Save Your Future (with Steven Step)

The future always seems so far away…until it isn't. This week we're continuing our positivity streak by talking with Bank on Yourself® Professional Steven Step. Learn how to prepare for your retirement, or your next big move by investing in yourself.

Thanks to our Amazing Guest:
Steven Step: Website

Stuff We Talked About:
Re$cue Your Retirement by Pamela Yellen 

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Transcript

0:43

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Grand Pan Show. I'm here with our incredible producer, as always, Sierra. Phines, sadly, could not make it today. We have Grandpa. It's a nice consolation. I'm Brandon Fox and we have an amazing guest today. Steven Step. Hey, Steven. How you doing? If you could just go through and give the audience out there who doesn't know you just a little bit about yourself, that'd be super helpful to start off. Yeah, no problem. My name is Steven Stepp. I'm a financial planner in Southern California. Only about 17 degrees today. And I work with about 300 families. I've actually had over a thousand clients, but I specialize in working with about 350 different families because it's more than one generation that we're often working with. In fact, it's sometimes two or three generations. I specialize in an area known as back and itself, or sometimes called infinite banking or other names of it, or similar programs. But the original is all about them, and I've been with them for, you know, 20 years. And I think somebody I mentioned Indianapolis on my show that I listen to and I actually grew up in Indianapolis. Oh, wow, that was Phines. So he's not here today, but. Then maybe another time and and basically I'm a full service financial planner, with the interesting exception is that I do not do stocks and bonds and mutual funds. And that's a big role brokering things. I actually gave that up a number of years ago. I felt that was something that's mostly for like insiders and you have to know a lot or have vital information on individual stocks to do really well with that and I was not an insider, did not have that information. And and a lot of stocks just take off because they were popular and not because they had the earnings to support it and stuff like that. And as a whole lot of additional regulations, I need to be able to do that as well. So I actually just dropped the whole stocks, bonds, mutual funds. And I tell people all the time about stocks that I think they might be interested in, but I refer them to, you know, other brokers, if you will, for that. But almost anything else, whether it's gold and silver or life insurance, annuities, general planning. This afternoon I just put together a whole spreadsheet for a family with 18 different investments, all going at the same time. So that type of planning and that type of and we're really good on service and somebody calls us or emails us one day and let's it's like 5:00 in the afternoon, we'll get back to them, you know, that day as well. So we've built a very good, happy clientele if you all that come to know us and trust us. And because I'm completely independent, I will tell people straight out I like this, I don't like that. Here's why. And they can take it or leave it. And most of the people do have come to the point where they they really trust with hearing our advice and getting our suggestions on anything, financial planning. Amazing. And you said what's the term that you specialize in something you're. I I work with a program is called back on yourself you can you can go to bank in itself but if you do put in my code that that's 95 that you'll be referred back to me if you had questions about it. But it's it's a nationwide program. There's about 200 of the independent agents who work on that. And the whole idea with bank on yourself is that we show people that you don't have to take the kind of risks that are inherent in the stock market in order to be able to meet your financial goals. Everybody's going to be a millionaire. Everyone's going to earn if you're a 30 year old, you're going to earn a couple of million dollars no matter what you do. So it's a matter of what you did with that money, how you saved it, where you invested it, higher earnings kept up with that. And if you had a plan, right, a lot of young people, you have to have the newest car, the newest fashions, the newest, you know, whatever it is. And instead of thinking about what that money would do for them over a long time, even if it was just compounding at like 6%, that would be could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars later on. And that's where a lot of people, especially younger people, kind of mix up what you're from. But yeah, no, just there's the latest car and all of that stuff. But I know a lot of people that 30 range late twenties and stuff that are still trying to sort of like pay off loans or debt or are sort of pretty deep in the hole where it's like trying to trying to get by and save at the same time is very hard. Even if they're not doing the newest car, etc.. You know, I do think it's very hard these days for younger people. You know, the cost of a house is astronomical for most. I know that rents are, you know, skyrocketing and going higher, higher all the time. Inflation itself is making even food and gas and basic things, you know, really expensive, especially these days. So I totally get that. But at the same time, if you're if you're making any any kind of income, even if you're making, say,$20,000, $30,000, I have a daughter, 26. We just got a unnecessary raise. And and so I get that. But I think the concept is that part of the idea is that if you can start saving, right, even as it's 5%, even if you're making 30,000, 3000 