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Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
This podcast is designed to help with suicide prevention. That is the #1 goal! This is also a Podcast of perseverance, self-help, self-Improvement, becoming a better person, making it through struggles and not only surviving, but thriving! In this Podcast the first 25 episodes detail my life's downs and ups. A story that shows you can overcome poverty, abusive environments, drug and alcoholic environments, difficult bosses, being laid-off from work, losing your family, and being on the brink of suicide. Listen and find a place to share life stories and experiences. Allow everyone to learn from each other to reinforce our place in this world. To grow and be better people and help build a better more understanding society.
The early podcast episodes are a story of the journey of my life. The start from poor, drug and alcohol stricken life, to choices that lead to success. Discusses my own suicide ideations and attempt that I struggled with for most of my life. Being raised by essentially only my mother with good intentions, but didn't know how to teach me to be a man. About learning life's lessons and how to become a man on this journey and sharing those lessons and experiences with others whom hopefully can benefit from my successes and failures.
Hosting guests who have overcome suicide attempts/suicide ideations/trauma/hardships/difficult situations to fight through it, rise up, and live their best life. Real life stories to help others that are going through difficult times or stuck without a path forward, understand and learn there is a path forward.
Want to be a guest on Brandon Held - Life is Crazy? Send Brandon Held a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/brandonheld
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy
Premium Episode 2: Credit Card Secrets Exposed w Tommy Kilpatrick
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Brandon Held - Life is Crazy +
Exclusive access to premium content!Tommy Kilpatrick shares his extraordinary life journey from entrepreneurial child to debt freedom advocate living in the Philippines. His revelations about credit card debt and banking practices offer listeners actionable insights into potential financial freedom strategies.
• Started as a young entrepreneur at age 7, selling cake and Kool-Aid from his garage
• Worked as an insurance investigator, commercial diver, manicurist, and reflexologist
• Developed expertise in credit card debt elimination after facing $85,000 in personal debt
• Discovered banks often lack proper documentation (invoices) to legally claim debt obligations
• Voluntarily lived homeless for 10 years to gain perspective and personal growth
• Now lives in the Philippines teaching farmers sustainable living practices
• Believes in finding relationship compatibility across different cultures
• Offers a free book and consultation on credit card debt elimination strategies
For more information on Tommy's debt relief strategies, visit www.diy-debtrelief.com for a free 15-minute consultation and complimentary copy of his book "Forget and Forget: How to Nuke Your Credit Card Debt."
BrandonHeld.com iPad drawing for Life Coaching clients
Welcome. Welcome back to Brandon Held. Life is Crazy and I'm excited about my guest today. His name is Tommy Kilpatrick and he's lived a pretty interesting life and we're going to get into the story of that soon. At one point in his life he lived off of three credit cards for six months. He learned a lot about credit card debt. We're going to get into all that, tommy. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming, happy to have you here. Let's tell everyone a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm a retired teacher and I was an author and I have lived a wonderful life, a crazy life, and that's why I'm here. I've traveled around the world, basically, you know, across the United States, and find myself now in the Philippines, where I teach farmers how to build a dome house with bamboo vertical gardening. I'm also opening up a free, self-managed medical care clinics. That's what I'm here for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's going to be cool. I can't wait to hear about all that when we get to that part of the story. But life is crazy. We talk about the highs and the lows and everything in between. We're going to just start from the beginning. Tell everyone what your childhood was like.
Speaker 2:I would say it's a wonderful childhood. My dad was a certified public accountant and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. I had two older brothers, seven and nine years older than me, so I was like an only child in a sense. When I was seven years old I needed money, wanted money. So I figured out how to buy a jiffy cake mix for 10 cents, bake the cake, cover it with icing and then made some Kool-Aid for five cents and I sold it out of my garage on Saturday. People a friend of mine didn't have money, so I tell them to go get me three customers and I'd give them a piece of cake for free. So I was going to honor the know-how right from the beginning, give them a piece of cake for free. So I was going to honor the New Year right from the beginning, about 10,.
Speaker 2:When I was 10 years old my brother was in Vietnam and he was on an aircraft carrier in the Navy shipping cookies and I knew what was going on. The dinner table conversation at that time was about Vietnam. I hadn't watched the news. I see 200 American soldiers killed and then 2,000 enemy. That math didn't add up. So I knew I was being lied to.
