(0:00 - 5:42) Many financial advisors will recommend full or universal life insurance policies as these build equity over time. However, while this may be good advice for the wealthy and high-income earners, it may not be the best path for the common person who is often, especially in today's society, struggling just to get by every month. Oliver Ross of Liberty Lives, who has been a guest on my show in the past with a series on protecting your privacy, joins me today to discuss the ins and outs of life insurance. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and understanding the pros and cons of whole life versus term may not only help you to make a better decision on which option will best protect your family in the event of your untimely death, but even be a strategy for freeing up money for savings and investments. As Oliver points out, the goal with any form of life insurance is to reach in life a level of wealth where you no longer need insurance. Oliver, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me back. It's been quite some time since we last spoke when we did a privacy series a couple of years ago, and then you were very kind to send me an email last week talking about basic financial knowledge really, because I do and my viewers know that I do do a quarterly update with a team of financial experts, but truthfully a lot of what they talk about is for higher end, high net worth investors. What we're going to talk about today is for the everyday person, to help them to understand these financial concepts so that they can build a better future for themselves. And it starts with something what you call a FIN number. Would you please explain what that is? Yeah, so a FIN number stands for a financial independence number. Every single person, no matter your age, no matter what you've been doing, has a financial independence number. So what it really comes down to is you're planning for retirement, right? You're working every single minute of every day to try and have enough money so that you can do something. But, or whatever, it doesn't have to necessarily be retirement. But what you're never told and what you're never given advice on is what number you're trying to get to. And everybody has that. So if there's, whatever your situation is, if it's dealing with, if you have CPP or whatever coming in, there's still a number that you need to achieve to be able to hit your goal and be able to retire or do what you want in the way you want so that you're no longer concerned monetarily. Right, and now you've broken that down into basically sort of three steps. You've got the basic level, then the medium-term planning and the long-term planning. So let's talk about that. Especially, I think, let's talk about the short-term planning because that's where a lot of people get themselves into trouble. Exactly. People don't have emergency funds ready and they're thinking about, oh, I'm going to put my money in whatever asset. It doesn't even matter. It's important that you know where your money's going, but some people say everything has been gold. I'm not of that philosophy. Some people give you different advice, but the point is we're planning for different time periods. So in the short term, that's really when it comes to like emergency funds. You never know what's going to happen in your life, or maybe it's your spouse or your children's lives. And if you're strapped for cash for whatever, medical or something like that, it's going to be very difficult to actually deal with that situation well. And at that point, if you don't have the money set aside, or you haven't planned to keep this money in a certain way so that it's very low risk and that you always have it and access to it in a meaningful way, then, like I said, you could be in a situation where you're going to need money and you're not going to have it. And that really is when people get the most concerned. And like if you're dealing with some emergencies, it's people always encounter things where they are not quite there with what they need. And it's important that as part of a holistic plan, you're covering that short term period on top of the other components. When we have the medium term, we're talking more along the lines of a purchasing a home, moving, potentially we're talking about student stuff, RESPs, things like that. And those can be a little bit more risky in the way they're structured so that you're able to capture more growth. And you're also but you're protecting it in a way that you actually still going to have access to it when you need. The whole issue with money in general is it's so much easier to spend it than it is to save it. Everybody needs to spend money, groceries and everything is going up in price. So it's it's very hard to manage cost of living if you're not properly putting a plan in place that deals with all the different time frames. And in the long term, the easiest one in a general sense anyway, because it's really for most people, it's retirement, whatever age they desire to have as their retirement and however much money they want as their retirement. But that if you're planning properly and you have somebody who's sat through doing each component, then the the long term can be the most risk on and it should be the most risk on because that's what that's you're looking for your growth, that you can achieve that goal. (5:43 - 7:27) Right now, let's talk about some practicalities, because of course, there's a lot of people today, especially now, who are very, there's really struggling financially, life has gotten very, very expensive. So I'm not talking about having the self discipline to put money away, let's assume that somebody's got that. The problem is, they're at a point right now where they're having to spend basically everything just to survive. Yeah, what's your recommendations for those people to put themselves in a position where they can actually start putting away maybe a couple