E109 - 25 Years of Watching People Die Changes How You Think About Money

E109 - 25 Years of Watching People Die Changes How You Think About Money

Connect with Dr. Paul: paul.mchale@factumfinancial.com Book a call: https://remnantfinance.com/calendar [https://remnantfinance.com/calendar] Out Print the Fed with a 1% target per week: https://remnantfinance.com/options [https://remnantfinance.com/options] Email us at info@remnantfinance.com or visit https://remnantfinance.com for more information FOLLOW REMNANT FINANCE Youtube: @RemnantFinance (https://www.youtube.com/@RemnantFinance) Facebook: @remnantfinance (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560694316588) Twitter: @remnantfinance (https://x.com/remnantfinance) TikTok: @RemnantFinance Don't forget to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE Dr. Paul McHale has spent over a quarter century in emergency medicine, and he'll tell you exactly what that does to a man: ER docs either get old, get tired, or get afraid. He's all three now. But it wasn't the ER that changed how he thinks about money. It was almost getting killed by an F350 in a grocery store parking lot, going home spooked, and realizing he had life insurance but not nearly enough. What Paul discovered after that near miss is the through-line of this entire conversation. He watched colleagues who had made serious money for years panic when COVID cut their shifts. Not one or two of them. A lot of them. Physicians pulling $20,000 a month who could not absorb losing five shifts for a single month. As Hans puts it, a teacher making $50,000 with a savings habit might weather that better than a doctor making a couple million a year. The problem was never income. It was that nobody, in 18-plus years of the most rigorous education in the country, ever taught them what to do with it. Chapters: 00:00 – Opening Segment 06:50 – Twenty-five years in: old, tired, or afraid 07:40 – The grocery store near miss that started everything 09:00 – Buying the first permanent policy and abusing it 10:25 – Building an ER group 16:50 – How ER billing actually works 18:40 – What's broken in healthcare, from an outsider's seat 24:45 – A physician's honest reckoning with COVID 30:40 – The credibility medicine lost and can't get back 41:35 – The doctors who couldn't afford to lose five shifts 49:35 – Max the 401(k) for thirty years, then what? 52:45 – Liquidity as the single greatest portfolio decision 55:10 – Sequence of returns and the average rate of return lie 57:45 – What ultra high net worth families actually buy 01:00:35 – Bonds, volatility, and the product advisors won't look at 01:03:10 – Cutting off the compounding curve right when it gets good 01:16:15 – Bastardized cancellation data 01:26:35 – Why Paul's policy is death benefit heavy 01:31:05 – The Mississippi River theory of money 01:34:30 – The colleague who lost her husband in two months 01:37:25 – "Don't ever leave your family without insurance" Key Takeaways: High income is not the same thing as financial stability. ER physicians earning $300 an hour called Paul looking for work when their hospitals cut five shifts. These were successful doctors, some of them former partners whose payouts he knew personally. They could not take a one-month cash flow hit. The treadmill runs at whatever speed your lifestyle sets, and a high salary just means the belt moves faster. Physicians stopped behaving like scientists. The willingness to change your mind when the data changes is the entire job description of a professional. Liquidity is the single highest-leverage decision in a portfolio. You cannot buy the dip without cash. When the market hemorrhages, the reason people freak out is that they've lost money and have nothing left to deploy at the bottom. Whole life lets your risk assets stay risk assets. The conventional move is to ratchet a 55-year-old down from equities into bonds, which have their own volatility and lose money roughly every six years. A fiduciary title is not a knowledge credential. There are bad doctors, bad pilots, and bad fiduciaries. If an advisor can't explain a policy loan, the fiduciary designation hasn't done anything for the client.