Speaker 2:Back then I ended up learning how to scuba dive at 13. And because I was near Los Angeles because of Hollywood, a videographer was doing an underwater movie and he needed some extras, we called up the dive shop where my friend and I were hanging out and they offered us a free ride to Catalina Island. We were in this movie and got to show it to our eighth grade science class. We ran this movie and got to show it to our eighth grade science class, which was a lot of fun. That's me you can't see me, but that's me behind the mask Bought a motorcycle and I was able to drive a motorcycle to high school to learn how to drive a car, which was a crazy thing because I had driver's ed but I couldn't drive on the highway, couldn't have a passenger, couldn't drive at night, which I did, of course.
Speaker 2:So I went to high school to learn how to drive a car and then I graduated at 17 and was out on my own in my own apartment about two months after I turned 17. So I had a good life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great childhood. Especially you got to grow up in California where the weather's great in a magical time. You know I have my feelings about today's California. When you were there as a child that was a great place to be. Even your entrepreneurial skills at Seven. Did someone give you that idea or did that come to your head to tell your friends to go get three customers?
Speaker 2:Probably. My dad, by being a CPA, had clients. He had a client called magruder saltwater taffy and every tax time he would bring home like a five pound box of saltwater taffy and they were located down at the pike. It must have been my dad's influence about that one. Hey dad, how do I make money? Why don't you do something you like to do? And then it was probably the practical application. You open up your stand and there's no customers. So how do you get customers? How do you get the word out? My parents didn't have any money, but I had cake. They want a cake, I want a customer. So it's pretty logical, I think just even back then, to do that.
Speaker 1:It's still pretty creative, especially for a seven-year-old. So yeah, that's impressive. And then the fact that you could ride a motorcycle before you could get a driver's license, that's also pretty funny because obviously, as we know, motorcycles are much more dangerous than a car. Half I still had eight months till my birthday, but you beat me. You got out two months after you turned 17. I joined the Air Force. So what did you do after you turned 17? And got out on your own.
Speaker 2:First of all, there was a draft happening, but because of my back I was in cross country and track and I didn't know at the time my back was. I had two vertebrae that were separated at birth so it caught me pain, so I was not qualified to go into the military. So I ended up looking for a job and I had my own apartment at $95 a month including utilities, and so it was a wonderful life there. I was an insurance investigator so I lied to them, told them I was 19. But I had to show my driver's license because I had to drive the car. They had to have insurance for me. So they looked at my driver. I knew I was 17. So they knew I lied. They told me they knew that, so they hired me anyway. And it was.
Speaker 2:I was the eyes and ears of the insurance company. I'd go out, take a picture of the car or the house or the business and write some things down on a form, and so it was pretty simple work and after about six months I got it down about four hours a day. So I would go in once or twice a week and get all my caseload and it was like map it out and then the most efficient driving. So I would drive out and I had a car. I'd bought a brand new Mazda RX3 and I had a thousand dollars cash. When I went to the dealership, I dropped that down at the table and their eyes bugged out. I signed a contract, even though I was 17,. I signed a contract to buy a car, which I did, and I fulfilled my contract agreement with the bank.
Speaker 1:Yeah, were you not making enough money? If I had a job where I could work four hours a day and still enjoy the rest of the day in California, that might be something I stick with. So what made you decide to walk away from that?
Speaker 2:That's what I did. I rode my bicycle down to. I was really into bicycling and stuff, and so I'd ride down to the beach, lay on the beach, get very dark, cover ourselves with oil and stuff. Then I'd ride back and still had time. A friend of mine had beat me at a pool and I had a pool table when I was growing up and I just irritated me that this one friend of mine could beat me any and every time, so I didn't play with him for a couple of months. I bought a book by Willie Moscone, the pool expert. I read his book the Pregnant. From then on he never beat me. That was the fun stuff.
Speaker 2:But then I'm looking at the guys doing my work. They're 45, 55. So I'm going. Do I really want to spend 40 years driving out people's house doing the same thing over and over again? I thought wait a second. I want to be wealthier, so I'll take my dad's practice. I'm good at math, so I'll be a CPA. I ended up going to college to be a double major of abnormal psychology and accounting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, funny story about that. By the way, your dad was a CPA. One of my uncles was a CPA and I took one of those tests in high school. That said this is what you should do for a living. It said I should be a CPA. And I called my uncle. I went to my grandma and I told her this and she said your uncle is a CPA, talk to him. So I called him and I said hey, I took this test. It said I should be a CPA for a living. What do you think? He said don't do it, run, go do something else. So just by him doing that, I decided not to become a CPA because he'd been doing it most of his life and he just said I wouldn't enjoy it. So I took his word for it and I went a different direction. So I guess your dad loved it then if he was telling you to follow in his footsteps.