away or maybe 50,000, find a way to put 5000 into something that say the back of it to prepare. And, you know, on that, you know, right now I was realizing that series I bonds which I don't sell but they're out there and they're inflation adjusted and right now they're paying like 7% and any individual can buy went up to, you know, $10,000. So part of my message always to young people is just regardless of what is going on, pay yourself first effort and try to put away at least 10% of what you earn for yourself first into your own savings account, that it will make such a difference over your lifetime. And it's amazing how that and then when you do have more and you're saving more and you can get under investing, then you can get into doing other things. And one of the things I like about things itself is there are some minimum and there was a maximum. So we literally have people starting with, you know, $300 a month, $500 a month, and they're and they're building their plan and they're starting and they get it. And they're clients and they'll be clients for a long, long time. So I guess below that, there isn't really an answer, but I think people would be surprised that if they have the right mentality, how easy it is to kind of get at least get started early, still a little something that's awesome. I'd love to open it up to zero and grand. Fuck you. Opening questions on. What will you tell me what you just said? I'd love to open it up to you, Grandpa. Oh, okay. All right. I think that's excellent advice. Put away money as much as you're able to. You know, I. I think it's excellent advice. What about forever stamps. Grandpa, but can you turn your game down a little bit, please? Turn the game down. Okay. All right. Now. That's better. Thank you. Better. You know, I heard that as a as a good idea. And you know what? If that's where the starting point is, that's probably a good idea, at least a little be inflation on both sides. And you're thinking at least a little tiny baby step in the right direction. Yeah, I was kind of kind of kidding, but but they are going up a lot in costs. So, you know, they constantly increase. So I send I send these mailers out all the time. They call them the priority mail staff or the three day, you know, staff. And it used to be a few years ago they were to 90. Now they're 990. So, you know, if I had been able to buy Forever Express Mail, that probably would have been a good idea. Yeah, there's more value of nickel in a nickel than what I understand the nickel for. It's I don't know if it's still that way because. And Penny still more copper in a penny than than the penny is worth. Exactly. But it would be kind of hard to have to deal with it in the market. You know, it's kind of silly, but but anyhow, but I think it's a very excellent idea to put away as much as you can possibly afford to do so that, you know, you save money for a rainy day or for retirement or whatever. But now I'm having trouble hearing you. Could you split the difference a little. Bit. Closer to your mouth? Yeah. Okay. Is that better? How's this? Is this better? Your muted Sierra? I can't hear. Why. That is not better. Turn it now. I call myself a audio engineer about how to turn the wrist. Turn it up a smidge just to. We're on, like episode 83 same number. Slightly better. No, no, no. We're doing good. We've made a lot of good luck with that. Right. I want to congratulate you today and obviously, they they really pushed to buy a hearing aid. But but he told me that I have about 30% hearing. And now. We. Said. Yeah, who told you to do brain damage if. The doctor specialist. Yeah. Um, cool. Do you have clients that are in their eighties? Stephen I do. I do. Do you take on clients at that age? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I know a guy who I'd really love to work with you would be Grandpa. I mean, some of our concepts and ideas, you know, you know, don't work at that time. Banking this out, for example, is a is based on life insurance. And it's it's, you know, until you're 80, that's kind of too late for that. But but I just did a case a couple weeks ago with the father of a client who's 84, and they ended up with an annuity which will guarantee them a growth and then an income. So what how does it have to do with life insurance? The bank on yourself group they are part of or philosophy. Really? Yeah. It's rather unique. I found out about it about 20 years ago and the more I learned, the more I. I got into that and I created policies for myself and saw how well it worked. And over the last 20 years, it's kind of took over the majority of my practice. But the the basic idea is that you're you're buying a whole life life insurance policy and we distinguish between other types of life insurance firm and, you know, life but whole life, life insurance. But we've structured in a way where about 75 to 80% of the money going into it is going into the pure extra cash value is not going into the base premium, so to speak. So the amount of death benefit is typically smaller than somebody might think about for the amounts of money that are going in or capitalizing on the fact that because it them because that money and then of a life life insurance policy it grows without taxes being taken out, it can be taken out completely tax free at any time. It has a tax free death benefit as well. So eventually there's going to be a eventually there's always going to be a payoff. Is more than the cash prizes ever get to be because that's. Money upon the person's death or. Upon the person and says, well, my while but and it earns about four or five over the years it is more like 5%, but it starts out earning a guaranteed rate of 4%. So not that exciting in terms of rate of return. But again, coming back