just an acronym; it's your treasure map to homeownership and we're the seasoned guides you can rely on. We delve into the FHA loan labyrinth, offering clarity on what it takes to secure your slice of the American dream in today's market. So, buckle up for a financial rollercoaster ride with us—your trusty FBN family—bringing you the latest insights and warming you up for a March filled with even more exhilarating content. Stay connected, stay informed, and above all, stay financially savvy as we embark on this adventure together.
Learn more about the FBN initiative and get access to all social media platforms at https://linktr.ee/fbnlinks
First and foremost we want to be clear that what we are sharing with you are strategies and concepts that can be implemented by individuals who understand the logistics of how these techniques work. We are not giving you specific tax or financial advice. We are simply giving you three key elements of how to approach such platforms as far as the literal, the mental and spiritual format needed to be successful with your aspirations.
Speaker 3:Hello world, you're tuning in to FBN and this is another episode of Finance Bros Network. I am the one half of Finance Bros and Tone Leftwich, and this is.
Speaker 4:Mike the Polk, the other half, the other half.
Speaker 2:Let me say that again.
Speaker 4:We are coming to you live with Finance for the Unknown Finance for Everybody. Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:We are Finance for.
Speaker 4:Everyday People. Everyday People. We are honored to be here and to be able to serve diverse communities, as usual.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, and we got to. Finally, the February wrap up. So we already came to the end of our first month. Mike man, just time, just flying by.
Speaker 4:And it goes quick, right it goes quick.
Speaker 3:We are at the end of February in 2024.
Speaker 4:Unbelievable. And you know we started the season with, you know the state of the union for 2024. Yes, sir, how about that man? It's just a lot going on in 2024. And you know, if you listen to our episode and just going back to certain things that we mentioned about just looking out for what's going on, what's applicable to you and your income, if you're saving, you know different things that you're looking at to make sure that you know you're on top of your finance Absolutely, because 2024, there's going to be a big change because there's an election year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, in November.
Speaker 4:So election year. So there's a lot of things in finance that you know. The big boys we look at the big boys. They're looking at stock markets, they're looking at different things. Now there's crypto. That's a part of our life. That's being integrated, believe it or not, crypto has been regulated. Now it's being regulated. In other words, the politicians and everybody's like oh, crypto's a scam, this is a scam. All of a sudden. Now they're writing laws, they're like oh yeah, crypto might be a good thing for us All. Right, yeah.
Speaker 2:They see the money.
Speaker 4:They see the taxes they can make from it. So you know, and we spoke about that I mean all that leads to or falls back to what we talk about planning. You know, making sure you use a planner or the FBM Welfare and Planner. We always say yeah, exactly. So all those things we just got to be conscious of right we might do a crypto episode to yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 4:So, so definitely looking at 2024, planning, planning, planning. I think that was the biggest take away from that episode. Is is the planning aspect. Things are coming. Stay on pulse, whether it's your savings, whether you know it's what you're gonna spend on, just just be prepared to plan right right.
Speaker 4:Just don't. Don't go willy-nilly, don't lose your money. You know right. Plan what you're gonna do, look up, get advisors or or look at different things that make sense to you and do what you can do. Don't do what you think it's right or you think is it. Don't, don't, don't, guess it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, don't be afraid of the homework, right, I mean you never. You know, it's kind of like working out after a workout. You never say, man, I wish I hadn't done that, right, you know, I mean you always feel a little bit better. So, and you know, and, and the whole meaning of this, the platform for a FBN is keeping people connected, right, right, keeping people informed, getting them connected. If you don't know who to call, reach out to us. We'll plug you in where you need to be and then you can. You know, you can take your, take your road from there.
Speaker 3:You know, and if you, if you do need that handholding, then if we can find someone who we feel like is gonna do right by you, Then we'll do the research, we'll do some homework, we'll put you in touch with some people, we'll try to lead you as best we can ourselves right, and of course you know you just got to do your part.
Speaker 4:There you go, that's it, it's just again, we can't say it enough focus on yourself, focus on what you're spending in 2024, look for those opportunities and Don't just jump in. Do your research, follow up. Hey, dms, hey, access a question. We, if we don't know the answer, we'll get the answer. We love when we get messages, so people, so, so let's, let's make it happen.
Speaker 2:So that was the the state of the union for For 2024 and then yeah, then we're gonna we to final expense, which we talked about is.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, I've actually really enjoyed diving into this even deeper because it's it's obviously gave me the ability to Appreciate, you know, an aspect of my business that you know before I was more than willing to do and happy to do, but I just didn't have the, the laser focus to dive into it because I was doing so much of the infinite banking and the, the cash value insurance before.