Speaker 2:No, he didn't tell me to follow his footsteps.
Speaker 1:He would have told me the same thing he hated people.
Speaker 2:He didn't like people. He hated it. Yeah, he probably liked the accounting work, but the problem is you buy yourself a job. That's a different way of thinking now that I have in reflecting of this. So I could go get a job as a CPA and work for one of the big eights, or I could be on my own practice, which is buying yourself a job. He could only make money if he put the time and effort into it and so he made a lot of money, but he was limited so I just didn't like that. But I never became a CPA.
Speaker 2:I got involved in teaching in the tutoring room at the college and I loved those. I fell in love with sign language. The deaf guy came in and I learned sign language so I could bypass the interpreter. He became a friend. He lived across the street so we walked to college together for classes and stuff. So I asked the counselor at the college I'm really interested in signing. What do I do with that? Be a social worker. So I transferred from Chico to San Francisco State to be a social worker. But I never became a social worker. I dropped out about two classes before I was doing it. All for the wrong reasons I was doing it for the money or doing it for that so I had no purpose in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm noticing a pattern here. You're very restless. You don't like to sit still for very long. When did you recognize this in yourself?
Speaker 2:Well, I count that as a phone. When I actually had a phone installed so I was so light I would have a hammock. I'd put the two kind of screw hooks in the wall and string my hammock. So I slept in a hammock basically a lot of times. So yeah, I've always been restless, so that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's okay. That's obviously pretty clear just by. We don't even know the rest of your story yet, but just in the early part of your life you were jumping around from place to place. But I get it, though. You're still trying to find yourself, you're still trying to figure out who you want to be and what you want to do. I get all that and, honestly, I'm about to be 52 and the longest job I've ever had is actually twice four years in the Air Force, four years in the Army. I have never had a job longer than four years. I've lived in the same place, but I get restless when it comes to doing the same thing over and over, so I need something to do. You were at San Francisco State at this point doing social work, but you dropped out because you realized it wasn't the right choice for you. So what was your next move?
Speaker 2:I worked for a company called Cream Jeans. I was the accountant for a Levi Strauss. Former employees had broken off and created their own jean manufacturing company, so they would go to Paris and buy the latest pair of jeans, bring it back at, undo all the stitching, and then create a pattern. They actually had sweatshops in San Francisco and within a week or two we were shipping the latest brand pants seen at the Paris fashion show to outlets across the country. It was quite entertaining. I was the only straight there, so it was an entertaining world to be in San.
Speaker 2:Francisco, at that time working for that company.
Speaker 1:So they hired you as an accountant without an accounting degree.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's happened before to me too. Again, those short jobs. I was the controller of the country club, a ranch of Bernardo. Years later I didn't have the CPA credential but I could do the work and I actually trained the CPA who took over my job. So yes, I do that quite often.
Speaker 1:At some point here I haven't heard anything about a love life. You gotta have met a woman who had some kind of effect on your life. Where are we at with that?
Speaker 2:That would be July 4th 1976 in Dolores Park in San Francisco. It was a bicentennial without colonies, so it was a political movement there. Jim Jones, I don't know if you remember that guy he was the guy who had this whole following and took them down to Iana and there was terrible things happened down there with 900 people passed away. He was actually their leader and he would come in a bus and they had four or five buses and he'd get out and four or 500 people would be there for the rally. He would speak for half an hour 45 minutes. Then he would leave and everybody left. They went back in the buses and drove away. So it was good PR to have him at your rally, but he'd bring so many people but they're only there to hear him talk.
Speaker 2:That friend met my first wife, lisa. She was beautiful. We connected and decided to get married. My brother had just gotten married, so I'm like I'll get married too, and that's a long decision. So within months we knew it wasn't going to work out. But we took a honeymoon and my honeymoon was in England, ireland, spain and France. So for two, three months we traveled around all that whole European area and so it was pretty funny.
Speaker 2:I had taken a class in college for Spanish and then knowing I was planning to go to Spain with our honeymoon. So when I was there for a month we actually lived with people. We weren't tourists and I had a connection through an international organization that introduced me. I had an introduction letter and I was speaking Spanish within a couple of weeks. It was fluent for me. Then we got on a train and very quickly went from Madrid to London. We got on a train and very quickly went from Madrid to London.