hundred dollars every month, even if that's all it is, and eventually get to the point where they do have some emergency funds? Yeah, so the way they have to really structure is you have to go through what you're paying for now, most people, whether they're aware of it, most people aren't. And that's completely normal. They're paying for things like mortgage insurance, creditor insurance, and they're sometimes they're paying too much on their vehicle insurances and things like that, where the money that they're spending isn't going to something that will pay if something were to happen to them while they're building their wealth. So they're spending at some people spend upwards of $1,500 a month, and you never know who you are until you've actually gone through it. But where they're spending this money on something that really when you're talking about covering what you need to have covered, that money should be a couple hundred maximum, that's probably even pushing it depending on exactly what your financial situation is. And so people are, that's where you can find your most disposable income on things that obviously, no, we shouldn't be sacrificing the quality of the food that you're eating. (7:27 - 13:07) You shouldn't be sacrificing the important things in your life to try and make your future happen. But you need, but things that you go into a bank, you sign some papers, you're getting your mortgage and what they tend to do at a bank is you get your mortgage, they give you a pile of paperwork, they say, sign the line, oh, this is mortgage insurance, just sign on it, it'll cover you for what you need, don't worry about it, there's no issues, be happy about it. And then people just sign it and they'll end up spending money on something that they have no idea they're spending firstly, and then they don't know what it's actually doing. There's a lot more intricacies to it, and especially with the life insurance side, which we should get into. And let's do that because what we're talking about here, and I'm no financial wizard myself, so if I get terms wrong, please correct me. But what we're talking about here is term insurance policies, where you're paying every month to have that insurance, but you're not accruing any asset from it, you're not getting any money put away, whereas with... Okay, yeah, this is a big important thing that needs to be said, and everybody, if they're not doing this, they need somebody to sit down with. It's actually the opposite in practice, you do not want to have assets attached to your insurance, because what always happens, there's three different types of policies out there, and then there's mortgage insurance, which is a different animal altogether. And there's group insurance and things like that, but those mortgage insurance and creditor insurance I'll talk about, but those are a little bit different. There are three types of insurance. There's only one that all the experts, wealthy barber, people like that, if you've ever heard, there's research, plenty of research out there on the topic. But there's three types of insurance. One is useful, two of them land up, you overspend, and you don't land up being able to set things aside for many different issues, many different reasons. So there's term, universal life, and whole life. Term is the best if it's done right, period. Because what you can do with a term, especially stuff that I can do, is you can set it up. So what really comes down to is the idea of the theory of decreasing responsibility. So when you're younger, starting off a family, do you have kids, you're probably trying to save up for some of their education, you probably still have some form of student debt, so you've accrued a lot of debt. And in most people's situations, at that point in life is going to be when they have the most debt, including a mortgage and all those different things. And you work through your life to try and decrease your debt, right? Everybody wants to be debt free. And it's not even impractical or impossible to get to that point where you are debt free. And then on the other angle, usually when you're starting off at that point in life, you don't have very many investments, you haven't had time, maybe you weren't given, you weren't sat down with when you were younger to try and set stuff up and things like that. So you're starting really at zero on the investment side or close to it, and 100 on the debt side. And your goal to hit retirement is that, and with your insurance to cover that window, is that you have 100 percent, you've made what you need so that you can do what you want and at whatever time period you want, and you're no longer concerned about debts. So the details, though, when it comes to that are really important, because this is where people get offered a lot of bad advice and they don't know what they're signing. Or they hear something online, some popular guy, a TikTok video or something saying, this is the way you need to go, or because whatever their research says or whoever is paying them. But there's always fine print in these insurance policies that will end up hurting you in ways that you're not aware of. So when we really talk about the basics here, whole life is a policy where you're paying for something, you're paying for insurance for your entire life. Firstly, if you're ever structuring insurance that way, then you have to think why you're purchasing insurance in the first place. Because insurance as a whole, life insurance is the biggest of this, but it should be a impermanent need. Your goal with the insurance is to not need it anymore. You want to be able to be insurance free then you're saving money. And you're using the insurance to cover three fundamental details of your life. So we have debt, we have final expenses, funerals, costs, stuff like that, that you don't want to have any, obviously you don't want your family having to pay out of pocket for a funeral. And the most important one that most people overlook when they're dealing with insurance is income replacement. The whole point of having the life insurance policy is that you're able to leave your spouse or your family in a situation where they're able to maintain their lifestyle. Because what tends to happen is after one of the husband or wife dies or what can happen is you're in a situation where okay, the insurance covers my mortgage grade, the insurance is covering maybe the final expenses, not always because usually what tends to happen is you're given a number and you never know why you purchased that amount of insurance. (13:08 - 14:48) It's $500,000 let's say, but your actual needs because of your mortgage and all your income replacement are $700,000. So your family is going to be left shy in that type of situation where at that point what tends to happen is homes get sold, lifestyles have to change and that really hurts the potential of your family growing their wealth and being able to grow and however they want to be able to continue their lifestyle. There's a lot more to it. I don't know which direction you want to go. I'm going to stop you here and ask a question before we move on. So what you're telling me is actually quite contrarian to what I've heard from most financial advisors and they want to recommend the whole life because you can borrow against it down the road interest-free because it's your money, you put the money into it so you can borrow that money. But what you're saying is it's better to go with the cheaper term life insurance and use the money you saved to go into savings and investments because of course your objective is to get to the point where you don't need life insurance, where you have enough money to put away that if you die your family's going to be fine. So here's the real trick with whole life and most of the policies. I've never seen a policy that doesn't have this. You're not borrowing against yourself when it comes to borrowing money. Firstly, really when you break it down there's two approaches to dealing with investments when it comes to whole life. So one way is you're setting money aside, TFSA, stuff like that, you're able to tax shelter and you're keeping the money what you exactly need in the insurance. (14:49 - 16:15) So that's the way that is recommended because of the pitfalls of whole life. There's four big concerns with whole life. Start off with most whole life policies, you are stuck paying into the investment component for anywhere from two to five years before any money actually goes into the policy. They'll tell you in the fine print, and it's easy to point out. So if you call them up two years into the policy, and let's say you're putting $100 away into the policy, you call them up two years in, they're going to tell you you have $0 in the account. That's great, you've just wasted $2,400 because it's going to their different service fees and all things like that. That's one big component of it. The second component is usually they have a window, a rate of how much your money grows. So once you hit, let's say you hit past the two year period, at this point, whatever money you're putting away, fine. Now it's going towards an investment, whatever investment vehicle they decide. But they're going to tell you usually it's between one to 4% is what you will make on your investment in there. But if the markets are doing really well the way they were last year, and it's coming in 10, 12, 20%, depending on which market you're looking at, they're going to cap you at that 4% and take the rest for profits for themselves. (16:17 - 18:00) And again, they tell you that in the paperwork. Maybe the sales advisor there won't tell you because they won't know potentially. It's not usually an issue of malice because what it really comes down to is they are trained to do it a certain way, and they don't even necessarily know what they're selling. So you have to have somebody who's actually able to look at it and point out this is the problem that you're dealing with. Now when you're talking about the borrowing aspect, that's where a lot of people get sold on the policy, but it doesn't really work the way they're hoping it would work. So you're able to borrow against yourself, and usually the interest rate is anywhere from 6% to 8% in that window. But the thing is you're not able to actually take out that money. It's borrowing against your policy. So your premiums that you're paying in and the entire way the structure is could potentially get hurt because you're forced to be paying interest back on your own money that you have set aside versus if you're setting it aside in an investment account, there's no payment like that. You take out the money. It's done, right? It's your money. And then on top of that, let's say some unfortunate situation happens, and you're getting ready to take your money out of your account for whatever. You want to make a big trip out of what you set aside. On your way to the bank, for example, you get in a car accident and you die. Where would you hope the money went? Well, obviously people hope it's going to go to their family. (18:01 - 19:00) And the reality of most of those policies is the money from the investment goes back to the company. So you're in a situation where you're paying into something that you can't get the most out of versus if you're spending it into a TFSA, RRSP, you're properly setting it up, you have somebody who's guiding you. With quality investments that don't come from a bank, your family is going to get the money, the beneficiary, or wherever you want, right? The beneficiary on file will get that money. And if you still had a term insurance policy going, they're going to get the term payment. So it's really when you break down the key components why whole life is something that people think of as important, most of the investment parts, they work against you. They work against your growth potential to actually have that wealth that you want in retirement. (19:02 - 19:07) Okay. So now we had talked about three different types. You talked about the whole life and the term, but there was a third one. (19:07 - 20:36) UL, so universal life, it's very similar to whole life in some ways. And in other ways, there's more types to whole life, arbitral universal life, pardon me. There's more types to universal life because there's two ways they do it. And it's usually sold in a similar... The way they tend to sell universal life to young people is, oh, it'll help you save for your first home. Now, that is also silly if you really think about it, because you have these registered accounts that you can put money in to save and have your money sheltered and obviously be able to get the returns. But there's two types. There's level cost of insurance. And there's a year to date or they go YRT or ART. So with YRT, ART, every single year, your insurance is being reassessed. So if you're paying a premium, let's say you're a 20-year-old man, you're paying the premium of a 20-year-old man when you're 20. But there's a really fancy looking sheet in every universal life policy where they go through and it looks horrendous. It's very difficult to navigate if you don't know what you're looking at, because they give you price for $1,000 of insurance and they give you to like 10 decimal places for every year. (20:36 - 21:21) So obviously, it's the way that companies are able to show you, but make it so daunting that you're not able to actually understand what you're looking at. But what really happens is, so you're 20 years old, you're paying, let's say, $30 to the insurance. If you're going to keep that policy, which if you're starting a universal life, you would probably be looking to keep that policy long term. By the time you're 60, 70 years old, you're going to be paying something like triple, quadruple, usually in that range, because obviously every year you're reassessed. And as you're reassessed every year, the price goes up and up exponentially. So you get to a point where the insurance obviously becomes untenable. (21:22 - 22:48) Now, of course, this happens with term insurance too, as you get older. But if you followed the plan I'm talking about, and you've invested the money you saved, by the time you get to the point where that term insurance becomes odiously expensive, you don't need it anymore. There's another point to term, which will, because there's a reason why the term policies that I deal with are the best that you can get. But let's finish on universal life, and then we'll explain why that term makes the most sense in general, that the type of term that I have makes the most sense, and why most term doesn't actually. There's so many pitfalls in this whole field. So firstly, you're getting hurt with the cost of insurance going up over time. With the LCOI, the level cost of insurance, you're paying a lot more on the insurance front, probably more than you will need to, period. Because obviously you're insuring yourself for your lifetime. So they're going to charge you more. That's just the reality of the way the market, and that's a part of the whole life too. The actual insurance component is a higher fee, because you're paying for something you're expected to have 50, 70 years. But what tends to also happen, and this is the biggest issue with universal life, the LCOI in general is very similar to whole life with the different policy components. (22:49 - 33:38) But the YRT, ART type, where they continue to get reassessed every year, there is a point, so you're paying, let's say you're paying $100 into your account per month. So you're starting off at $30 worth of insurance, right? There's going to become a point where your investments are going to be used towards paying for your insurance, because unless you're going to start, you're diligently watching as the price of insurance is going up, you're going to hit a point where your insurance cost is going to be more than $100. And then that's burning on those investments that they put into that universal policy, now it's all being eaten up by your premium, because your risk has gone up, thus their charge to you has gone up. Exactly. And you don't come out ahead. And then what happens is, once the investment component is eaten up, they're going to give you a call, they're going to tell you this is the cost of your, or they'll send you an email, depending on how the company goes. They'll give you a call, they'll tell you, well, we're going to have to close the policy because you no longer are able to pay for it. So either you can start paying the $200 a month on just the premiums for the insurance, or the policy is gone. And you've lost the time that you're putting in to make that worthwhile, that all with your investment component, you're losing your future potential because they're eating it up. Okay. And then, yeah, when we go back, so that's really, those are the two. And then mortgage insurance, creditor insurance, those are things that depreciate in value over time because you're trying to pay them down, right? So if you're paying, let's say you have a $500,000 mortgage, and you're paying $50 a month on your insurance. There's two different ways it goes. You can you and your spouse, assuming you have a spouse, are both paying $50 a month, or they sometimes combine it the way they list things, it would be $100 a month. But you're both paying towards the same policy. So if something were to happen to both of you, first off, you're going to get only whatever the dollar figure is for the mortgage. That's one part when you can pay for term, where you have two separate policies, both covering the mortgage and your needs. So if you both perish in some unfortunate situation, the family is going to get double. That's one part. The second and the really big part that is incredibly important to understand is that it's a product that you're paying the same dollar figure for, but it's depreciating in value because your work is to pay down your mortgage, right? You don't want to be stuck with that death pledge your whole life. I'm assuming you've had somebody on before mention what mortgage really stands for, the disgusting industry. But your goal is to pay that down, right? So let's say you're doing really well. Five years down the road, you've got your mortgage down to $400,000. You think the bank is going to reassess what you have to pay for your insurance? No, they're going to say you're still paying the $50 and you're going to be stuck at that until you pay down to zero. So you're paying for something that you're getting less out of over time. And with term, with the proper term, it's a completely different animal because we can get into this a little more, but before I do, you have any questions about any part that I want to go into a little more detail on? No, but I do want to remind the viewers that this discussion isn't just about understanding insurance. This whole thing started when I asked you about those people who are in this position where they're just getting by every month and where do they want to put some money away, but where do they find it? So what you're talking about here is looking at those expenses that you don't even possibly think about every month, things like your mortgage, your insurance, whatever, and looking for ways that you can pair those expenses down so you do have some money left over that can be put away into savings and investments. So I just wanted to clarify that that's a second purpose for what we're discussing right now. So good. Now let's get into term insurance policies. Yeah, that's really the main goal of this whole thing. You want to be able to leave some form of wealth for your family. So term, what usually happens when you deal with a bank or somebody who doesn't have the proper products available is they're going to offer you probably a 10 or 20 year term. If they have a 20 year, that's sometimes surprising. Usually it's a 10 year term that they offer. And like you were saying, you get reassessed after that 10 year period. So let's say your needs are that you're covering whatever, $500,000 worth, and you're getting it when you're 35. So you're paying, I don't know, $50, $30, $40 a month. Once you're reassessed at 45, it's probably going to go up, they tell you in the policies, but it's probably going to be something like $80, $90 a month for the same coverage. The difference with the appropriate type of term to match your needs, which I have term policies that go all the way to 35 years to make sure that it actually covers that window covering the amortization of your mortgage, so that you and it can be slightly past it so that you have that wiggle room window, where let's say something doesn't go the way you want it. You have to do a little bit of financial maneuvering, you're still going to be covered within that appropriate window to cover your needs at an affordable price where you're able to set things aside. So while we're dealing with in the best term is a 35 year or whatever, it could be less, like I said, depending on the mortgage and other expenses where we've properly accounted for all of your needs. You've gotten rid of your mortgage insurance, you've got rid of your creditor insurance, you don't have you're not paying into any silly group plans where you have no control. This is locking you in for the term that you need. That's always cancelable if so if you land up doing really well, you get a new job, you find, I don't know, you become a Bitcoin millionaire, whatever, and you're doing really well, you cancel the insurance. That's really what it comes down to because it's here to sit to protect that window, but we're setting it aside with all your needs in mind. You have that window covered where it will not go up in premiums during that window. You have set aside with the company that I'm going to pay this dollar figure, whatever you assess that with the proper medical assessments and things like that, but you're paying that dollar figure from this date till 35 years from now. What we do alongside that is we set you up in a way that whatever money you're able to now save, or maybe there was some money that you had aside anyway, but that you were planning on saving for investments, what we do is we put it all into a financial game plan where we're able to see exactly the dollar figure that you would need to save per month to hit that financial goal so that you're going to be able to retire and then at that retirement or stop working, whatever you want to consider it, doesn't really matter. The term doesn't matter. It's whatever age and whatever your needs are, we get that dollar figure and we figure out that monthly allotment that we will hopefully we're taking out of some of the things that you shouldn't be paying for so that you're able to have that point where, okay, I'm able to cancel. I no longer have my mortgage. I no longer need the insurance. My investments are doing what they need to and they'll be doing what they need to into retirement or into the next point of your There is a major stock market crash coming that will rival the crash of 1929. But there is a way to not only protect your wealth, but profit in the coming crash. The stock market chart today looks exactly like the charts prior to October 1929. Banks are disastrously over leveraged, and several major US banks have already failed. And the CDIC, the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation, doesn't have nearly enough money to cover depositors. If you have money in the bank or the stock market, it is time to get out. Governments and corporations around the world are buying up precious metals in record amounts because they know the coming crash will make their other assets nearly worthless. You can buy precious metals at wholesale prices through New World Precious Metals at commissions substantially below other Canadian brokerages. And you can even transfer savings in your RRSP tax-free. To get more information, use the link below this video to contact New World Precious Metals. They will answer any questions you may have. You may also wish to contact Adrian Spitters, a personal financial consultant who successfully predicted the stock market crashes of 2000 and 2008. You will find Adrian's contact information below as well. Finally, if you want more information on the coming crash and what you can do to protect yourself, your family, and your assets, see my most recent quarterly update with my team of financial experts at ironwolfreport.com. By clicking the link below to contact New World Precious Metals, you will also be helping to support our efforts to bring Canadians the truth as we are an approved affiliate partner. And I'd like to add a personal story about that term, life insurance, where you mentioned the premiums don't go up during that term. It's a set term, we set it up and it's going to run to the end of that term. Even if something changes drastically in your medical situation, as happened to me, my life insurance, my term insurance was actually quite affordable up to the age of 50 because I was in excellent physical condition, I had no medical problems, nothing in my medical history. Then at the age of 50, I got stage four cancer. Fortunately, I still had two years left in my term. (33:40 - 34:06) So no change, if I had not survived and there was about a one in five chance I wouldn't have, my family would have been looked after. Right. That's exactly it. You're in the driver's seat. And yeah, it's a tough situation, but you never know what life's going to bring you, right? So you want to be in the driver's seat. And with having a term insurance that goes to the 35 year or the 30 year, whatever, from wherever you're starting, and make sure that that length is covered. (34:07 - 35:07) You said then whatever happens after that point, you've already had your medical assessment. So it's not like something with mortgage insurance where they're going to do your assessment after death. So if something changes, they can't do anything about it. You are in control. And that's the whole point of having the appropriate insurance that you can be the one to say, okay, I don't need it anymore. Great. It's done. And the only downside there was that when it did run out as a term two years later, now, obviously I didn't die. I'm still here. I was not able to get life insurance for another year after that, because most of them want you to be three years cancer-free before they'll insure you again. And when I did get insurance again, it was more expensive than it used to be. However, you still got that good point that here I am one of the healthiest guys around, last person you would expect to end up with stage four cancer, but I was protected and I knew my family was going to be okay if I didn't survive. (35:08 - 35:49) Yeah, exactly. But then even better, let's say you're 30 when you start the insurance policy, right? As an example, if we did the 35 year plan where you're covering your mortgage and all your expenses properly, you get cancer at 50, there's not going to be that window where you're going to have to be reassessed or anything. Your insurance costs won't go up after something like that if you survive, because again, we would have it set up. So when you're 65, you've got your investment set aside, you're done and we don't want you getting another policy at 65. That's the point. If you do, something wasn't done right for your situation. (35:50 - 37:21) Okay. So now let's talk about some practicalities. We've talked about mortgage insurance and how a lot of people just sign on the dotted line at the bank when they get their mortgage and now they're paying too much for that. We've talked about term insurance policies and the different options for that. First question that would occur to me, because I admit my wife and I made that mistake. Now we own our home at this point, but when we had a mortgage, yep, we got our insurance from the bank. If you wanted to cancel that insurance and then go look for more practical, cheaper insurance, for something like yourself, how difficult is it to go to the bank and keep your mortgage, but get rid of the insurance that's on it? That part's not the difficult part. The issue that most people tend to have when that happens is if they've had it for, let's say, 20 years, as an example, and then they've heard this advice and they want to cancel it. The one part that's the biggest problem is they can cancel it. Fine. And it's great because then they can shop around for the interest rate, a cheaper interest rate too. So they're no longer burdened to being stuck with the bank with their insurance. The only part that has the potential to have a problem, if it's not done early enough, is now you're shopping around for term, instead of being 30, you're 50. So your costs and premiums are going to go on. That's why the best thing you can do is you talk to somebody early on who has the tools available to them. (37:22 - 38:00) So here I was talking specifically about the mortgage insurance here. Yeah. But that's my point. With the mortgage insurance, you can cancel it easily. That's not the issue. It's the issue of even on the mortgage insurance, you're assessed at a certain age. It's signing it on, but you're assessed with that period of time. Because they're assessing you, they're still going to be performing some form of test after your death to figure out if you actually earned that insurance. But my point is, if you cancel the insurance, so you purchase the mortgage insurance at 30 years old. (38:00 - 38:22) Okay. I think I had a misunderstanding, Oliver. You're talking about mortgage insurance that pays off your mortgage in the event of your death. I was thinking of mortgage insurance in the terms of, say, house insurance, where if your house burns down. Oh, that's a completely different animal. Completely