E108 - The Order of Your Returns Can Make or Break Retirement

Book a call with Travis: https://calendly.com/travis-eib/30-minute-call [https://calendly.com/travis-eib/30-minute-call] Book a call: https://remnantfinance.com/calendar [https://remnantfinance.com/calendar] Out Print the Fed with a 1% target per week: https://remnantfinance.com/options [https://remnantfinance.com/options] Email us at info@remnantfinance.com or visit https://remnantfinance.com for more information FOLLOW REMNANT FINANCE Youtube: @RemnantFinance (https://www.youtube.com/@RemnantFinance) Facebook: @remnantfinance (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560694316588) Twitter: @remnantfinance (https://x.com/remnantfinance) TikTok: @RemnantFinance Don't forget to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE In this episode, Hans welcomes back Travis McBride, a former Navy helicopter pilot turned insurance professional, for his third appearance and a conversation about annuities, guaranteed lifetime income, and why the order of your returns matters more than the average. Fresh off the birth of his son, Travis opens up about how fatherhood reframes the way he thinks about mortality and protecting the people who depend on you. From there they get into sequence of return risk, including a live demo where shuffling the exact same 30 years of returns swings the outcome from $2.2 million left over to fully broke in 14 years, and why a guaranteed income floor lets you stay on the compounding curve right when it's most powerful. Chapters: 00:00 – Opening segment 03:10 – Re-anchoring on why we plan: it's about the next generation 05:25 – Why $500K of SGLI won't set a family up 10:15 – What an annuity actually is: the inverse of life insurance 14:40 – The power of setting an income floor 18:30 – A brief history of annuities, from Rome to the modern pension gap 20:15 – When to consider an annuity: the 50 to mid-70s window 21:15 – No medical underwriting: annuities are priced on age alone 25:15 – The 4% rule and where it falls apart 26:05 – Sequence of return risk explained with a live shuffle 28:45 – Same data, wildly different outcomes 30:50 – Why the Series 65 teaches nothing about insurance or annuities 35:00 – Trade-offs exist everywhere, even in a Roth IRA and 401(k) 39:50 – Mortality credits: the third form of return 45:30 – Payouts are tied to the 10-year Treasury at purchase 46:40 – The 1035 exchange: upgrading an old, uncompetitive annuity 50:00 – Closing segment Key Takeaways: The order of your returns can matter more than the returns themselves. Take the same 30 years of market data and simply shuffle the sequence, and the outcome swings from leaving $2.2 million behind to running out of money in 14 years. An annuity is the inverse of life insurance, and it's the only chassis that guarantees income for life. Where a $1 million portfolio using the 4% rule cautiously pulls $40,000 a year and still might run dry, that same $1 million can buy a fully guaranteed $77,000 a year that keeps paying as long as you're alive. A guaranteed income floor buys you flexibility everywhere else. Once your baseline needs are covered for life, you no longer have to run conservative with the rest of the portfolio. $500K of group life insurance is not a plan. In a high cost of living area, half a million won't maintain a family's lifestyle, and most people aren't even capped out there. If your parents bought an annuity, get it reviewed. Payouts are locked to the 10-year Treasury yield at the time of purchase, so annuities bought in low-rate years are often badly uncompetitive today.

E107 - You Cannot Imagine How Expensive 2050 Will Be. Plan Like It.