Speaker 2:I'm in a bus in London. I'm saying to the conductor how much does it cost to get from here to there? And he looks at me like I'm crazy and my wife nudges me. She's in here speaking Spanish. Oh yeah, that's the first one. After I left college and after I did about a year of working as that accountant for that cream jeans, I decided to go back to be a commercial diver. I, working as that accountant for that cream jeans, I decided to go back to be a commercial diver. I went to diving school in Oakland. It was called the.
Speaker 2:Coastal School of Deep Sea, ripoff. So I went to that school and then I traveled to Louisiana and I got a job with Seacon. I worked for Seacon for about four or five months as a diver and a tender and we laid pipe, we were out in a patch and now I get to call it the Gulf of America. So in the diver and tender and we laid pipe, we were out in a patch and now I get to call it the Gulf of America. So in the Gulf of America there was about 2,000 rigs out there and so had I not gotten that job on Seacon, I would have gone to the next one. They had a diver drop down and he cut into a pipe and it happened to be natural gas on the other side and all I brought up was the end of a hose. What you do is just cut off the hose, put another fitting on and the next time it drops down. So you're pretty much considered garbage in that sense out there. So it's very dangerous work. I got paid very well and a lot of experience with hyperbaric chambers. So I do want to mention my hyperbaric chamber in the future, but that's where my experience came from, the hyperbaric chamber.
Speaker 2:So then I came back to California. There was an oil glut in 82, and the jobs dried up. So I came back to California and I drove a hydrox sweeper for ship-shaped divers. I drove a hydrox sweeper underneath the ship and knocked the barnacles off. I worked probably 40, 50 days that year and I made enough to live on. It was a very good life. And but then a friend of mine, she got interested in manicuring and I took her to a manicuring school and I said on leaving I said how do guys doing this? She said sit back down. Women love to have their feet rubbed by a man. So I became a manicurist. So I became a manicurist.
Speaker 2:Wow, just the Tommy of all trades here I'm in a nail shop and the owner is working on a customer and the customer is using her hands. I thought she might know sign language. So I said to her do you know sign language? And she signed back to me yes. Then she said how did you learn sign language? I learned it in the university. How did you learn sign? She says I'm a nurse. I use it in my nursing practice. All without any words, and the owner is looking back and forth at the two of us talking in sign language.
Speaker 2:So that's how we met and she ended up becoming a wife. And we went on a game show called Sweethearts. We had to tell our story about how we met and they brought three of the couples and they matched them up. They were liars. So one person said I'm supposed to be a reporter for a newspaper in San Francisco. What do I tell them? You tell them you work for the Chronicle. So they got paid money if they could convince the celebrities that they were truly married. And we had to tell the truth. Our story was so unbelievable that they wouldn't married. And we had to tell the truth. Our story was so unbelievable that they wouldn't believe us. We won the game show because our story was so unbelievable how we met what we're doing. So then from there I had married her and I needed a job. So I didn't really want to work for somebody. So I developed a pedicure tape and it was a way that raises the feet up so you can do your work without having to bend over and you put them in a higher, taller chair.
Speaker 2:I went to a trade show and I needed something in the back of the booth to look colorful. So I bought a reflexology chart and I didn't know it, I just put it up there. When I came back at the trade show she said what did they buy? I said they didn't buy anything. I said what do they want? They wanted those charts. She's like how many did you sell? I said I didn't sell any. You idiot, sell them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I bought a book and bought charts, went to the next trade show, maybe sold one table, but I sold people on the idea of taking a class. So now I had to learn how to teach reflexology. So I did a quick study and started teaching, and then people wanted to be in a teacher like me. So I said great, why don't you be an instructor and you just give me $50 on every person you teach, I'll send out a piece of paper. So I made up a certificate and I shipped those out. I had written a book and it was a 600 page medical textbook, because the wife was a nurse and that led into 2004 to have a infomercial contract. So I'll stop there. I'll let you digest that for a good quickly.
Speaker 1:No, I digested it. It's a good path to where you're headed, for sure. I don't really have any questions about it. It seems pretty self-explanatory, so you can keep going from where you were.
Speaker 2:It goes. I had to live on my three credit cards because I was being test marketed on the radio, so they would book radio spots for me to be introduced and talk on the radio about reflexology in a book that was selling, and it went very well, extremely popular. But then one of the talents got in trouble with the FTC and he had made claims of weight loss which weren't true, and so the FTC came down hard on him and the company and the company canceled all the new contracts, all the new talent. Then I was canceled and I was left with $85,000 of credit card debt. That was not the best thing to happen. I was promised $100,000 a month, so $85,000 wouldn't be a month's pay for me. It was going to be a great time. Shift happens and make sure you pronounce the F.
