Episode 75: How to Pay Off Debt & Create Financial Freedom with Adam Carroll

Acquania Escarne 0:03

You are listening to The Purpose of Money Podcast, a podcast where we talk about ways to build wealth and create more freedom in your life today. I am your host, Acquania Escarne.

Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that I'm launching two new group coaching programs starting in July 2022. Program one is for women ready to work on their personal finances and start building real wealth. We'll meet twice a month for three months, you'll get one on one financial report, which means we're going to go through your finances and figure out where your money's going. We're also going to discuss how to maximize your income now and how to improve your investing and retirement savings for later. Plus, you'll get access to me through an app and have a way to track your goals and progress all with an accountability group. Spots are limited so click in the link in the show notes to apply today. Program two is for women business owners eager to learn and implement creative retirement strategies and build a legacy. If you're ready to learn how to invest in real estate, and leverage your income, business and life insurance, this program is for you. You'll get access to me my eBooks and my new course The Purpose of Money Maximizer, where I teach you how to leverage life insurance to invest in real estate. This is a six month program, but it will set the foundation you need to level up your business and dive into real estate investing, including investing in hotels, and multifamily syndications. If you're interested, please click on the link in the show notes and apply today.

Hey guys, welcome back to The Purpose of Money Podcast. Today I'm super excited to be joined with a special guest, Adam Carroll. Adam Carroll paid off his home and record time saving over $180,000 in interest in the process. Today, he's going to share with us his strategy on how he helps people free themselves to be themselves. Adam is a published author and has written four books. He's produced an award winning documentary on student loan debt, and has a TED talk with over 5 million views. He's going to help people or he is helping people achieve true financial freedom in their lives. And more than financial freedom, Adam is also all about helping people achieve time freedom, relationship freedom and service freedom. Adam, thank you so much for what you're doing and welcome to The Purpose of Money Podcast.

Adam Carroll 2:52

Well, thank you Acquania. It's so awesome to be here. And I have mad respect for everything you're doing.

Acquania Escarne 2:58

Oh, thank you! See, that means you did a little research on me and I did a little research on you.

Adam Carroll 3:07

I did indeed. Yeah. And I'm excited about this. This conversation, this topic and partially because I know you are a student of this game. And so, that's why we start podcast, right? Because we want to learn ourselves and in the process of learning, we need to teach other people. Yeah, so I'm thrilled to be on with you.

Acquania Escarne 3:25

Excellent. Me too. And I learned so much from my guests on the show, especially when we have amazing conversations. So let's hop right into it. So I gave a little spicy introduction, I mean, $180,000 that you were able to cut off your home loan is huge. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to even want to pay off your mortgage faster? And then we can talk about how you did it?

Adam Carroll 3:52

Yes. So it I want to start by saying this one of the things I love about your podcast and The Purpose of Money is that some people treat money as if it is the end. And it is truly just a means to an end. And in my world, what I realized was one of the core values that I wanted to live my life by was freedom and flexibility, two values, I guess, that go hand in hand freedom and flexibility. And I saw my parents live a life that was sort of, it was run by payments. And I know you probably have listeners that experience this, like their life is just really driven by the payments that they have to make month in month out. And I realized that the two greatest expenses we have in life are taxes and the interest expense on debt. Those are the two greatest expenses that we will all accrue throughout our lives and if we can minimize our taxes and minimize the interest expense on debt, that will maximize our ability to achieve financial freedom and ultimately flexibility which was what I was going after. So a little bit of the backstory is that I was in the mortgage business. And I remember showing the Truth in Lending Disclosure to every single client that I had. And our joke was, we would say, show them the number and say, this is the government's way of depressing you. And it was essentially the document that says, if you borrowed 300,000, it's 5%, or 6%, then at the end of your loan, over 30 years, you would pay 600,000, right, or 575, or 550, or whatever the number was. And I remember seeing that, and it just internalized for me over and over again, like this is a boatload of money. And then when you realize how amortization tables work, and compound interest works, I just realized there had to be a better way. And so I went about looking for that, which I know we'll talk about here in a bit.