to savings and and savings and compounding interest. And then then to me, the most interesting thing is that while that tax rate is building up in the policy, you can what we call bank on yourself. You can borrow that money, you can borrow up to 90% of the money that's in those contracts to finance something like a new car or a used car or whatever it is that you would otherwise go to a bank or finance in some other way or put on a credit card. You become the bank. You become the source of your own financing. There's no reason you need to go to what we call the sex and dragons that, you know, operate most big banks. Right. Or even little banks. And why pay them all this interest? You know, a lot of times will sit down with families and 20 to 30% of their net income. That's going to pay to pay interest and bills on cars, on houses, you know, jet skis that you name it. Right. And all that money is going out, never to be seen again. And if we can teach them how to take their own savings, their own tax free savings, and borrow it out from the policy, the policy still earns the same amount of money, whether you take it out of a loan or not, because the cash value is the collateral for the loans. But you still have the same full amount earning the same interest and the same guarantee. And I'm very I'm very unlearned in Unlearn It and this which I think is really good because I'm learning a lot right now. But what can you repeat what the collateral is like? What what would you lose if you're unable to repay that money? You wouldn't lose anything. You just wouldn't be available for the next item you would have would be able to do. Like, for example, let's say you saved up$30,000 and it was time to buy a car. As a part of this life insurance policy or just in your savings. Nest in the, you know, in the cash value of the policy. And so now it's time to buy a car and you buy a car for $25,000. You borrow the $25,000 out. You got a good deal because you're paying cash for the car and then you make the same payments that you would have made to any other bank or finance company. And you put that money back in your policy and over, say, a five year period of time, you pay it back. Now, while that's happening, 30,000 is still earning the same guaranteed 4%, and it's still earning the same dividends because it's a whole life contract that it would have earned even if you had never taken out the loan. So if you didn't ever pay the loan back, you just wouldn't have very much. You just wouldn't have very much for that football for the next five or the next time. And sooner or later the interest went up. The remaining cash for you. But what we train people on for people to do is like, you'd be paying this loan back to somebody, so why is it a bad thing to be paying it back to yourself? And now you're doing the same payments that you would have made to the bank. You would have had to make those payments or they would have taken the car back or rebuy it. Right. And now you're making those payments back to yourself. You put all that money back into the policy. The loans are the 5% rate. And then when it's time for the next car, the next car or the next thing or the roof of the house or whatever, it might be different. You've got all the cash value intact. So that you can do it again and again. So for example, in my case, from my life three policy, my last three cars were all bought with money from my policies and I got a good deal. I paid cash for them. I typically bought them like a year old, and then I paid it back in a short period of time and now I have the same full amount available for the next car. A year ago. Two years ago, same thing happened. I need to get a new roof on the house. So instead of wondering what credit card I got to put that on, or where am I going to borrow that money? Or How long do I have to save up to get that? I was able to instantly take it out of my policy, pay for the roof. Now I'm paying it back for myself. After about a year or two, I had stated all that and again, no, no problems. I didn't have to go into debt to somebody else or make payments forever to a bank or put it on a credit card in order to be able to handle this particular thing. And those are the things that get in people's way right now, have to get the new car, they have to put the new roof. They have to deal with inflation. They have to all these all these emergency, these are always coming up, you know, for everybody, it's just the way life happens. And to know that you can take care of most of these things from your own savings and then pay it back in a way for you. And you're the you're the loan committee on these policies. You need to get some payments. You can do that. You have your money and your policy is your plan. Is their interest on this? Yeah, the loans are at 5%, but you're also earning over five 4% plus a dividend in the policy itself. So it's. Kind of like money that you borrow. On the money that you borrowed. You're still earning the same 4% and the same dividend that you would have gotten even if you've never taken out the loan. So I don't I don't believe I mean, through work I do. But as soon as I leave work, I would no longer have life insurance. But you're talking about personal life insurance, I imagine. Yeah, that's right. So all of the and I assume that a lot of people, 27 might not have a policy I didn't even realize. I always assumed life insurance works the same as, say, like medical insurance through an employer where like I pay a specific amount every two weeks or every four weeks and then like I have access to the medical care, I have access to the life insurance policy when I die, when I need it, when I when I get sick. Right. But you're saying that there is money before you die, that you have