Speaker 2:About a month later I wake up thinking about my dad being a CPA, where my life could have been had I finished my courses. It dawned on me that the bank does not have an invoice and the thing that you're always taught I remember the guy at Cream Jeans. The CPA said never, ever pay from a statement. If you pay from a statement, I'm going to fire you. And I went. What a trick story. He says a statement is only their story. It's not the truth. You can only pay from an invoice, but those invoices have to be approved by the person who acknowledges they've got the material. So never send out a payment off of a statement, and that kind of stuck with me. So the evidentiary proof of a debt is an invoice. It has the date of what you owe and stuff like that. So then I got thinking.
Speaker 2:I remember in my accounting classes in a banking segment, we read a book and it was called Modern Money Mechanics, put out by the Federal Reserve, and that's in your show notes. I'm going to have your audience. Don't believe anything I have to say. I'm a doubting Thomas. I want you to doubt whatever I have to say. I'm going to have some links in the show notes about what I'm talking about. I want you to send this podcast to your CPA and have her or him tell you I'm a hundred percent accurate. Don't believe me from what I'm telling you, but have your own CPA tell you what I'm telling you is the truth. This will be the first time they've ever thought of this, so don't be surprised.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, the bank does not have an invoice and then it's a loan. On page six in that modern money mechanics it says what banks do to make a loan is you sign a promissory note and then they write numbers into your checking account. They do not take money from a depositor and give it to you. They do not find money somewhere else and loan it to you. In this scenario, what they're doing is they have to have a promissory note in order to issue that loan. Is they have to have a promissory note in order to issue that loan. Since I didn't sign a promissory note, I didn't have a loan to the bank. But then you'll say oh, tom, you used the card and that is terms and conditions. You have to abide by that rule.
Speaker 2:At the time, my father-in-law was a judge and an attorney and we had long discussions about how criminals can't use a court system, and that's where the Supreme Court has ruled over and over again that fraud undoes all contracts. So with that knowledge, the bank has committed a fraud, I'm claiming, and so we do not have a contractual agreement. So that's basically what I came up with, and so I had watched YouTube a little bit back then and this guy was bragging about how easy it was to file a federal lawsuit. The judges are very accommodating. They're helpful to the pro se. They know you're not an attorney.
Speaker 2:In Los Angeles, I filed three federal lawsuits against the banks and it was going great. We were getting close to a deposition and then, all of a sudden, the judge called me in to court and he said Mr Kovacs, do you have a credit card? No, I got to start at the beginning. Oh, we'll start at the beginning later. Do you have a credit card? No, put your card in, put my card in. He said what does it say right there, credit card. So you made a purchase, right and you didn't pay it. So here you go, get out of my court. So he threw me out.
Speaker 2:All three cases were dismissed and now I'm going oh my God, here I'm going to get sued for $85,000 plus interest, plus court fees and then the attorney fees. How am I going to pay this? And then, a month later, I looked at my credit report and all three were gone off my credit report. I'm like what? So it was astounding that they would actually do that.
Speaker 2:They never sued me and I never got a 1099-C. This is important to know about because when you take a loan out from a bank, a legitimate loan and you give, let's say, $100,000 and you don't pay them back. That's actually income. So they notify the IRS that you got $100,000 of their money and didn't pay them back. They then get to take a tax deduction and pay less taxes because they're making a claim that there was a loss. They never sent a 1099-C to me or the IRS because in my pleading I explained the crimes that they were committing, the fraud they were doing, and if they did send me this 1099-C, I was going to file a 39-4, 39-a. It helps having a dad being a CPA. I've got the.
Speaker 2:IRS as part of my DNA. That's a form you notify the IRS of fraud. Now I'm claiming that the fraud is done by the bank, because they're Nibbles alone. They can't take the deduction. A friend of mine had a charity that wasn't really active and so I turned it into a credit repair charity. And a lot of these people had debt. So I would write a letter to the bank and they would drop it off their credit report. It would create this thing Now if they had 40, 50, 100,000, 200,000 credit card debt, the bank would push back and go for a lawsuit. But then I had an expert CPA who would be my expert witness. That would explain to the judge that no, there's not a credit card, and he would go in detail about it. So I was quite successful with that. But then the corruption. I had to take a walk and then the wife said get out, take the dog with you. So that led my journey again.
Speaker 1:So what happened with the marriage? Why?