Acquania Escarne 5:44

Yes, absolutely. So that's really interesting to be in the space that used to give people money to buy homes, you knew what you were doing, I mean, you had to disclose that. And that's actually what sparks you to teach people how to get out of their mortgage faster. So I want to learn more about the actual method that you use. And the one that you talked about in a TED Talk that's like super popular. And you reference it as The Shred Method. So, you know, everyone is curious to know, what is The Shred Method? And how can I use it in my life?

Adam Carroll 6:20

Yes, here is the magic, The Shred Method is math. You know, it has it has no magic sauce, or we don't do anything super special, it really is just discipline and mathematics that we put together to make it work. Here's what it is ultimately, Acquania. It is using a home equity line of credit, as a checking account, with a software product that runs an algorithm, that that will show you exactly how much to send and when, from your HELOC to your mortgage to knock it down to zero, if that's your intent. And so what most people do, and this, this is a good way maybe to set it up. Because I find that metaphors are a good way for people to understand what we're doing. If you were to leave your house in the morning and go to the grocery store. And let's say you got back at 9am. Knowing that you had to go to the post office at 4pm. Would you leave your car idling in your driveway all day long?

Acquania Escarne 7:21

No.

Adam Carroll 7:21

Why wouldn't you?

Acquania Escarne 7:23

It'd be a waste of gas, energy, not that great for the environment.

Adam Carroll 7:28

All of the above, right? Someone could steal your car, I mean, all these things. And so what most people do financially is they leave their paycheck, which effectively is their car, idling in the driveway, which is their bank account for days, weeks, and sometimes months or years on end. All the while they're paying compound interest on these very large things like their home or their student loan balance, or their cars or what have you. And homes are really where the lion's share of this interest goes, right? And this was, this is exhibited on the Truth in Lending Disclosure. And what we don't realize is that if you look really closely at a mortgage, the majority of the interest that you pay is when?

Acquania Escarne 8:14

At the beginning.

Adam Carroll 8:15

At the very beginning, right, like the first three to five years, you're paying 90% interest.

Acquania Escarne 8:20

Yeah.

Adam Carroll 8:20

And how long do people generally stay in a home. Do you have any clue?

Acquania Escarne 8:25

I would say on average, seven, five to seven years is that.

Adam Carroll 8:30

Spot on 5.5 years, typically as the average amount, according to realtors, and the Association of Realtors. So, if that's the case then for the first five years of living in your home, if you refinanced it even once, and reset the clock, the majority of the payments you've made to your mortgage company, have gone to the mortgage company, they haven't gone to your mortgage, haven't gone to your equity. And so what I'm teaching people to do is how to reframe their home as an asset and putting more money into their home to create more equity which translates to more liquidity, which then leads them down the path of being able to invest the way rich people invest. Which is in candidly it's in real estate, it's in life insurance, it's in non traditional wholesale type investments, not retail $500 A month dollar cost averaging over time, which you got to invest for a really really long time to make any money.

Acquania Escarne 9:31

This is a lot of truths. And I love you said one of my favorite words life insurance, but we're not gonna go down that path. But yes, you are correct in that there's a lot of ways to go about it. But essentially what you're saying is by leveraging a home equity line of credit, you're giving yourself cashflow, to do other investing once you've paid down your home. And so tell me how long did it take you to use this method to pay down your home I know you saved 180,000 in interest, but what was the timeframe? Because I'd like to give people perspective if it's gonna take three to five years let's prepare you for three to five years.

