In this episode, Joe Pantozzi sits down with Jason K. Powers to bust the myth that wealth-building is just about following rigid formulas or waiting for life’s circumstances to change. They share simple strategies and stories on how the right mindset can turn uncertainty into opportunity. 

You’ll hear why most people are stuck in old money habits, and how making a few key changes can set your family up for generations. Get ready for practical, honest advice you won’t hear from mainstream financial gurus. 

Tune in for a fresh perspective that might just change how you think about your wealth and your future.

Show Highlights

• What if you had the tools to turn aspirations into achievements? [01:52]
• Discover Nelson Nash’s viewpoint on right thinking [04:13]
• Are outside circumstances dictating your dreams? [06:22]
• Do you know what prompts change? [08:20]
• Learn to balance immediate and future needs effectively [10:22]
• Here is how you can master the skill of savings [13:00]
• Discover Jason's views on thinking about money as silos [15:24]
• Learn how one policy has the power to change lives [16:53]

joe@alphaomegawealth.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-pantozzi-941a073/

AlphaOmegaWealth.com

Welcome to make youe Wealth Work, the podcast where wealth becomes your greatest ally in achieving your dreams.

Hey, everyone, this is Joe Pantozzi. I'm here with Jason K. Powers, and this is the make youe Wealth Work podcast. Hey, Jason, how you doing?

Hey, I'm doing great, Joe. Glad to be back.

Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you're here. So we're gonna talk today about one of my favorite subjects. Which is, which is hope.

Finding a way to help our clients gain hope in any all circumstances. And our primary product, our primary service, our primary vocation is helping people with financial literacy.

It's coaching, it's planning, it's delivering solutions using insurance products and solutions using investment related products and solutions.

And I want to talk about how we can help you, how we can help our clients get closer to and grab a hold of the hope that you need to have right now and not have it. Rely on anything that anybody from the outside world delivers to your door.

Now, you might think that totally eliminates the people on this podcast, but you have it within you to create hope from completing the plans. It's a great idea to have a plan.

Somebody said that it's good to have a thought process, it's good to have an ideal, but there has to be action, there has to be execution, there has to be movement beyond the decisions.

So one of the things that we try to focus on, as opposed to a product or a process or a System or a 40 or 50 or 200 page financial plan or design and delivering it to a client, having them put it on their library shelf and never looking at it for another year, is helping our clients get to the point where they have steps that they decide to take and that we help them actually take those steps. So, Jason, why don't you elaborate a little bit on the material we've been talking about, you and I?

Yeah, I think we've, you know, we were discussing this and it's just I've, you know, more recently too, I've talked to several people where we start talking about this thing, you know, this thing called the infinite banking concept.

And we start talking about what are the things you want to accomplish in life, what do you want to do, you know, talking to a married couple, guy in his mid-30s who's just starting a family, you know, and, and the fear that comes with, well, I, you know, just had a kid. And, and what does that mean? Well, I've got a. I gotta get a good emergency fund situated. I gotta get a college fund going for my kid.

Have a good car for the family and. And then I've got to maybe hopefully retire someday. And. And it can be a little bit overwhelming.

I was there, I mean, in my mid-30s, it was like, my goodness, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get there?

Right?

And there's this, this fear component that kicks in.

Right.

And that's where, you know, we got to you and I got to talking about hope like, like there is hope in attacking this from a different angle even. And we don't have to just live in this fear of not the bad kind of hope. I can, I hope I can make this.

I hope I can make this work, but just the ability to walk people through these things and help them navigate, which gives them hope, the good kind of hope, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

So Nelson Nash, our mentor, in this context anyway, said, it's all about the way that you think. It's all about how you think. And that sounds like such a cliche if you're on the outside of the department store looking in the window.

But if you take that statement to heart, you'd actually start to take inventory of the things that you're doing in your life that may be automatic, they may be rote, they may be robotic or mechanistic or ritualistic. And you're only doing them because you're seeing everybody else doing them and you're hoping that they give you a good result.

So, yeah, I'm putting money into my kids college fund. I'm putting it into a 529 or other vehicle. I don't care what it is.

What made you decide that you should focus on that as opposed to some of the other elements that Jason just mentioned? Well, you know, I needed a car and therefore I went and got the best rate I could. And it just so happens our car payment is 600 bucks a month.

Okay, well, why'd you come up with putting the college fund as one of the top priority items? Well, because we just had a baby. Okay, so you just had a baby. God bless you. Congratulations. I hope you have many more, by the way.

And that college fund is going to come into play and be very, very important in some way, shape or form 18 years from now. Okay. But in the meantime, there might be some other things that are more important in a priority sense.

Well, we're renting a house right now, and I don't see any way that we can get away from renting right now until I change jobs, until I get a college degree, until I get a raise, until circumstances happen. Okay, let Me kind of dwell on that for just a second.

So what you're telling me is you're waiting for outside conditions to change so you can allow yourself to think differently than you're thinking now. Well, no, I really didn't say that. Okay, maybe I misunderstood.

So I'm just suggesting that we lay out all the priorities on the table, short term, medium term, long term, and find out what all those priorities are. And I realized because you have a brand new bouncing baby, that baby is a priority.

But as far as financial, financial priorities, maybe we can get some of those other items that you're dealing with every single day, get those under management. Maybe there actually is a way to get closer to homeownership, if that's your goal, for example, maybe there is a way to get the other priorities.

Maybe you didn't like the fact that it was a $600 car payment. I don't care what the number is. Maybe that is out of line with the rest of your financial picture. But you thought that was your only way out, right?

So those items all kind of center on the savings component, and that has to be the fundamental piece of the financial puzzle, right? Starting with savings and then finding out what you can do once you have that discipline under your belt.

Well, and that's what we, you know, talk to clients about all the time. I'm talking about, look, we, and I say it daily. Change the way you think about your finances, and it'll change your life.

And think about what prompts change.

You know, when we get into this topic of change, like, okay, a newborn, that's life changing, your first child, life changing, marriage, life changing, right? All these things in our life. All of a sudden, shift your thinking often, right? And you go, oh, well, I.

Now I have this situation, therefore I need to. Whatever that is. You know, and we've talked about it before. I love this quote about change by John Maxwell.

And he says people change in four different seasons. He says when they hurt enough that they have to.

He says when they see enough that they're inspired to, or when they learn enough that they want to, or when they receive enough that they're able to.

Wow.

And it's so true. It's so true. Like what creates change in people? And it is. You really can't boil it down to, I think those four. Those four things.

And now enter finances. You know, like Nash says, you've got to change the way you think about your money. And then what is that going to do for you?

Do we have to think the same way that the masses are taught? Do we have to. Is really our only option to save for college, a 529 plan? Is that really our only option or cash? You know, maybe not.

Right.

In so many of these situations. And I think that's, I think, you know, and this changing in your perspective is I think what in turn gives people hope.

You're like, oh, okay, so there is a way, there is a, a more tangible way to do this and accomplish other things at the same time.

There you go. Yeah.

So we talk about the multitasking dollar and one of the things that kind of informs my thinking about this is thinking in terms of some of the priorities as acute situations, right.

If I have a toothache, that's an acute situation and I'm going to go to the dentist, I'm going to get a filling, I'm going to get a crown, I'm going to get medicine, whatever the case may be, that's gonna be an acute situation that is taken care of in relatively short order, right?

But if I have maybe a life threatening type situation that I have, let's say the C word, you know, cancer, God forbid, that could be a chronic situation.

Gee, you could have a low grade cancer and live with it for the rest of your life, manage it, observe it, watchful waiting, all this stuff, but you're looking at a chronic situation. Well, one of the things that I, that I have to do to manage and watch over and make sure that situation doesn't get out of hand.

How am I applying that in the financial sense? Well, even college is an acute need. The child's college, let's say it's going to be four years, right?

A lot of kids are coming home from their first semester of school and telling their parents, hey, I just learned it's going to take me five years to graduate. Yeah, no problem. I'm happy to pay for the first four fifth one's on you. College is an acute situation. It's in a come and go.

You might save up for 18 years for your kids college and your kid go gets age 18, gets out of high school and says not doing it, I have no interest whatsoever. I'm going to trade school, I'm going to become a mechanic, I'm going to go become a singer in a roadshow.

I don't, I don't know, it doesn't make any difference. You'll you'll repurpose that money.

But that's an acute situation, one of the chronic situations, and I think of a more positive way to spin that, right? Your need for savings is chronic and it's lifelong.

And it's, it's one of these things you can never stop doing because when you overcome one emergency situation. Tires from my car two months ago, fifteen hundred dollars rebalancing. What was that? That happened to my, the. My truck was out of alignment, right.

It was an acute situation. Guess what? There's going to be something else, right? So the need for savings is going to be chronic and the acute situations will come and go.

The cars, the college.

Now, one of the things that will hopefully become a habit for you is developing a desire and an interest in the research and the skills to, to buy and to create new assets.

And the first thing that has to happen is you have to develop the skill of savings so that you're adding to your capital base every single week, every single month, every single quarter, every single year, every single decade. I tell my clients you should be looking at your net worth statement every three months.

Don't agonize over it, don't go crazy over it, but look at it and see if you're making even a little bit of progress.

If you're not making progress, if you're going backwards slightly or even going backwards a great deal, then there's some changes that need to be made, maybe wholesale changes, maybe serious changes, because you're not paying attention to that need that's going to take care of you and your spouse into the decades of retirement.

And if you have any desire to create generational wealth or create inheritance of any kind, or create gifts to charities or churches or missionaries or missions or causes, then you're going to have to be the master of your wealth plan. And that entails getting these basics down, developing this just horrendous. I hate the word discipline.

I hate the word, by the way, discipline of savings. And you start practicing that discipline of savings after five or 10 years, it's hardly even going to hurt anymore.

Or if it does continue to hurt, you'll get used to the pain, Right?

Right.

Well, and we get, we get into this thinking of, you know, just, just to use the savings idea, right? We're going to save for college. We've talked about, you want to save for a car. You've talked about cars already, right? So we have cars and colleges.

We want to save for retirement. We don't call it put money away for retirement, but I think Those definitions are kind of the same, right?

We tend to put them in compartments in our head and go, well, I'm going to build up for retirement. But that's savings, right? That's just savings. You know, traditionally you kind of can't touch, which becomes a problem.

And then you have savings for the car that you need down the road or you have savings for that college coming up, you have the emergency fund, you have all of these different piles, right?

Silos, silos, that's it.

And that's it. I think we have to stop thinking about money in separate silos and start thinking of it as a system. And I think in doing that is when.

Now, now you're really changing the way you think about your finances.

Now you go, oh, okay, well what if, what if there's a vehicle where I can do all of this under one warehouse, so to speak, and accomplish all those things that I've created separate silos for? And what if that works even more to my advantage in the long run? Oh, but I can also take that and take it on to the next generation.

You know, I can start this warehouse instead of a bunch of little silos and this warehouse can last for generations, literally. You know, when I and Joe, I think of when I first heard about infinite banking, I go, it took me like six months to, to really chew on it and get it.

And, and I'm like, no, this, you know, and I was self eliminating my, I was eliminating myself. I, I was like, I can never do this because I can never afford it. You know, one little, tiny little policy.

The, the, the, the first guy who ever taught me after banking showed me one tiny little policy, he's going to get me out of debt. And I'm like, yeah, that might be a stretch, you know, but that thing has done so much for me over the years. Just that one policy.

And I've started multiple policies since then, you know.

And so what I wanted to say was in thinking, once I was able to shift that thinking and once I started having children, so like my strategy for my kids, I started policies on them and they're small policies, money I was going to be probably putting away anyway. And we timed it so that I could have enough in there by the time they're 16 and we could borrow against the policy and go buy a car for them.

Well, if I were to go into a bank, I'd probably take a three year loan or so if I were going to finance it. And so we'll pay it back over three years from that point on.

And then there'll be enough in there for some of college or all of college or tech school or none of college if he decides they're not going to college. But then I haven't positioned my money in a place where now I've got to figure out how to move this money out if they decide not to go to college.

You know, and then that one policy again, now I've done car college, and that one policy can take them. They will control that policy through their adult life and take them into retirement just off one single policy.

You know, I love that you. You threw in that. That word warehouse because. Because Nelson Nash wrote another book called Building your warehouse of wealth.

Right.

And, you know, I have to say this. I've probably been saying this more often lately. I'm just amazed that there has not come down the pike another model.

And I hate the word system, but sometimes I can't think of a better word for system.

I can't think of another model, another system, another new development that actually contradicts Nelson's discovery because he says he didn't invent infinite banking. He discovered it.

There has not come down the pike another program or model or an idea that contradicts in all honesty and integrity, I must say it that way, that contradicts Nelson's method since he wrote the book 25 years ago. Now, a lot of people come out of the woodwork and criticize it and they'll say, well, this method works better.

You know, I heard somebody saying, if you will buy that mutual fund, you know, that quality mutual fund, and earn 12% and buy a term policy in case something happens in the meantime. Yeah, it's called buy term and invest the difference. It's a philosophy, it's a model. People are still selling it today.

And talk about selling a system that doesn't work. I have yet to meet someone who has actually put that system into effect and used it throughout their entire lifetime.

Now, I'm only going from my own history and experience of 50 years, so I don't have all of recorded time under my belt. But in the 50 years that I've been practicing this, I haven't found that notion to be doable by the vast majority of people.

And you can't ask me why, because I don't know why do I think that that would work? Maybe in an optimal ideal parallel universe that does not include human beings, because human beings are going to invade that market account.

They're going to invade that Wall street, that brokerage account, and they're going to upset their system. They're going to sell when the market's low because they won't be able to tolerate the losses when they're losing 40%.

Whatever the reason is, human beings have not been able to make that hypothetical work.

Hey guys, Hope you enjoyed part one of this episode. It's just too good to limit to one show. Join us next week to hear the rest. This is the podcastfactory.com.