Speaker 2:did your wife kick you out? Probably for very good reasons. I wasn't a very good husband. I was a good dad, but I wasn't really a good husband. I now realize that dating and romance is to get to know the person, and I'll never get to know her ever. So I want to date every Friday night or whatever, and I want to have that romance every day of my life. I want to learn more about her. So that's why I came here.
Speaker 2:I say it in the language here is a Allah. So I came here looking for a wife. So I learned the language in 30 days. That's another book I'm currently going to be published on Amazon soon. I haven't speak a language in 30 days, but that's what I've done, peter. So I came looking for a wife and that's probably the reason a very good reason why the wife said get out and they don't need us In America. We're trash, we're garbage. And had I come across Ho Math? He's very funny. I like his channel, I watch all of his videos, but he explains true relationships. That's going on and that's what it is. We're just held as garbage just for somebody who makes money, and that's why I couldn't make the money. Get out and take the dog with you.
Speaker 2:And so I became homeless on purpose and took a vow of poverty for 10 years so I could heal what it was like before. But to hear the story, I had a silver spoon in his mouth. I sure did, and I acted that way Be hungry and not have a place to stay. I was never dirty, I was never a drug addict, so the charity that people would share with me and I was always of balance. I had to do something for them. I wouldn't take charity, I had to earn it. It was a humbling experience.
Speaker 2:So when I'm here in the Philippines, I have lived poorer than some of the people I had been with. So I'm in a house that has no heat, no electricity, no running water, no toilet. I'm fine. I can sleep on the floor with them. I can eat off of banana leaves. We don't have that on plates. I went to one house and they were scrambling around trying to find a plate for me to eat off of. No, you don't need to do that. Bring the banana leaf out, you put the food on it and you eat it with your hands, like poor Filipinos do. I have no judgment against that. I've lived worse than they have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is funny because you grew up with a pretty great childhood and people who have a very good childhood like that they usually can't handle certain conditions that are less than what they were used to growing up.
Speaker 1:So it's funny how you were able to adopt and be able to deal with worse than what you were used to.
Speaker 1:I saw something the other day and it was this guy talking about how, in marriage, there are expectations from men. Men are expected to be providers, men are expected to be good fathers, men are expected to do the different things that men are expected to do, and then women are expected to do the things they do, like maybe cook or clean or provide sex or whatever. And when you get divorced, everything that the man was supposed to do in the marriage is now required by a contract, now required by a contract, by divorce law, to still provide the ex-wife, and everything that the wife used to do in the marriage is no longer required and doesn't have to be provided to the man. So it just goes to show you how screwed up our divorce laws are in america and the way things go, and if we truly want to have an equal relationship and equality of men and women. This shouldn't be overlooked. The way divorces work should also be a part of that conversation.
Speaker 2:I agree with you a hundred percent. Had I known about this relationship beforehand and the things I know now, boy, things would be a lot different. But then again I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be in a Philippines and I have a wonderful life here. So it's all meant to be.
Speaker 2:And so back to about your talking about the marriage. It's all set up for failure. Any man thinking that's going to get married is looking forward to being divorced, never see their kids, is going to be paying money to the wife and to have some other man living in his house. So after the 28 year marriage and two years dating, I moved on and I found a girlfriend and she was 30 years old. She found me attractive, which is crazy, but I didn't know it at the time that she was a covert narcissist. She invited me to come with her to a farm. So we moved to Maine and I lived there for about 10 years and I raised her son from two to 12. And then she wanted to bang the neighbor. So it's back to home app.
Speaker 2:What the women want is excitement. I'm the nice guy, but all I was going to be is a friend and I'd say that now, as a girlfriend, while I was there, was to hear her problems and be the girlfriend. Now the bad boy. That's what's exciting. That's what they want. They want the masculinity, they want the hand to be dragged around and stuff like that. So that's what they think is good for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my non-biological son, but he called me dad. I can't see him for another six more years until he turns 18 and I'll have him collide here. And when I talked to him about and when he was about yeah, when he was about 11, I said are you going to get married? He says no, I'm never going to get married. Why is that? All they do is cheat on you. All they want is child support. That's all he's ever heard from his mother. So he is tainted. Even at that age he is not going to get married and we have a population collapse because people are not making babies.