Schedule with Scott: https://callosborn.com Book a call: https://remnantfinance.com/calendar  Out Print the Fed with a 1% target per week: https://remnantfinance.com/options Email us at info@remnantfinance.com or visit https://remnantfinance.com for more information FOLLOW REMNANT FINANCE Youtube: @RemnantFinance (https://www.youtube.com/@RemnantFinance) Facebook: @remnantfinance (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560694316588) Twitter: @remnantfinance (https://x.com/remnantfinance) TikTok: @RemnantFinance Don't forget to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE _____________________________ In this episode, Hans welcomes back Scott Osborn, a retired Army officer turned financial planner who specializes in working with airline pilots, for a conversation about behavior, compounding, and why going conservative too early (or at the end) might be the most expensive mistake in retirement planning. They dig into what makes the airline pilot compensation structure unique, why average rate of return is a red flag that means nothing, and how the dollar milkshake theory explains a strong dollar even as Congress drives deficit spending off a cliff. From there they get into the math of compounding, including the magic penny example where losing a single day at the end costs you $2.6 million, and why a real plan with five to seven years of safe income lets you keep your growth assets ripping instead of chopping off the most valuable years of the curve. Chapters: 00:00 – Opening segment 02:40 – Why airline pilots need specialized planning 04:50 – Headwinds, tailwinds, and fixing behavior first 06:15 – Market timing and the "market is too expensive" trap 07:25 – Optimism is the only realism 08:40 – "This time is different" is the bait that ruins investors 10:00 – Why average rate of return means nothing 11:55 – The dollar milkshake theory explained 18:15 – True diversification is across asset classes, not sectors 18:40 – IBC and the collapse of the dollar: hedging against being wrong 24:00 – Reality will keep slapping your predictions in the face 27:00 – Bad life insurance advice is dished out freely 33:15 – Maximize fixed income to keep equity allocation high 33:50 – The real multiplier math: 12x at 10 years, 66x at 30 38:45 – The magic penny: losing day 30 costs you $2.6 million 42:30 – Five to seven years of safe income keeps you aggressive 43:50 – Market at all-time highs while everyone feels uneasy 47:10 – Dry powder: going conservative with new money only 48:05 – A mortgage from 2000 and what 2050 will look like 52:15 – The K-shaped economy and playing the rules as written 58:30 – Closing segment Key Takeaways: Average rate of return means nothing. Volatility, sequence of returns, and inflation all destroy the simple spreadsheet math of dragging 8% across cells. Build a robust portfolio for total lifetime return instead of chasing an annual average. The last years of compounding are the most valuable, so don't chop them off. A penny doubled daily hits $5.3 million in 30 days, but losing just day 30 costs you $2.6 million. Target date funds that dial down growth near retirement are cutting the curve at its steepest point. Preservation without a plan is its own loss. A 63-year-old who went to all cash out of fear missed out on roughly $1 million of growth in two years. His account never went down, but it went down from what it should have been. Five to seven years of safe income is the unlock. Between IBC policy cash value, cash savings, and conservative new contributions, you can weather the worst market stretches without selling equities at a loss, which lets you stay aggressive for a long, long time. Everyone who bet on the dollar collapsing has been wrong so far. Gold, raw land, and the fortified homestead all require dollars to acquire. Hedge against being wrong by optimizing your dollar acquisition and preservation either way.

E106 - He Built Jet Engines for GE... Now He Teaches Families How to Build Financial Freedom | David Zapata

Schedule with David: https://factumcalendar.com/david Book a call: https://remnantfinance.com/calendar  Out Print the Fed with a 1% target per week: https://remnantfinance.com/options Email us at info@remnantfinance.com or visit https://remnantfinance.com for more information FOLLOW REMNANT FINANCE Youtube: @RemnantFinance (https://www.youtube.com/@RemnantFinance) Facebook: @remnantfinance (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560694316588) Twitter: @remnantfinance (https://x.com/remnantfinance) TikTok: @RemnantFinance Don't forget to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE _____________________________ In this episode, Hans sits down with David Zapata of Factum Financial, one of their leading agents, for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from David's personal story to the philosophy behind infinite banking and the kind of practice he and Kyle Fuller are building. They walk through David's path from a Colombian upbringing marked by the early loss of his mother, to a decade as a jet engine engineer at GE, to the coffee shop meeting and the single book that pulled him out of the corporate track. From there they get into why nobody has an incentive to teach you control, why life insurance is a product of privilege, and the four-stage progression from saver to full infinite banking practitioner that shapes how Factum serves its clients. Chapters: 00:00 – Opening segment 03:30 – Growing up in Colombia and losing his mother at 15 07:35 – Protection as a real transfer of risk you can't control 09:40 – Insuring the non-breadwinner spouse 12:20 – The peace of mind of having already transferred the risk 13:05 – Ten years at GE and the pull toward more purpose 13:40 – Watching layoffs and retirement fear reshape his thinking 18:25 – Financial literacy in Colombia vs. the US 28:10 – Stop being a passenger: becoming your family's CFO 33:05 – Money as the foundation for every other relationship 41:40 – Concentrating capital across four policies 43:00 – Getting licensed and joining Factum 45:05 – "The Waiting List": why delaying kids backfires 47:30 – None of us know how many days we have 49:30 – Inside Factum: 2,300 clients and 99% persistency 54:00 – Why Factum won't do transactional business 59:15 – The Factum model and building leverage as an agent 01:05:20 – Read the book again: you've changed, it hasn't 01:07:25 – Where to find David and Factum Key Takeaways: The absence of protection is a risk you can't control. David lost his mother to cancer at 15, and it shaped a lifelong conviction: in the absence of protection, a family falls prey to whatever is left.  Life insurance the way it's used here is a product of privilege. As one of David's CLU professors put it, whole life requires the money, the background, and the health to access it, which is why the top 20% of society uses it meaningfully.  You can earn six figures and still save nothing. David and his wife both earned six figures and couldn't put away $400 a month, and it made him doubt whether he could even afford to have kids.  Don't run a transactional practice, build relationships. Factum services roughly 2,300 active clients with 99%-plus persistency and about a billion dollars of protection across all 50 states.