Speaker 3:But this is such a this is such a key aspect of financial planning and life planning, or you call it end of life planning, because, like we, like we mentioned before, yet it's not fun to talk about, but rather talk about it while you're here than when you're not. It's right and it really is an element of bridge insurance, if you think about it, mike, because you have a Life insurance policy, yes, and that's great, right. However, there are certain elements to final expense that benefit the family immediately, such as a 24-hour payout day. If you've never heard of a 24-hour payout and you don't have access to one, hit us up, we'll put you in touch or we'll help you ourselves and that's what things exist.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's what's important. Is that quick payout, because you even mentioned there's some companies With fine-tuning scents that that takes a year or they'll eventually pay you for all that time. But can you imagine you have a situation where you're dealing emotionally, yeah, and then you're worried about the amount of money yeah, absolutely that that has to be spent, and you're going around begging people. It's stress on the family.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean and and, and. No disrespect anybody who's had to do it, because we all understand people have their situations. But I mean, do, do. Do we really just sit here and think, oh, when I die, I'm just gonna my family's gonna have a fish fry and raise the money for me or go? To the church or do a go fund me no.
Speaker 4:I mean, that was that t-shirt, yeah, I mean, you know, and we'll get to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was, that was the t-shirt of the month, so we'll get to that, but you know, it's just having these things in place. So so when the when, that time does come, because we're all going that way, right that the burden is taken off of the family and, and just to mention the, there was one thing we said is Two things to let a guarantee in life. Yeah, death and taxes.
Speaker 4:Death and taxes, it's coming, it's coming, so you don't know when right and, and I remember speaking about my, my, my scenario you know, god bless, he's gonna be a hundred. I mean in April 20 years, and we had, you know, our finding spent setup for him. So you know I was happy to do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you can be content, it's peace of mind, peace of mind and just know that there are companies out there that don't require that you send in a death certificate. We'll wait on the county or the city or whatever to get you that documentation to send that in. Some insurance insurance companies will actually Call the hospital and just verify have you take a picture of an obituary? Believe it or not?
Speaker 3:Wow and send that in his proof, and then they'll cut you, cut your family. That check within 24 hours, usually, so all right. So hey, that exists.
Speaker 4:Hey, for your loved ones. For yourself, yeah, do it. Do do the right thing for the loved ones, the ones that are Preparing for it. Let's do it to protect your loved ones. And if you have loved ones that you know that might be near that time, do it for yourself, because you don't want to be the one that's running around. You know when you're dealing with that emotional trauma, because even though you know it's coming, it's still trauma when it happens.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course it's gonna. It's gonna be a, it's going to be an emotional time for everybody and you know, you know, we have everybody talk about a celebration of life. Right, what such insights just passed away. We're going to the church have a celebration of life.
Speaker 4:There you go.
Speaker 3:So the faster in, the easier we can bring our family through the morning of our life, the faster we can get to where they can actually celebrate it All right.
Speaker 4:So that brought us to episode number three yes sir, yeah of the month which is getting a house, getting a home Having a house and getting a home.
Speaker 2:That structure.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we spoke about structure and I remember mentioning the the several structures. Like people, we, you can make a home anywhere. We spoke about anybody building a raft bill. You can make a home anywhere, but to have that structure, that house that you can call a home, it's totally different. To own something that you can call a home, it's totally different. And we even mentioned renting, right? Yeah, we did.
Speaker 3:We're out by renting, we're paying some, we're paying equity into someone else's dream, we're paying off someone else's house. So you know, having steps in place to to make sure. Yet, yes, granted, we all got to start somewhere, but now at least we have a target to hit, exact to go through a process, because it is a process to get from being a renter to an owner and what that looks like.
Speaker 4:And then we spoke about the Different structures the house, the condo, that which is a condominium, a co-op, which is an apartment.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but in apartment building, manufacturer homes owned, and the manufacturer homes that are in a rented space we spoke about that and mobile home. So all of these are structures that you own Exactly and and that will Build equity exactly. Well, I'm not really the mobile home, but but at least you'll have something. If you put your money into it, you can get some money out of it, but renting you can't do that, right, you can't do that. And you know, just kind of looking at what we needed to do To get to those structures, to have that structure that you own, what you have to do, especially for our finance pros, network Wealthy ends.
Speaker 4:Yes, what do you need to do? And then we came up with CSI.
Speaker 3:And no, not crime scene investigation Right so the.