different animal. Okay. So, yeah. I brought that up because if I was confused, I'm sure some of the viewers were too. (38:23 - 38:46) So now that we've clarified that. When I was talking about mortgage insurance, it was specifically on the mortgage itself. It's not any sort of damages to the home or things like that. That's a different animal. I have partners that I deal with who would be able to offer different types of... And that's a completely different animal because it's not based off your health. That's based off the neighborhood assessments and stuff like that. (38:47 - 41:56) Right. But specifically when it comes to affordability of the mortgage, when you're purchasing mortgage insurance specifically to pay off the mortgage, no other doodads or anything like that, it makes it very difficult for you to move the insurance, move the mortgage because what's going to happen is you're going to be forced to cancel your insurance because you're moving it. And so the interest rate change, if you're able to save a percent, that would be crazy if you were, but any sort of savings you wouldn't be able to really get. But my point when it comes down to it is mortgage insurance, if you're paying into it at 20 years old and you want to move it at 40, or you want to cancel it at 40, they're not going to stop you from canceling. None of these... There might be something in the fine print in one of these policies out there. They always have different things, but for the most part, they can't stop you from canceling a policy. It just lands up being that you're reassessed at an older age, which that can cause some problems if it's an increase in price. Okay. So now let's start trying to tie all of this together because we got a little bit... I sidetracked us. You were starting early on the interview to talk about the short, medium and long-term planning. And I interrupted you with the question about, okay, what if you're in that situation where you want to put away some money, but you max out every month? And this is where we got into discussion about insurance and ways that you might be able to change the way you're paying for these things that are almost sort of out of mind expenses, where you set them up and they just come into your bank account every month. But you might be able to reduce those and actually free up some money without affecting your standard of living. So that was how we got into all of this. So now let's get back to that short, medium and long-term and let you fill in details now that we've talked about the insurance. Yeah, exactly. So now the insurance is all part of the proper thin financial game plan, your financial independence number. You're covering your family to that point. Now we're talking about that separate entity, which is equally as important as the investment component so that you can hit your goal. And then the insurance, gone. Now you've reduced all your expenses. You're looking towards being able to live your own way without having to be worried about money and to be able to maybe even leave something to your kids, hopefully, and really have that type of freedom in mind that, well, come what may, I planned it out. So the short term, so yeah, let's say we fixed everything and now you have an extra, I don't know, let's just say, let's give a hundred bucks to make it nice and round. This is different for every family. And it's obviously going to be different, the exact dollar figure and how you break things up. (41:56 - 43:45) Some people, when you're younger, if you don't have a family that you're concerned about, you might be more wanting the slanted to the long-term, right? Because it's not something that you're concerned about. You're going to want probably, and everybody should have an emergency fund. That dollar figure is, depends, depends on the person, depends on the family, depends on what they're thinking. But it's always good to have some money on hand. You never know. So whatever portion, like it would be a proper part of the assessment for every person where you'd have whatever portion of that a hundred, you're setting aside low risk. If you really want an extra, extra low risk, you put, you want to keep it in cash in your house, that's your choice. But the point is, it's something that you're going to have liquid, easy, not just one thing, not a GIC or anything like that, because you're not going to get the returns. They lock you in for the period. Like the products that I have for the low risk, the mutual funds that are low risk, they're low fees because they're low risk. They're very low fees, actually. But the great thing about them is whenever you need it, if you're setting it aside as in the investment, whenever you need it, you can take it and get the gains that were accrued. Instead of, oh, six months from now, my GIC is coming up for renewal. I can take it out then or I'm going to it on. So that's one part, but the short term, low risk because you need it to be low risk. You don't know what's going to happen. And once you have that set aside, maybe the, let's say you hit, I don't know, $20,000. Let's say that's an important for whatever you're concerned about. (43:46 - 47:02) Now you set that aside, you have that, maybe the growth that you're getting from the $20,000, you're moving into a medium or a long-term type account where it's higher risk. And now you're dealing with trying to get to your actual goals. So now we've covered the short term, you have your insurance properly done. So any of those major, major expenses that happen when you, if you perish within the period, everything's covered. The income replacement is properly covered. Your family is set. And you also, if you, if you land up living and keep land up living, that's not a nice way of putting it, but you don't have any terrible situations. And, and now you're, you're just able to use, let's say you fall behind a month on, or you're close to falling behind a month on mortgage payment. You have that money set aside so that, okay, I'm going to make sure I pay myself back later in the emergency fund, but that is here. I've covered, and I don't need to be concerned about that problem happening. And then we're moving to the medium and the long term, the long term, and then how long, how old you are and how long you're thinking you're going to be having your money run for. But that is anybody who tells you that a long-term should be low risk hasn't given you the advice that would probably best fit your needs. Because if it's 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years out, if it's over seven years is what they use with the metrics in Canada for being considered long-term. At that point, the markets are going to have fall, potentially follow through with the recession, whatever comes, but you're going to be at a point where from where you started to where you're ending, there's going to be more money. If it's all, even if it's all on equities for the most part, obviously every 10 year assessment, it's always in the green, the stock markets, historically. I'm not going to give any predictions on any of that type of thing. That's a completely different discussion, but if we're talking playing within what the current way of doing things, a 10 year period, you're going to have growth. If you're looking out 20, 30 years, if you're not doing something that's, it doesn't have to be ridiculous risk. We're not talking about putting your money in something and to introduce that cryptocurrency as an investment type of thing, where it's just the volatility is off the charts. There's reasonable management involved in these types of things. But the point being, you should be exposing yourself to way more equities than you would be in the short term. And in the medium term, it would be more of a balance between the two. Okay. But of course, you want your overall risk exposure to go down as you get older. (47:03 - 48:11) Obviously for somebody, you're stuck with yourself in your 20s, you can afford to take considerably more risk than I can at 60. Exactly. The point is, if it's properly done, what would happen is once you've hit that age where you, so like the way the system that I have, where it plugs it in it, so you put in your desire date to stop working and you put in exactly what you, maybe you're going to have, maybe you're lucky and you have family wealth and you're getting some money is still given to you at that point anyway or whatever like that. Doesn't really matter, but that all can go into the system to figure out what's going to happen. But at that point, let's say you're 60 and you want to be retired at 60. You're 40, you want to retire at 60. So you've hit that 60 mark, at that point, we've properly set it aside, you've been paying yourself, the monthly installments, whatever, we've been putting it aside in the right risk approach to hit to the point where you're trying to. At 60, the investment won't stop. It's not like you're cashing everything out at that age. (48:11 - 49:45) What you're doing is, we're going to change the portfolio so that it's a much more balanced approach, but you're still going to be making 4, 5, 6, 8% even potentially, even on a properly balanced thing that's like a 60% equity or even a 40% equity, you can still be with the right companies. You can still be making 4, 5, 6, 8% a year, depending on the way the markets are going. But the point is, at that point, you've hit your goal there. You're flipping it to a lower risk. Now, some of it, let's say something really crazy. You want to retire at 45 and you're starting at 30 and we do it so that you're able to and we put it away. Maybe a part of it is still going to stay in a longer term, a higher risk thing. Well, if we're talking about the average situation, you've hit your goal. Now, you've hit that point where you're going to be financially independent, but it means you're not dependent on a job or anybody else to meet your needs and whatever your needs may be. At that point, still being invested in a lower risk investment. Obviously, the returns are going to be lower, but you're having the security in mind so that you are able to always have access to it. And that would be really what it's meant to be. (49:46 - 49:55) Okay. So people watching this interview, I assume they can contact you for further details, for their advice. So we'll provide your contact information beneath this interview. (49:55 - 51:37) Is there anything else that you wanted to cover before we end the interview? One detail from somebody who's done a lot of research in these different areas of finance, things like that. It's important that whoever you're dealing with, or if you're dealing with it yourself, that you can understand what the fine print is saying to you, period. If we're talking about an investment platform, Wealthsimple, doesn't matter with me, anything like that. If you're not able to know what exactly you're paying for and what you're not paying for at the beginning, access to things like with Wealthsimple, it's cheap fees, but every single thing you do, if you want to take money out, things like that, they all have a fee associated with it. And if you haven't done the research on the platform, or who you're dealing with, they aren't being 100% transparent with what they have, and they're not saying, here, look at it, and I will give you, like with stuff that I do, I have cheat sheets and stuff, I will give you the links that I use, I will show you the comparisons using third-party software for everything to make sure that you are in the driver's seat completely. Don't let somebody else, whether it be the bank, or family member, or whatever, intimidate you or tell you that they have the silver bullet answer if they're not willing to show you the work. (51:38 - 51:41) Right. All right. Thank you so much for your time today, Oliver. (51:41 - 51:43) It's been a pleasure speaking with you again. Thank you, Will.