access to as a part of the life insurance policy? Well, what you have is I'm from my parents and it's passed through the company. And so it's what they call group term. And they're basically three types of life insurance. There's there's permanent terms where it's just the death benefit. Right. And so for a lot of younger people, younger families, primary parents is probably the answer because they need a high stakes amount. But they and they don't really find the extra cash value the way that we're talking about. So that's a really good, you know, solution to not be bothered that one or three times their salary as a as a death sentence, God forbid, something happens to you, you know, there would be that, you know, a death benefit and it would be tax free. But what we're talking about here is an individual, whole life policy, their cash value. There are two types of cash value policies. One is whole life and one is universal life. If you go on a big debate as to which of those is better, I happen to favor, you know, all life for a lot of different reasons. But the whole idea with any permanent individual policy is that you're building your own individual policy and then with banking itself or simply designing it in a way that most people have never seen or desiring it in a way where most of the money is going into buy extra bad credit. It's called data positions, but extra cash right you into the policy and that that is that extra money those extra dividends that are making it really fly as a savings and banking policy. So say my like if I have the life insurance and I were to die I would get $100,000. Right. And that that fee for the personal insurance to the insurer is like 50 bucks or 70 bucks. You're saying that each month I could pay in addition to that 70 or whatever that fee is. And that is all for when I die. But I also have access to those funds to take out with like a 5% penalty. Is that what you're saying? Well, it's not really a penalty. It's a it's the interest that the company is allowing you to borrow your own cash. Are you up to 90% of it? But you can never take that money out until you die. Right? Like like your loved ones could take it out, like everything on top of whatever the insurer is going to give you. On top of that 100,000, like is extra that you would have access to after you pass basically one. Now, while you're while you're alive, you're saying you're creating a policy in a state where there's all kinds of living benefits. And as an individual and typically where way we typically do it is we'll help people figure out how much can they say. Let's say they could save $1,000 a month, just get you the typical number. And now we're telling them that about 300 of that thousands are going into the underlying all day full life policy. Right. That's the part that has to be paid, no matter what, forever in order to keep the policy going. But the other 700 amount is optional and it's going into the extra step of creating extra cash value in the policy. And it's primarily that extra cash that we're providing about using it and using again and again. But it's very much most of the people that by the federal policy are buying it for being able to use it, being able to say, being able to finance the next car, to be able to finance college education, to be able to buy that next problem or make the down payment on an investment. People use the cash rise, even buy gold and silver or other or make other investments. It's their money and it's available for them to borrow at 5%. And then again, the secret, if you will, they're having it work, right, is pay yourself back. Right. You have to pay some of their bank back. So why not pay yourself back and then make those funds available, you know, again and again. And what actually happens with most people is they end up with multiple policies because like my first policy was a $500 a month policy. I couldn't have done any of the things that we're talking about. If all I ever did was put in $500 a month and a couple of years later I was more like a thousand a month. And a couple of years after that it was more like 2000 a month. And so that became, you know, like a centerpiece of my, you know, financial plan. So it really starts with how much can you save? And then we build the plan around that. But it's it's it's much more about most of my clients are really focused on the debt process. They realize that they're building this cash right here. And that's going to be, over time, much more valuable to them, especially if they use it again and again and again. And it's getting there and available tax rate is going to be much more give them much more peace of mind and much more possibilities and options down the road than better than saving it anywhere else. Did you know about this Sierra or grandpa? My. No, I just like this is this is all interesting because like in my brain, I was like for the longest time, I've just never even I just assumed, like, I'll probably have some money when I'm 30. I don't know. So this is this is well needed information. I didn't even know that life insurance policies worked like this. Did you know. What? Pardon me? Did you know that this works like this? Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not. Not in. College, and I would be serious. Is that a thing? I did not know that was a thing. I've asked you for advice a million times. And you never brought this up once. Well, I mean, better destitute. Yeah. Even like this problem. I'm the wife. Actually, I had a friend in college who was a very well-to-do family here, a lot of real estate. And surprisingly, he was a business guy, even when he was a kid in college. And he sold me a life insurance policy with Northwestern Mutual back in those days. I'm going back now to the to the early sixties. So, you know, it's a smart guy, done very well. So. Yeah, I do I do know I mean what storm I had. I mean, it's just a combination of term, which means that you get what you pay for. And once the terms are over, it's done with and you have to do it again and your rates can keep going up or whatever award and what they call, you know, the invested capital, which is the other part. And then when they put them together, they call them whole life. So that's really what it is. Yeah, it's a combination of term and and. And and and one distinction was how like there is, there is a term there's this underlying base guarantee level of premium. And then one what grandpa was driving, there was more what's called a universal life where it's a combination of a family policy with aside from that's supposed to be growing and a lot of people will say that universal is better because it can be invested in the market and or different indexes or just a regular cash account. But what happens in those types of policies actually, you know, well before Grandpa's age is that the term reserve keeps going higher and higher and it makes it difficult for the policy to work the way I've been describing, because there's more and more being taken out for the cost of the life insurance, whereas the whole life is the underlying base premium is absolutely guaranteed. It can never go up. So even with inflation and underlying base premiums stays exactly the same. And so the optional part, the additional money that you're putting into it to make it work for banking itself or for other things. And by the way, one of the most common uses for that kind of policies is for helping fund for college. Right. College supports some of these days, almost no matter where you go and a lot of people have good income, they might make $100,000, they might make $200,000. But if they have two or three kids, they're constantly worried about, how am I going to save enough money to have them go to college and still have my own retirement plan? And so one of the most common uses for bank and itself is to find help, find college education, and then a combination of paying it, you're paying it back. And even have the student who benefited from the education, I'll pay it back as well. And then. And then. And then you're probably find that they have the policy, you know, at retirement time you can start taking out tax free income from it as well as having respect for that, some of that. So once I started learning more and more about that type of policy, I became you can see why it kind of started taking over my practice. Yeah, you're like, how many people our age do you think know about that of, know about or even have life insurance? None, except maybe like some probably like some one percenters or five percenters whose parents know about this. And, you know, I've done it for them. Stephen, you do you meet clients already that are young, that have life insurance policies already? You know, to be honest, what happens is I'll start working with somebody who's in their forties or fifties and they're, what I was discussing about how to pay for college or how to pay for, you know, other things. Or they start taking their own retirement seriously and they're looking at their own borrowing patterns and there's not going to be enough. So they'll come to us and we'll start having that conversation. And then once we've set them up, then they're going, You know what my kids think about that? I wish I had known about this 20 years ago so I could have started earlier. And so let me help my kids get them going. And, and, and yeah, it's easier if you're in the 1% or 2% or whatever, but the information is out there. You know, I'm happy to work with anybody at any age. And and there isn't like I said, there is no real minimum. You know, if somebody wants to be $300 a month, will work with them. If somebody wants to do, you know, 300,000 a year, we'll work with them. So it and everybody everybody's situation is different and everybody's goals are different. And that's one of the things I like about this program in particular. But of the ones that we have as well as the work we're designing and building around what you're trying to do, what your goals are for my goals, as a matter Grandpa's goals, as a matter of what your goals and what you're trying to do and what you're able to save is where it comes in. So a lot of times it starts with a 45 year old, but then they're going, you know what my kids have? I have this my grandkids have to have this. We have a lot of situations where grandparents are because they have all the money right there and they're 50, 60, 70. They they have all the money. Why not start gifting it to the kids? And the kids have life insurance that they may not have to cover the next generation and then have that money available to help or college or other things like that or starting a business or whatever it might be. And then eventually we've got a third generation that's going to get the best out of that. So we're actually helping three generations with one policy, and I've even done it with great grandkids. So once people understand it and they get it, even if they're 40 or 50 or 60, you know, and when we first meet with them and those are the ones that are typically interested in it, but we get a lot of people that are in their sixties who are going through a you know, for me to do this and the answer is no. The only thing that's going to the structure of the policy is going to be the same in terms of like two thirds of the money going into the cash value portion of the policy. But the amount of that like 20, there's going to be much more of that benefit for that same amount of money when then when you're 50 or 60 or 