Speaker 4:CSI is your credit, saving and income. So your credit we spoke about how keep it at around 700, 750 and you won't have any issues applying for that mortgage. Right, it gives you options. It gives you bunch of options when your credit is that good and you're in a position of power. Power, exactly, and we also mentioned that credit is might be even better than money, better than cash, because if you have the credit, people will roll out the red carpet for you most of the time. So think about that, protecting your credit. Don't do anything with your credit. That's gonna, you know bring it down.
Speaker 4:That's gonna hurt you Savings oh, I know you had something that you liked about the savings. Yeah, brother.
Speaker 3:Do not let your emotions spend your money. Peter, I just feel that man.
Speaker 2:I mean seriously, because we all been there yeah.
Speaker 3:What do we call Christmas? And I love Christmas, don't get me wrong. But hey, we are. You're buying gifts for everybody. We're just because we feel like we wanna. We wanna, you know we wanna get something, somebody something for something. Get something for everyone.
Speaker 4:We care about Exactly An emotional expense, emotional buy or whatever Right exactly Emotional decision, but if you're looking to buy that home, you're looking to buy that house, I should say, or that structure to call a home you need to have savings.
Speaker 3:Yeah, emotions gotta be put aside.
Speaker 4:Skin, you gotta have skin in the game, Trust me. I mean, at this point where we at we're not born with a silver spoon in our mouth, Right, right, and nobody's just walking up to, hey, here's an extra hundred dollars, thousand dollars. Go buy yourself a home, People. That's not happening.
Speaker 3:I was gonna say where, where does that happen?
Speaker 4:So for the demographic that we're trying to reach out to for our everyday people. You know you have to have those savings. You know use the wealthy and a planner That'll help you save.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, because now you have something tangible, like Mike loves to say, tangible.
Speaker 3:Something to touch, whole, feel, A target, to hit. Writing goals down. You know what I mean and, believe it or not, those things become more real. Right, I mean, you know we put it down on paper and I know it's Clicc's shape. Probably everybody just puts stuff down on paper. Write down your goals every day. But these are some of the things that we have to, I feel, you know. Even for myself, I feel like we have to get into the habit of doing if and even if it's just breaking the chain, breaking old habits that don't serve us, going into new habits that we know are gonna serve us Exactly, Writing down stuff doesn't hurt, does it? It doesn't, you know it definitely doesn't hurt. It doesn't you know you're not gonna feel worse after than you did before. You know what I mean. And it's bringing ourselves to a position of reality too. Look, this is what's going on right now, and then we can write down those affirmations right below it or right after that to put ourselves where we want to be right now.
Speaker 4:So savings is important. Yes, saving that money is important. And the last thing was the income part. Yeah, income, keeping the job, yeah, so we even mentioned even if you have great credit and you have the money to put down, but if you have a $20,000, $30,000 job, you're not going to get a $700,000 house, how are you going to pay, right? How are you going to pay that mortgage? You know they're not going to give you the mortgage because your income doesn't justify that type of house, that type of structure that you're looking to get into Exactly. So you have to have that mindset. You have to have the understanding of having a job and making sure that you have the income in order for you to be able to get that mortgage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do what you have the means to do until you have the means to do more, right, right, I like that too.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we did mention about and we'll mention it T-shirt's coming out.
Speaker 2:That's the right MFDF. Ladies and gentlemen, so we did.
Speaker 4:I just wanted to mention, just to kind of wrap this up. But there's FHA loans that you can get at a 580 credit score we're 3.5% down. 500 credit score at 10%. We talked about how those are usually scenarios of people that are just starting credit or just getting more. A lot of time it's foreigners that are coming in who just got their social security number and then they got that type of credit. But most FHA loans are backed by banks and remember, the bank is the one that's giving you the money. Fha, the Federal Housing Administrator, is backing it. So they're saying these are the criterias that will back this person to give the loan. Because in all fairness banks you walk in raw 700 credit score, 10% down, don't matter, that's their criteria. Got it OK?
Speaker 3:That's their criteria, and understanding that criteria is so key. Mike man, we were just learning this lately, going through some processes with ourselves. So I mean, and you actually learned a lot from that, you broke down. A lot of that for me. They have these criterias and all we have to do is fit the criteria and you're good and that's it.
Speaker 4:That's it. That's it. You fit the criteria, here's the money. It's that simple. So think about that and that's why we have that CSI. Think about those criterias. We want that for our wealthians. Gotcha, Excuse me. We did speak about NACA. I want to mention it again so to note that there is help out there for no money down situation. This is called the Neighborhood Assistant Corporation of America. Naca is a nonprofit community at adversary and home ownership organization. Service includes home buyer consulting, mortgages, mortgage assistant and emergency rental assistance. So there is venues, avenues out there. The system is not set up for us to win, so now they're trying to help us. So that's one avenue, but it's a hard truth, but it is true.