Speaker 2:And so darn good reason Women don't need men and that's why I came to the Philippines was to find a Filipina who's actually feminine. She is going to let me be the boss, let me be in control, let me take care of the finances, but I let her be in control of the kitchen and the housekeeping and the cleaning, and we have a great relationship. So as long as we have it up front of what we want from each of us, you can have a wonderful life. But I'd say you got to come to the Philippines, you got to come to the East to find someone like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you definitely need to find someone whose culture and upbringing matches your beliefs in what you're looking for in life. And I did the same thing essentially. But I didn't go East, I went South, I went to Brazil and I got my wife out of Brazil and married her and brought her to America and it was the best decision I've ever made. I was married to three Americans. I've had three divorces and three sons from American women, and it's been hell. It's been torture and it's been hell. And outside of my sons it's the same situation.
Speaker 1:I say I regret marrying them yeah, I do. But also, would I be who I am today if my experiences had been any differently? No, so in the same time, it's hard to say you regret doing that because you are who you are now because of what you've gone through. My wife I'm 52. My wife is 28. And I'm very happy, the happiest I've ever been in my life and we have a great marriage. I'm not saying it's perfect. We have little issues and little arguments, like everyone else, but it's just the way those things are handled that are so different than the explosive blow up craziness that I was used to in the past. Getting someone from a different culture just seems better.
Speaker 2:There's a guy named. He's at a show called Nomad Capitalist and he says go to a country where you are welcome. I was planning to go to Argentina. I'm familiar with Brazil, but Argentina has a passport. You bring $7,000 in to the country and open a business and I'm thinking import-export. Really simple In two years you get passport status. You are a citizen of Argentina.
Speaker 2:I can't trust what's going on in America. This is going downhill very quickly. I can't trust what's going on in America. This is going downhill very quickly.
Speaker 2:I saw that when I was in Maine, which is pretty conservative, and I'm in someone's house. I do not talk politics, I don't bring up religion, I don't do that. And out of the blue they're telling me they want to see President Trump dead, and I'm going what? And then another person is telling me they would rather see him dead, and I'm going what? And then another person is telling me they would rather see him dead, and I'm going. That reminds me of a book I read back, pearl Buck. She's a famous author. She wrote this book in 1911. I'm reading the book and along comes a page and she's.
Speaker 2:I'm walking down the street of Berlin with a friend of mine and people are walking up slapping her face. She's Jewish, but what's going on here? She wrote about the anti-Semitism back then and the smart Jews got out. I'm the smart American who got out because things are going very terribly there, so I needed a passport. That's why I wanted to go to Argentina. But then a friend of mine told me about the relationship he had with a Filipino. He comes home and she takes his shoes off, she gives him a foot massage, dinner's cooked, the house is clean, there's a mall across the street and she never goes to it. His life is loud. But then that changed my attitude. To fly to Manila and end up on a farm. I'll tell you more about that from a Wolfie. It's WWOOF, where you can be on a farm and they beat you and take care of you, in a sense for room and board, in exchange for your labor.
Speaker 1:And that's how I ended up here in the Philippines. Yeah, I do see the divisiveness in America. I don't get it. No matter how much you dislike any president, if you're saying you want them killed or dead, you need to be looking in the mirror. There's something wrong with you, not something wrong with the president. I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm also not a Trump hater. I'm an America supporter and so whatever it takes to make America the best country which I still believe it is but, like you say, it's going downhill. That's what I'm about. So that starts with the people as much as anything else. And all this kill the president stuff is that's something wrong with the people, not the president. I don't care how you feel about him.
Speaker 1:I personally hated Obama. I got laid off from my job because of him. I had my first career and he cut defense funding, which directly impacted me. I got laid off because of his direct defense cuts and that, to me, made me hate him more than any other president. I never said I wanted him dead or I want to kill him, but he certainly had a very negative impact on my life. People just need to look in the mirror when it comes to that stuff.
Speaker 2:Let me go back to my story about my credit card. I help people get out of the credit card debt. If you say that you have a debt, you have a debt. You have to pay, Because law is language and language is debt is law. What I'm suggesting is to use the word alleged. We watch the news and you see the bank robbery and they're always saying alleged bank robbery. We saw it. He dropped his wallet. It was his name, we know his name, but he's alleged. So all I'm asking you to do is take one bit of skepticism and say wait a sec, how about alleged? And then that forces the bank to produce the evidence.
Speaker 2:Now there are true credit cards. So my scheme is not to get out of debt everything, it's only a particular kind of debt. So if you think about it, there are, let's say, a tire store, you need tires. You go to a tire store, you need tires. So you go to a tire store and what you tell them is I don't have the money. And they go. Why don't you apply for an in-store credit card? And if you get approved, you'll walk out with tires and a pay leader. Oh great, I've got a refund coming. I've got my check that bonus is coming, so then I'll pay it. Then, Okay, great, Bonus is coming, so then I'll pay it. Then Okay, great, At least you have tires on your car.
Speaker 2:At the end of the month you get a statement which is true, and they have an outstanding unpaid invoice. The bank never put tires on your car. The bank never performed a service like a plumbing job on your house. So they do not have an invoice. And that's the critical thing is that, since they don't have an invoice, they cannot issue you credit. The credit card is a lie, and then they say it over and over again. You're indoctrinated and if you don't question it, then you're actually brainwashed. So I'm having you not be brainwashed. Call it into question about an alleged bank-issuing credit card. So how do you know the difference between a credit card that's a true credit and one that's a phony? Just look at the back. On the back of the card. If it says, issued by America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank, this works anywhere in the world, that is a phony card and you can eliminate that alleged debt.
Speaker 1:We're getting towards the end of the show. I don't like to have my show be longer than 50 minutes whenever possible. We're approaching that part of the show, but that's still great information, and I am fortunate enough where I don't have credit card debt in my life, so I don't really have to worry about something like that. But many Americans do have credit card debt and that is a problem they have to deal with. That's quality information for everyone. In that situation, how can people learn this information? You wrote a book, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, I have. It's called Forget and Forget how to Nuke your Credit Card Debt. I offer a free 15 minute consultation. If you take that, I will send you the book at $69 on Amazon for free. So I want you to be able to write a letter to the bank asking to close your free checking account that's associated with that card. It sounds really crazy, but it worked for me. It can work for you. So how can you out is have your CPA send a letter that says first of all, there was never an invoice, so there is no debt. You cannot issue a credit card if you didn't do any goods or services. And two, because the person didn't sign a promissory note, you don't owe them anything. And then the attorney letter would say because the court has ruled over and over again that fraud does all contracts, there is no protractor agreement. Letter would say because the survey court has ruled over and over again that fraud does all contracts, there is no contract to bring it. So you say wait a second, I got the card. It's really simple.
Speaker 2:It's what the bank does. They try to get customers and years ago they would give out a toaster or a wall clock and that cost them money. One time they had an ad in a paper and said put $25 into this account, hold it for 90 days, we'll match it. So on day 91, I went to the bank and took out $50 and closed the account. In my show note link there's a guy on YouTube that says I made $361 doing what he just said.
Speaker 2:Find the bank that offers a matching. You put the the money in, fulfill their contractual agreement and then draw the money out, close the account. It's exactly the same thing happened when they sent you a 500 credit card. I would call it a gift card. A gift card arrived, you use the card, you think you have a debt. You wrote a check to the bank. That's the first time the bank took money from you and that's considered a loan.
Speaker 2:Banks are only involved in loans. Even you go into the bank took money from you and that's considered a loan. Banks are only involved in loans. If you go into the bank and take a loan out or you put money in the bank, that's considered a loan. Every subsequent purchase has been with your own money. I'm an accountant who's revealed this huge worldwide fraud because the banks on average make $23.04. If a bank has a million card members. They're bringing in $23 million a month just to charge people for a free checking account. And that's what they're doing. They're making you think you have a debt when you really don't, and so there's a way out of it. And I usually buy my clients money first and I always have them verify what I'm saying with their CPA and their attorney, so they never go forward without having backing with the legal and accounting backline. So that's what I can do for your customers, for your listeners, that they have any need for that.
Speaker 1:All right, that's great, tommy. I will have in my show notes. It's wwwdiy-debtreliefcom. Wwwdiy-debtreliefcom, and I will put that website in my show notes.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for being on my podcast today. What a great story your life was. I don't think I've heard anything like it yet. That was very unique. Your knowledge of different things, especially credit card debt and loan debt that's going to be valuable for the listeners, so I appreciate you coming on and sharing that with the listeners. For me, I would like listeners to go to BrandonHeldcom and at the very top of the page, click on subscribe to podcast. It's only 10 bucks a month. You're supporting the show and for supporting the show, I put out a couple podcasts a month that only subscribers can listen to. So go ahead and get there, support the show, check that out and follow me on instagram at bh underscore life is crazy, and follow me on YouTube at BrandonHeld underscore LifeIsCrazy. And so I hope this information was valuable to all of you today and, as always, I thank you for giving us one of your most precious resources, which is your time and listening to this podcast, and until then, I'll talk to you next time.