Adam Carroll 10:10

Yes, yes. And this is a really great question because it really depends for every single individual, on your income and your expenses and how much debt you have to pay off, right? So I'll give you the raw numbers for me, and then give you some examples of others that have done it. My number was we had $250,000 left on our mortgage, when we really started using The Shred Method intentionally. And I say that we are using it intentionally because it became the center of our world, like we were, we were using this model over and over and over again, every week, every month. And in three points, it was about 3.5 years, we paid off 250,000. And in the process of doing that, over three and a half years, it was 2012 to about 2015, late 2015. And we got to a point where we had no mortgage, we had paid the thing completely off, we are running all of our income through a home equity line of credit. And we lasted for about nine to ten months with no mortgage payment. So our mortgage payment at the time was about $1,600 a month. And when you have an extra 1,600 every single month, it creates a lot of freedom and flexibility for you, right? And then what we did, and this may sound counterintuitive, Acquania but we refinanced our mortgage because rates had gone so low, that we were like, Okay, if we can take a loan out for 3%, let's go get 250 or $300,000 out of our home, which ended up being about half of what the home was worth. And we invested that. And we invested in a number of different areas, life insurance being one of them real estate being another. And then we proceeded to turn around and start shredding all over again. And the magic is because of our income, it increased through the investments. And through time, we were able to shred the $300,000 in about two and a half years instead of three and a half years.

Acquania Escarne 12:09

So not only were you able to leverage your house and create more income to invest, but then you were able to pay it back off faster the second time around. Potentially because you understood the strategy, you believed in it, you knew it worked, but then also realistically is because you increase your income. And sometimes that is what we need to do. I know that there's budgeting and cutting back expenses that people can do but sometimes the solution is you need to make more money. I actually tell clients that a lot, because sometimes they're thinking, Oh, if I cut out my lattes, and I'm like $5 lattes is not gonna do it, boo. Yeah, like sometimes we need to make more money. And it doesn't always have to be through your job. I mean, some people, maybe you want to be in a service-based career, but there's always side hustles, coaching, consulting, part-time jobs. I talk a lot about how when I first got engaged, my husband and I were determined not to have debt from our wedding. And I was in a position where I could work a part-time job at a clothing store I had experienced in retail. I hadn't done it since high school, but it was enough experience to start at a better wage and be able to work after hours. So I do my job during the day and I do retail at night and on the weekends. But that's how we didn't start our marriage with debt from a wedding. You know, So game changer. So yeah, I like that.

Adam Carroll 13:41

We talk a lot about how much people are playing offense versus defense. And, you know, you cut out lattes. Okay, that's, that's some defense. But you got to play offense too. And that is what we're talking about increasing your income, figuring out side hustles. I'll give you a case in point. I met a young lady. She was a junior in college. And she came up to me after an event that I was speaking at. She said, hey, I made $30,000 this last year. And I said good for you. How'd you do it? And she said, I sold on Poshmark. And she went after two things, Acquania. She was looking for a coat or not coat. She was looking for Gucci T-shirts and she was looking for Hunter rain boots. And so she'd go to all these resale shops and she'd pick those two things up and then turn around and she knew what she could make on Poshmark on those deals.

Acquania Escarne 14:31

Flipping clothes. I have a client who does that, too, has tons of inventory, and even has gotten into an automated process. You know, it's posted people like they bid because she's also on eBay. And then it gets shipped out. It's not even that complicated to take what you know people want to buy, find it at a reasonable price and then sell it for more. it's interesting and not to go on a tangent but USA Today actually released this week an article that online sales are up 25%. People are at home, they are still happily shopping. And anyone in the e-commerce space is benefiting from that additional retail sales and less people are going to the mall to find what they want. Because I can find it at home or on their phone from the comfort of a beach, in front of the TV. You know, and so, I am not mad at that and to be in college at the same time and to have the time and you know, wherewithal to say I can make more money, all I need to do is look for a particular brand, and quality product and resell it. So I actually love that. So you mentioned that you and your family you had higher incomes by the second time around when you were implementing The Shred Method. But did you also have any side hustles other than the passive income that you made from your investments and life insurance?