70. So the earlier you start, the better it is. So you. Yeah. Like almost anything good that really starts, the better it is. So we should, we should look into this. Yeah, absolutely. And by the way, it's not a new thing. A lot of times it's new to the it might be new to you. Right. But there have been several books written on the subject and the book called Banking Itself and the Bank under Trump Revolution. They're both written by a woman named Pramila Yellen that I work with on a on a weekly basis. She created the term bank. I felt it actually existed as a term called infinite banking. Going back that I know of at least 50 or 60 or so. This is not a new thing. You know, 50 years ago it was like a 1% or 5%, you know, but this is the type of policy that they used to start. Walt Disney, this is the type of policy that J.C. Penney used to start his empire. So, yeah, the wealthy have known about it for the longest time. And and because it works through, you know, generations at the same time, you know, that's a that's an even better. Let's go ahead. And somebody is going to get that life insurance, right? Someone is going to get the tax free. You know, life insurance, whether it's a spouse or kids and grandkids, and then they have a whole new windfall to start their own. Yeah. Brand is why they're so much. More or not at all. Pardon. It's not taxed at all. It generally the policies are designed are but rather the catchphrase tax free and thinking right? Oh yeah. I was, I was thinking of the same joke for the last 20 minutes of like, man, this is really incentivizing a spouse to, you know, that lighting. Notes for myself, for my future. A What was the transition like from doing kind of traditional banking and investment type of planning to whatever the hell cryptocurrency is? Now I'm like, What the hell is cryptocurrencies? You know, crypto is I actually have a little crypto, you know, somebody wants to have crypto, you know, probably if they limited for like 1% of their investable assets, you know, you know, I can make a, an argument for that, but it is one of those things like, almost like anything else like that is it's a very speculative thing and you shouldn't be building your financial future on it. But, you know, if somebody makes 100,000, you have 100,000 to invest. And they want to have, you know, a couple of that in in crypto, you know, more power to them because there are obviously is a potential for a lot of growth. And the technology behind it is definitely a technology that's going to be around and impact things and speculate financially for a long, long time. But how many of these coins are going to do well and which ones and why? You know, it's probably better if you till the first two or three top ones like Bitcoin and Ethereum just because you know it's going to be hard to have a market for all these different, you know, coins that do well, I'm in an investment group that actually created two of their own coins. And so just from that, I happen to have a tiny little bit of crypto and it did really well and then it crashed and that will probably be very typical of it. And so in my practice, I like to focus on things that every single year are going to be higher than the year before. So whether it's an annuity or life insurance or just regular savings, you know, the balance is always going to be higher and higher every year. And it's something that you can know and count on and you've and have that be the core. And then if they want to, you know, invest in, you know, things that are more speculative, more powerful, but but not have that be a key, you know, portion like you were talking about the billionaire that is no longer a billionaire. Right. He was the youngest billionaire in the history of the in the world, but it was all in the act. And they were actually bailing out other crypto companies. You know, that's how big they were. That's crazy. But now it's like, let me, you and me and everybody else and you. Know, he's worse than me because I don't know everybody or, you know, billion. Thousands of dollars missing. And and by the way, there are a lot of other issues of crypto, not just like the performance of the coins itself or even just Bitcoin is like you have to store it securely, right? That's the whole technology. You have to watch it, you know, carefully. Somebody else has for know where it is and how it's secured. And so that's like if I haven't didn't tell anybody about it and died, nobody in my family would know where it is, how to get it, what it tells part of danger. And there's lots of stuff hacking and all kinds of craziness around it. And so, so even if you have it and did well like there have been people who have lost all their Bitcoin because they forgot their password and they didn't give it to anybody else. And without the password they can't get it and they literally don't have access to it. And now it's gone down to zero anyway. But, you know, so it's a you know, it's a speculation. It's a complete speculation. And I can see where people get interested in it and wrap up and maybe they're more positive things about it from somebody. And again, if you're limiting it to like 1%, 1% is never going to hurt you. Right? You get 100,000 doing back and, you know, 1% in Bitcoin is never going to remain. It may be a big plus like having the lottery or something like that. My daughter actually did very well with Bitcoin, so back ten years ago she bought some with a friend while she was in college when she graduated to spend, I went and got up to it was like 15, $50,000, right? She had shared one coin with her roommate and they ended up taking a trip around. They feel that they realize how much it was worth. They sold that and then went on a trip around the world and spent it on