E105 - Stop Planning for Retirement, Start Planning for Freedom

Connect with Rohit Punyani: https://ownersasset.com/resource-library [https://ownersasset.com/resource-library]Book a call: https://remnantfinance.com/calendar  Out Print the Fed with a 1% target per week: https://remnantfinance.com/options Email us at info@remnantfinance.com or visit https://remnantfinance.com for more information FOLLOW REMNANT FINANCE Youtube: @RemnantFinance (https://www.youtube.com/@RemnantFinance) Facebook: @remnantfinance (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560694316588) Twitter: @remnantfinance (https://x.com/remnantfinance) TikTok: @RemnantFinance Don't forget to hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE _____________________________ In this episode, Hans welcomes back Rohit "Ro" Punyani from The Owner's Asset for his third appearance, this time for a deep dive on retirement planning that takes apart the conventional model and rebuilds it around income and freedom rather than net worth. They walk through why Monte Carlo simulations and the 4% rule fail in the real world, how sequence of returns risk quietly destroys plans, and why net worth is the wrong number to chase. From there they lay out the two bookends of every plan, the 25X accumulation rule and the 12X annuity rule, and land on the middle ground: roughly 30% in risk-free assets paired with dividend growth equities, structured so you never have to sell unrealized losses. Chapters: 00:00 – Opening segment 02:55 – Freedom vs. surety of income: two definitions 05:25 – Re-pensionizing America and why the wealthy never stop 08:45 – Why entrepreneurship is about who you become 12:30 – Why Monte Carlo simulations don't work 14:55 – Sequence of returns risk explained 16:50 – Why even a linear 9% return runs out of money 18:35 – Where to start: the two bookends 19:25 – The 4% rule and the 25X heuristic 20:25 – The annuity bookend and the 12X heuristic 22:30 – The annuity's Achilles heel: inflation 24:40 – Inflation riders and the joint annuity strategy 27:55 – Net worth is not a proxy for income 30:50 – Why age 65 is arbitrary 33:50 – Building toward a dream part-time job 36:05 – The 30% rule and the Ernst & Young study 43:35 – The S&P: great for accumulation, terrible for distribution 45:00 – Dividend achievers, aristocrats, and kings 47:35 – The magic number is 8: yield on cost explained 51:15 – Earn compound interest, pay simple interest 56:00 – Why this strategy is so hard to run 57:35 – The Bessembinder study and why indexing works 01:04:05 – A plan is not a plan if you can run out of money 01:06:20 – Closing segment Key Takeaways: Retirement isn't the absence of work, it's freedom, the ability to do what you want, when you want, with whoever you want. The people who retire to something thrive; the ones who only retire from something often don't last. Net worth is not a proxy for income. Retirement planning is income planning. A zero-dollar net worth with $20,000 a month of guaranteed income beats a huge number you're too scared to spend down. You can average 7%, withdraw 4%, and still go broke. The average return doesn't matter, the sequence does. A couple of down years early in retirement force you to sell principal, and no Monte Carlo simulation can model human behavior, lifestyle creep, or a long-term care event. Know your two bookends. Multiply your target income by 25 (the 4% rule) for the high end of what you need to save, and by 12 (an 8% annuity) for the low end. For $100K a year, that's $2.5M versus $1.2M, and the right answer for most people sits in the middle. Index to dividend growth, not just the S&P. Roughly 40% of the S&P's total return since inception has come from dividends, and dividend aristocrats have historically raised payouts faster than inflation, giving you an inflation-indexed income stream instead of forcing you to decide what to sell, when, and how much.