Adam Carroll 16:04

I consider myself a serial entrepreneur. So I've always got side hustles. But I will say the majority of the income that I was making, you know, my wife had and has a full-time job. She's a school nurse. So there really isn't time for her to do anything extra she comes home, she's cashed from the day. For me, I do a fair amount of speaking. And for me, the majority of my income is either made through that consulting, and now through shred. And then the sort of the fourth level of income is through investments that we make through the life insurance and whatnot. You know, to answer your question very directly, one of my side hustles is writing and publishing and creating intellectual property and content that I resell. So, I like to consider some of my rental properties, the books that I've written that just, they sell on Amazon, we sell them in bulk at speaking gigs. It's just another income stream. And I'll tell you, this is one of my favorite quotes that came from a motivational speaker I listened to years ago when he said if you're going to be wealthy if you're going to be financially free, you have to have massive, passive permanent streams of income. And that's what I've tried to create all the way along that have helped. You know, candidly, they help The Shred Method but they've helped us live the life that we're accustomed to living today.

Acquania Escarne 17:30

Absolutely. And I can agree with that. I really like that massive, passive, permanent streams of wealth. I love that. And we always talk about multiple streams of income, multiple streams of income. But it's not just about creating multiple streams of income. It's really leveraging what you already know, and I'm sure your books are about subjects that you're an expert on, you have the background to talk about, you're confident, you know what you're doing. And you're just sharing your story with others like that literally, so many people can do that, they have a story to tell, they have a lesson they've learned, they have a technique that they have perfected, and they could easily teach other people. But I also liked the fact that you're leveraging that to get into the speaking engagements or utilizing a speaking engagement as an opportunity to share your book. So you're not just depending on Amazon to sell your book or someone else to take a share when they're sharing it on their platform. That's actually really helpful too. And I have interviewed authors in the past, I'll make sure to include some links to those episodes in the show notes because one of the authors puts out like little short stories every couple of months. And that makes money for her on a consistent basis. So you can do it in several different ways and she's pursuing her hobby, essentially, but also her passion. So I definitely want to encourage individuals, if you are looking for ways to make additional income, and you have a story to tell, why not start with publishing books? That's a great idea. So, we talked a little bit about The Shred Method and how you leverage a home equity line of credit to really get your mortgage down to zero, not once, but twice. So, for those that are not quite familiar with this strategy, but they may be familiar with the term Infinite Banking, can you help my listeners understand what are the differences or even if these are the same thing? I just want to make sure they're clear on what Infinite Banking is and The Shred Method and whether or not they can do it for themselves?

Adam Carroll 19:39

Yeah, yeah, this is a great question. So they are different. The Shred Method in my opinion, what The Shred Method allows you to do is to get to Infinite Banking that much faster. And I'll describe the difference between the two and what they're both what they could be known as. So They're marketed and sort of promoted, I guess would be a good way to describe it under different terms. The Shred Method, sometimes it's been called Velocity Banking or Velocity Banking is an offshoot of what we do. There's another term called the Australian Mortgage, which is what The Shred Method is. So if someone's out there wants to do the research, any of those are somewhat interchangeable. The Shred Method from my perspective, Acquania is the way that we can create equity, we can increase and improve the efficiency of your cash flow on a month by month basis. What that does is it makes Infinite Banking more possible. And Infinite Banking is sometimes called bank on yourself. It's called Infinite Banking. It's called investment optimization sometimes, but the core of it is that you're using overfunded cash value life insurance, in order to build your own bank of money, that when it's time for you to go buy a car, or invest in real estate, or pay for school or buy a duplex or whatever it may be, that you've got money you can borrow from, you've got this pot of money that you can borrow from easily without a bankers approval. And this is the magic in it, you get to decide when, how and if it's paid back. And this is really important, when, how and if. So imagine borrowing money for a vehicle and instead of going to a bank or credit union saying I want to borrow 40,000, and they say, cool, you owe us 650 a month for the next five years. Now you're saying I'm gonna borrow 40,000 from this infinite banking policy, basically, I'm gonna bank on my own money. And I get to decide when that money is paid back, how it's paid back. And then if it's paid back is kind of interesting, because what we ultimately want to do is we want to get that money put back in so we can redeploy it again. But it's so much more powerful when we can borrow money for an investment, and then decide how much the payments are, when the payments are made, how we put them back in, and get the advantage of the fact that these policies have a death benefit to them. And they have other advantages like if I go into, I have to go into a nursing home at some point, I've got a rider that covers this long term care, that's super expensive. So there's all sorts of added benefits to using the Infinite Banking policy. They're very, they're two separate things, The Shred Method and Infinite Banking, but I think they go hand in hand in terms of creating lifelong wealth and freedom and flexibility over time.