that. And then came back and it didn't cost me anything like that. Great. And so she's actually one of the the the big winners of Bitcoin, as far as I'm concerned. But again, total speculation and not really the way to plan. Steve Did you see this crypto company? FDX Yeah, that's what we were talking about. That was run by Eric, the youngest billionaire in the history of money, and he's probably still worth$1,000,000,000 and followed her head, headed it or whatever. But but the company itself and they were actually bailing out other crypto companies. It was while they just kept looping, they just kept looping over and over. I think I would take my chances on the craps table first. Yeah. Now you're on for much better. There you go. And you'll have more from them. They'll give you a free drink. That's so interesting what she said about if someone if you have if you do have any crypto that's, you know, worth anything and you just, you know, you die or you vanish, you know, that's literally like that riddle or whatever. If you if you hear if a bear, what is it? If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear, it doesn't make a sound. It's like. Yeah, in my case, I have a lot of it's called a wallet, it's got a ledger wallet and there's a 24 word code to get into it. And then I have the code in a safe deposit box and I tell my wife that God forbid something happens to me, the code I have found, the code is on a piece of paper and it symbolizes the power of the fact that she has access to it. And there are people that they are more secure than that. But for me, for the amount that I have, that's enough security. But it could still. Be a national treasure. Elaborate. Yeah. And all of that for, you know, the little amount that I have. I'm getting why it's so popular now. There's a lot of there's a lot of fun involved in, you know, hiding your code and hiding the code in the code and locking up and trading it. I get it. I get I'm starting to get it. I get I'm starting to get the picture. And Brandon had to dip out early. We lost Brandon. So I am going to wrap us up quickly. I do I do want to ask you one more question from your interview list. How Can I legally save on my taxes? What do I do? Well, you know, back in itself, as one legitimate way of saving on your taxes or working with a that CPA is another way of learning ways that you might be able to save on your taxes if you have your own business or you start your own business. There's a lot of ways of using that. The to lower the business taxes and therefore lower the amount of individual taxes for you. A lot of our planning also involves what we call annuities, which grow completely tax deferred and they're not taxed. And so you take them out and so you make the money out. And those investments are typically taken out when people are already retired and they're in a lower bracket. So they're putting it in. When they're in a higher bracket, they're deferring it like a pension or a1k until they're taking it out. And one of the thing I know you're running out of time, but there is a message that I would love to impart to almost all of your listeners and especially younger people. Most people, when they up at work, they're given they're saying, here's your for all and that is how it works. RE Max, it really don't matter. They consider it automatic that you would want to do that. It grows tax deferred and so you take it out or move it, you know, it can be moved to other companies and other companies are rolling over. But I think that companies you know for one K and their first home live that that's the automatic best way of creating retirement or starting to save for your retirement. And it's a huge, huge myth for a number of reasons. First of all, the fees are typically very high. Secondly, the individuals who are doing it are not financial planners. So they don't know. It's not like a pension where there's a pension actuarial team that's figuring out what's an investment. You're supposed to figure out, you know, what the best mutual fund choices are. For most people, that's not what they do or what they're good at. So the performance tends to be, if anything, what the market does. And most financial planners, that would be the S&P 500. So you'd be better off with just an index account. And lastly, especially for young people, that money is in prison. And so you're 50 years old. Is that really going to be and you really want to be locking up money with no alternatives besides what's in the for on K into your 60 year old. My 30 year old that I talked to would not want to do that. They wouldn't want a 30 year retirement plan and and a friend because things will change so much with how much things have changed in the last 20 years. I think what will happen is that in the last five. Yeah. So what will happen the next five, ten, 15, 20 years that they wish that they kind of take that money out or something else. So that's a huge thing. And if I, you know, you young people, middle aged people, whatever, do not rely they're not relying on your for one K to be the arbiter of the retirement plan. So instead of that four or one K, you're saying do the investing in yourself or be. Hired by life insurance by other things that you know and understand and control and they can help you in other ways. Absolutely. I did not know that. That is really good advice, especially since we don't we we aren't like our economy. Like our whole economy is not even just a generational thing. Our economy isn't really built for like careers like long, like decades spanning careers where you just stay in one place or at one company for your whole life. We don't really do that. Grandpa can tell you for the U.S., for my dad worked for a company for 40 years, that was the only