Speaker 4:So, but if you're starting this, just think about that. These are the steps you have to take to get that home going. That's good. So let's break it down for the month. Give them the breakdown, the breakdown for the month. So for literal, for the home. For literal, it came up as the Getting Home episode that we put. The literal is protecting and maintaining credit 700 to 750 store score. Make sure you're saving your money and always have income. So that's the literal for the month.
Speaker 3:OK, got you and then we got the mental for the month Is create a habit to stay financially focused. Put it on your calendar, do a vision board. I love that. Stay committed to it. All right, look for a way that it will remind you daily or weekly with someone or something when we do have AI. Now, yeah, to stay motivated and on track.
Speaker 4:Right, right, and that's the mental, that's the mental for the month, yes, and the spiritual for the month is. I think it was from a final experience when it comes to end of life, yeah.
Speaker 3:Go ahead.
Speaker 4:When it comes to the end of life, you have a sense of empathy that God forbid the unexpected happens. You'll have peace of mind, knowing you're you've taken the proper steps to make sure that the passing of the love of a loved one will not be a burden on your family. I love it, man. It's deep bro. So so that's a spiritual deep, you know.
Speaker 3:For our final, get no spirits more.
Speaker 4:So that that's a spiritual. And then you know, we did mention it before in the beginning this episode what is our t-shirt of the month?
Speaker 3:You want me to give it to him?
Speaker 4:What's the t-shirt of the broth brother and Tom? What's the t-shirt of the month?
Speaker 3:go fund me is not a life insurance Every time you say it hurts. It's so real though, man, it's so real, and I know sometimes we got to make it hurt for it to have an impact. Right, you know me, they say that the things that they say that we only change under certain circumstances. Right, you know, we change when it hurts. We change when we experience a loss. If we lose something.
Speaker 3:It motivates us to change. Something causes us like a like pain, rather be physical or emotional. It can impact the change. Right, so that's that's what. That's what it is.
Speaker 4:That's what's, that's real. I mean, it was a good month. We had a great month, man, yeah, I really.
Speaker 3:Honestly, man, this has been like one of the funnest months, I think, for me.
Speaker 4:Hey, I think, I think we we're getting better, we're doing better at this and it's short and sweet, getting people to work and boom.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 4:Go take on a day and we're gonna keep finding topics and you know, next, next month, to be seen. I want to talk about maybe our next episode about Taxes. Okay, okay, cuz, and and I'm saying that cuz, at this point we should have all our Order and everything, so okay, so we'll dive in, not only for personal taxes business Business tax right off and and and all those different type of things when it comes to taxes.
Speaker 4:And again, it will always be on our perspective, based on what our everyday people are dealing with when it comes to taxes. Right, they have to do who they go to to get their taxes done. What fees are being charged if they have to pay for taxes? I mean, believe it or not, the government provides you all of that. You may not have to pay for it. Yeah, it's a complicated thing, but we'll talk about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we encourage feedback. Right, always call it right. Right, we'll talk about that. Can we do a crypto episode next month too?
Speaker 4:You know what we'll definitely do a crypto episode. I'll do some more research on it because, again, crypto is very new, in the sense that you know it's out there, yeah, you can benefit from it, but it's very, very volatile. A lot of things going on right now to regulate crypto. So just gotta be, just gotta have all my eyes dotted in T's cross. I got you to start talking, but you know, we, we, what we do, we talk about intro in things. It's for you to know. Our finance bro network family needs to know that. Hey, it's part of finance, isn't it?
Speaker 4:Yeah and shoot and, believe it or not, you, you have access to it, so why not talk about it?
Speaker 3:So we'll do some intro conversation yeah, yeah, some some one-on-one level, yeah, one-on-one, one-on-one.
Speaker 4:So so that way you, if you decide to jump into it, you kind of have so you could, you could sound smart, talking to whoever you're talking to.
Speaker 3:That's what I love it yeah well hey, and so we gonna be diving into the month of March soon. It's gonna be great, it's gonna be exciting. I'm just I'm just. I'm just having a lot of fun, mike. So we'll make sure we keep you all informed. Keep a look out on us for social media. Keep a lookout for us on your all your social media and podcast platforms Apple podcast, I heart radio, google podcast. You already know the drill. It might be up down, left right, whatever social media platform you might be on, and, as usual, I appreciate you, you know it and we'll see you at the bank. Take care world. Just be happy to be safe.
Speaker 2:Be你就 Allen, Be segity.