Acquania Escarne 22:44

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Yes, this is like my love language.

Adam Carroll 23:49

Oh, good. Did I describe that okay for you?

Acquania Escarne 23:50

Yes, you describe it so well. It was, it was broken down. It's understandable. But it's also what I've been talking about for a really long time. But I just feel like sometimes I'm the only one out there singing a song and no one else knows the word. And now you're like, Oh, I know the melody the harmony. But yes, this is so amazing, because I have continued and I will continue to do so educate individuals on the power of life insurance and how you can use it to create your own bank, you can use the living benefits to help you really pay for medical costs so that you don't have to liquidate your retirement savings and your personal savings and your investments because an unexpected condition has now come up and impacted your quality of life. I love how you basically are setting the terms you have the power, you have the control. And I'm not just saying that because I sell life insurance, but I'm saying that because I used $40,000 in a life insurance policy to start my journey in real estate. And that is my true story, that is how I knew how to leverage it. And then I didn't always know that, but I knew at 25 when I got the policy, and my husband and I were deciding to get married, we wanted to protect each other. So we did get the policy under the purpose of life insurance, which is to provide for your surviving spouse if something happens. So, we knew what we were buying but we took advantage of the fact that we were young and healthy. We had the income that we could put into the policy, and we had time to sort of let the money grow and figure out how do we want to leverage it in the future, and all the stars aligned, and we were able to just really go, I don't want to say hard in the paint, but you know, like, just go down into the strategy and make it work for us, because we found the right opportunities, and we just were able to knock them out. So I always tell people that story, you know, 2016 was the pivotal year for us, because we invested in three different properties in like, eight months, you know, and that really sparked the interest and enthusiasm. I had already been interested in real estate, we already had rentals before. But before it was like, this is the house we're living in, and we're moving out, let's turn it into a rental. But 2016 was like we are going to leverage this money and get multiple properties and help people too because one of the properties was to help my mother-in-law secure her living situation in retirement, which was something that we were worried, you know, if we don't secure a place to live for her, now, she's going to have a rising costs in retirement that she may not be able to maintain. So let's lock in her real estate. And let's help her in any way we can. So it was a blessing to be able to do that to help other people to secure two properties. And to make sure my mother-in-law had a place to live. Now I will say, I've progressed, when we decided to kind of branch out and get out-of-state real estate in 2016. I did have my experiences and said you know what? rentals is nice. I like the cash flow. I like the experience. But I don't like to have this maintenance. I don't like maintenance. But I appreciated the opportunity to learn and I needed that opportunity to know that, hey, I like to invest in real estate. But maybe direct contact or even with property managers rentals is not for me. So I did it for two years and then I sold off some of the property and we still have one rental left. But then I got into passive real estate. And so I've been trying to tell people that what I like about my experience is it didn't discourage me from investing in real estate because I saw the power. I saw the cash flow. I knew that it works. But it gave me the enthusiasm to continue to look for other ways to invest in real estate that do require more capital. But because I set myself on the right path early, I have the capital to pull the trigger on bigger deals. So you know now I'm in multifamily syndications, I'm in hotel investing, both produce cashflow, but now I don't have to deal with toilets, tenants, maintenance repairs, phone calls, month-to-month bills, none of that.

Adam Carroll 23:55

Beautiful thing.