place he ever worked. They provided a pension, a real pension so that he knew exactly when he retired at age 55, exactly how much he was going to have on a monthly basis, guaranteed for as long as he or my mom were alive. My mom's still alive. He's 19 years old. He's still collecting on that pension. But those days, those days and the loyalty both ways is that there, you know, employee employees are loyal like that anymore. You know, you get to be 50 years old and you're earning a good amount and they can replace you with a younger person. They do it in an instant and the same, you know, and quite honestly, it's kind of true for young people also, if somebody offers them $10,000 a year more but on and you know, I can't blame them because the loyalty isn't there the other way. You either. Young. Loyalty and the. Benefits. So those kind of benefits are not there. And now with the fall and there's an excellent book out there, if anybody wants that, contact me and anybody can contact me at connect with even stuff that all my information is there. I'll send them a copy of a book that talks about the for one days and it's called Rescue Your Retirement and it goes into all the reasons and all the depth of why the for the person that created the for one for if you wish they never had done it and at the time it was simply a way of paying extra money from the companies to key employees and then how that would be on behalf of their pension instead of their pension. And there's there's another there's a movie out there called The Baby Boomer Dilemma. It's it's catching on a lot with baby boomers in particular, but younger people to where it tells the true story of a family. And there's all these interviews with experts as well mixed into it, but it tells the story of a family that in the state of Florida, where they roll over all the pensions and God save honest pensions into tomorrow, and and that made the individuals, the ones in charge of their own retirement. And they weren't set up to do that. So they didn't know how to do that and how to maximize it and how to pick the right mutual funds. And so sometimes it went well and sometimes it didn't. But then in this movie, they talk about how the market crashed. Literally the year from literally within weeks when somebody took their retirement. So they had they had X amount and now they have half that amount three weeks later. And then the wife was screaming of the husband, I left you in charge of that from look what you did. We can't live on those words that we are on this. And now you're retired. What are we supposed to do? But you tried selling the pain of that situation that that reflects this whole idea of of for most people, they cannot rely on or for one day to create the retirement that they think, you know, they're going. And and for employers, it's automatic. Here's your paperwork. Here's the following assignments. I've never been here. And since most people don't know any better in their savings or environment in, they're giving me a couple percent matching and isn't that wonderful? And I'm and I'm doing something that I'm saving for retirement. I'm being responsible. You know? Yeah, it's probably a good start, but not going to be the answer. I yeah. Yeah. There's no guarantees anymore. And, and when you work for a company, look what Elon Musk is doing at Twitter right now. So you really don't have any. So it's good to put money away. I don't care how you do it, but. How much of it not even individual stocks? It's mostly mutual funds and exchange traded funds that, you know, can go all over the place and, you know, to a lot of people, especially this year in particular, right. People are down 20, 30, 40, 50%. Major companies are down a lot. You know, if you look at and again, I'm a stock broker, so I'm not buying the entire industry. But, you know, Amazon is down a lot. This means that a lot of paramount is down a lot. Google is down a lot. So what if this was the year you are retiring and your 41k was turning into like 201k or what if this is the two or three years before or two or three years after your retirement, you know, what were you and you were planning on this about that 30 year, two or three years ago? Those are big numbers. And we were like, look at this. I'm going to retire, you know, a billionaire. And right now they're not. So, you know, again, more you can take it into your own hands, the better. Definitely. Well, thank you so much for coming, Steve. My pleasure. Wonderful best. Very informative. I we'll definitely have you back sometime soon because the markets, everything keeps changing that. Might. Kind of catastrophically. But maybe we'll go back up next time I got you. I get people calling me I my annuities only up 5% this year and I go and compared to what we're doing in in the market right now where where would you be? 40%. I'm 20%. Count your blessings is that I. Just say you're going to hang out. By the way. Yeah. You have a great way for radio and podcasts. I really like it. Thank you. I used to do radio when I was in college. I did public. Oh. I need to actually with. A cell phone. Very good experience. Excellent. And you peace and love. Compliments on that. Thank you, everyone. Check out Steven Stepp. You can get his information, find out about him and he can give you more beautiful, incredible advice. It's connect with Stephen. Step e-com STV and steep thank you so much again. Wonderful. Absolutely. And I probably am the first financial planner you've had on. I think so. I think we had someone talk about maybe in sure. Something similar, but I don't think it was the same vein. So this is very helpful because, you know, girls finally got some income. So. All right. Well. You have a great night. You know, I. Got casting with.