Acquania Escarne 24:56

And I like it. And everyone is like, how do you get into that and I'm like, it starts with getting your money right. At the end of the day, it really has to be discipline, like you said, you decide you're going to pay down debt, you're going to create extra cash flow, you're going to invest it, you're going to leverage those investments so that you can do other things. And so I have utilized life insurance, the stock market, regular savings, you know, you got to have your emergency fund, and just looking at what's around me, you know, like, what can I be doing to lower my taxable income, too. So I'm investing in kids college funds to lower my state taxes, you know, like whatever it is that I can do to take advantage of maximizing my income, minimizing my taxes. So I really liked this. This has been an awesome conversation on The Shred Method and Infinite Banking. I've never had anyone on the show to talk about these topics before, but I do talk about them a lot myself. And I you know, you're a living example, just like me, you use the strategy in your own life. It worked. It worked for you twice. So now you're telling other people about it. But I also want to present people the realistic perspective, that there are some cons to things that we do, right? So what are some of the cons to infinite banking? Are there any?

Adam Carroll 29:54

The cons to Infinite Banking, the here's what I typically see, Acquania. There are folks out there who are selling Infinite Banking as an investment tool. And it really is more of a process, right? Infinite Banking is not a product, it's a process. So you could you could overfund cash value life insurance, and just let the money sit in there as as capital, right, just in the in the account in the policy. But it's not really intended to be built that way. The purpose of building an Infinite Banking account, which is an overfunded cash value policy, is that you're deploying those funds into other cash generation methods. And there's, there's a big difference when going back a number of years, this all started with a guy named R. Nelson Nash, who wrote a book called Becoming Your Own Banker. And in the book, he touted, you know, if all you did was buy your own car, buy a car through your own Infinite Banking policy. And you did that every three or five years and you just repaid it back, you could grow your policy to a to a massive amount. I don't disagree with that. But there are savvier ways of of using the Infinite Banking policy, which you have alluded to. So do you mind if I like run through a scenario that would show exactly how this would work? So if someone, let's say that you've got a 25 year old Acquania, is looking at buying a duplex, let's say. So you and your husband very savvy, you save up three and a half percent down, you get an FHA, you know, low money down deal, and you get into this duplex. So you've got, let's say, 1,000 or $1,500 a month in rent coming in from the other side. And you leverage The Shred Method. So you're making decent money as 25 year olds, you get a little bit extra from rent, and you you shred, and what typically, within somewhere between two and five years, you can shred the entire mortgage if you wanted to. But we're going to do a little bit different, you're going to do it for about 18 to 24 months, you're going to shred the mortgage, to build equity in the property. And as you build equity in the property, your HELOC, a home equity line of credit grows, right, because you start out you don't have much equity. But after a year, you'll have pretty good equity might be 50, or $100,000 in equity in that property. After 24 months, you might have as much as 150 or $200,000 in equity in that property. And now you've got, let's say $100,000 line of credit. Well, what we then do is look at an Infinite Banking policy, and say, why don't you put $50,000 in premium in that policy, right? so it's 50,000, a year, which some people go 50,000 years a huge amount. And I don't disagree, it's a big amount of money. But you're gonna put it in there, and you have the opportunity to either pull it right back out again, and pay down the line of credit you just borrowed from, or you can leave it there. Or you could take 50 and put it into a syndication at an eight or nine percent return annually. So when you do that, it's going to increase your cash flow, which allows you to continue shredding faster. The next year, we had another $50,000 premium, we put it in there. Now we have $100,000 that effectively you had access to in that policy. And we just keep doing that over and over and over again. And before long, the entire HELOC is going to be shredded, the mortgage will be shredded on the duplex, and you have the option of either refinancing and taking out 200,000. And going into another syndication eight or nine percent, you know, annual. And the more we do this, the longer we do this, it just adds to the cash flow to the wealth accumulation. We minimize the amount of debt that we're paying the interest we're paying on the debt. And if someone's doing this really effectively, you do this 2, 3, 4 times over the course of 10 years, you're going to have enough passive income coming in, that you're likely going to be financially free, because your expenses are so low, right? You've figured out how the cash flow works through the system. And at that point, you have created what we call a situation of being money irrelevancy or money is no longer relevant to you in your life. So we just like to your point, we have to create consistency, we have to have some discipline, and where things can go off the rails is if someone is seeing this $200,000 HELOC that's available and they're like cool, now I'm gonna go buy a boat and a jetski. And you know, that truck that I've had my eye on it, whatever else. We got to have a long term outlook on what we're building, because you will be able to create a point in time where you can have anything you want in life. You just can't have it in the first year or first two years.

Acquania Escarne 34:50

Yes, that is key. And so I always tell people that first 12 months before that real return hits its essential that you stick to the strategy. And understand and remember what the strategy is. So it's so sad when I see people who are like, I don't know what I bought, I think I remember, I don't, I just don't know what to do, I'm stuck. So I just quit. And I'm like, what? No, you are almost there, you are literally, on the right path. So that's important. But I have another one that I don't know people don't like to think about. But at the end of the day, we are leveraging life insurance. So one thing you have to remember is life insurance, no matter what type of insurance it is, will still be based on your health, your age, your hobbies, your habits, right? But mostly your health and your age. So that is a key if you do have to be, maybe not the healthiest person in the world. But you should have a pretty good health history so that you can get the policy at reasonable rates. So this strategy can really work for you. Because if you're not insurable, you can't do the strategy. But that's something that most of the time is not an issue, especially if you're doing it at a younger age, or, at a time when you're healthy, or you have good habits, you can get qualified, and then you can leverage the strategy and follow the process. The other thing I noticed is people don't stick to the plan. And that's not a fault of the strategy. That's a fault of the person. But that's something where coaching really helps if you follow your coach and kind of stick to the plan, ask questions at any point in the process where you're confused, just sit down and go over it again. I'm really careful about how I explain things and when I don't explain it to your understanding, I always try to explain it again in a different way. Because sometimes it could be you're a visual learner, and you need to see it, or, you know, maybe you understand it through analogies, and I need to use that. But that's the other thing I've noticed is a lot of people, they get their ears perk up when they hear infinite banking, financial freedom, this vehicle to do more for myself, but then they don't listen to the details. And then they are they do business with the wrong products? Because they just heard cash value, life insurance, okay, let me go home and try to do this, instead of working with the person who's done it, and it's telling you about it.

Adam Carroll 37:32

And I want to touch on that because you, you know, this model, you know, this this industry, you're you're obviously knowledgeable about all of it. What I've seen some people do is they will sell and you're exactly right, they'll sell this as like the end all be all product. And, and what I've seen in a number of cases is as I'm going through and trying to help someone use shred as an example. And, and I'll go through their monthly bills, and I see $2,000 a month that has to go out to a life insurance policy. And what it does is it adds additional stress to them, that they now have this big nut to crack every single month, when it may actually be one step premature. Because they could do a $25,000 your premium. If they were leveraging The Shred Method in advance because then they could have a bigger premium and have more money in that policy sooner. So there are sometimes we're putting the cart before the horse was some people and agents may get really aggressive on what the premium is going to be because it could have a really nice commission attached to it. Someone could say they want to do it, but in the end, has a job loss or a break in income somehow or they're just not prepared to do what is required to make this work. So I do agree, I think you have to have a healthy level of caution going into it and work with someone who really understands how to set up Infinite Banking and a policy like this to work for their particular situation.

Acquania Escarne 39:06

Absolutely. And I think that's key and just being patient because one thing you said and but I want to kind of touch on a little bit more is knowledge is power. But you don't have to rush to execute all the knowledge you have right? There are phases to our journeys, especially financial journeys. And we have to give ourselves grace that maybe we're not able to execute that strategy on the very next day that we learned it. But we can plant the seed, we can work on paying down our debt, we can get our bills under control, we can make more money. And then when we have all of these things in place that we really need to execute the strategy well, that's when we pull the trigger. And so there could be a possibility where you might need six months to clean some things up, to knock out some debt, to figure out strategically what are you going to attack first and how are you going to responsibly be able to do it. Because I would hate for someone to invest, you know, to get a life insurance policy, like you said that they can't really afford. And now they're stressed about paying this policy. And then they're not fully executing the strategy in a way that it was intended because they were so anxious to just jump right in. So I think that's key. And I, you know, I love this conversation and where we've been able to go and kind of share, because these are strategies that I know wealthy people are using. And a lot of communities are just not aware of them. They weren't taught to think this way. You know, so many people were raised in a household where it was all about the bills you had to pay and you living off of what's left. And that is not the life that I want to live. And anyone should have to live, right? So I love it. So Adam, this has been really awesome and I want to thank you for your time but before you go, I have to ask you my signature question. The name of the podcast is called The Purpose of Money so I would love to know, what is your purpose for money?

Adam Carroll 41:13

Oh, man, this is a great. So I've been thinking about this question because I've listened to a number of your shows and I'm always like, the purpose of money for me. I view money a little bit differently than most in that money for me and the purpose of it certainly right now in my lifetime, when my kids are still at home, is to build experiences for my family, to keep my family really tight. So, you know, as an example, I love doing Saturday breakfasts. So like, let's go out as a family and just have a big old family brunch or breakfast. Because it's all, we're tight, or together, we're communicating. We're having fun, we're laughing. In another case in point, I took a month-long vacation in 2019 with my family, we went to Italy for the better part of four weeks. And it was just, it was awesome. And for me, that is the purpose of money to build memories and experience and closeness and bonding. It's not about stuff for me, it's about the experiences.

Acquania Escarne 42:20

Man, I tell you, if I didn't know any better, I think you were my BFF because you know everything about me. I am the queen of trips and experiences and my family has now my family and my extended family. Now refuse to travel without me. They always want my itinerary, my ideas, make it happen because I will land in a country, rent a car, explore the roads, see everything, do everything, and take tons of pictures. And so it is on my bucket list to take the summer off. You know, I want to go summer, somewhere. But I would love to do a month or two months and just really get to explore somewhere and Italy is a great place to do it. I lived in Italy for a year. I can tell you it's a fabulous place to eat a lot of great food, gain weight easily and enjoy your life. So.

Adam Carroll 43:15

Where did you live?

Acquania Escarne 43:16

I lived in Bologna? Have you been to Bologna?

Adam Carroll 43:20

So I have not. Bologna is one of the places on my list though. We were in Sorento for the for that month.

Acquania Escarne 43:28

See and to be able to spend a month in one place, it's like you almost become a local you know, like you get to figure out the favorite store and the street and that neighborhood and

Adam Carroll 43:38

Michels was our favorite pizza place that at least four or five times yes

Acquania Escarne 43:43

And you know, in Italy, there's no such thing as a quick dinner. So I'm sure you sat down and four hours later, maybe two. They're so friendly, and they bring you the limoncello to have the dessert, they want to talk about the ingredients in the food, and you're like, where did my day go? So I love that. But that is definitely how I live life and also one of my purposes for money is to provide memorable lifetime experiences because life is short. And you can't take all this money with you, but you can definitely use it to make an impact and to serve others. So Adam, thank you so much for being on The Purpose of Money Podcast. I cannot wait when this episode comes out, guys, I want you to leave a comment, leave a five-star review and definitely contact Adam. If you want to learn more, check out his books. I'll make sure to include links to his social media platforms, his TED Talk, and how you can connect with him in the show notes. And I encourage you, Adam to say hello to my listeners when they reach out.

Adam Carroll 44:51

I will do that, Acquania You're the best.

Acquania Escarne 44:53

All right. Thank you so much. Hey, guys, you know how it goes. Until next time, keep building generational wealth.

Thank you for listening to The Purpose of Money Podcast. For more resources and information, check out my website, thepurposeofmoney.com and while you're there, please sign up for our newsletter so you have the latest information on new episodes and blog posts. Until next time, keep creating freedom in your life today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai