E156: How to Breakthrough in the Rising Interest Rates and What More to Expect

Nate: In this episode, we discuss how rising interest rates will start to impact the economy as a whole, and also how rising interest rates impact infinite banking. She’s Holly and she helps people find financial freedom.

Holly: He’s Nate, he makes sense out of money. This is Dollars and Nonsense. If you follow the herd, you will be slaughtered.

Nate: All right. Well, it’s great to be back with everyone today on another show. Holly, it’s good to be here. We’re talking about something that’s pretty timely today with the interest rate environment that we’re in. Rates keep going up. They keep going up. The Federal Reserve every single time they meet, it seems like they’re saying, “We got to keep rates going up higher. I got to keep it going up higher.” So we’re going to talk a little bit more about how rates impact or really what to expect, Holly. We’re going to talk about what to expect in the coming months. We’re going to talk about what to expect in the coming years, especially if we’re going to be in a higher interest rate environment for a little bit longer of a period of time.

Right now, it’s longer than… First off, what’s crazy to me is the Federal Reserve back last year in the summer was still saying inflation was going to be transitory. It’s just going to be a little short period of time of inflation. We’ll get in. We’ll get out. It’s the COVID bottleneck and all sorts of things. Well, it was here to stay. It’s way worse because they were too slow to move.

Holly: They were late to the party like we like to say.

Nate: Yeah, they were late to the party. They totally missed it. And when Biden essentially won an election really by promising to give out more stimulus that nobody needed. So we are flooded with money and there was way too much stimulus being sent out, especially in 2021 and with inflation going rampant. So the Federal Reserve says, “You know what? We were late to the party and we’re sorry. It’s going to cause a lot of pain.”

At the very beginning they were saying, “Hey, we’re hoping for a soft landing. We’re going to just try to tinker with this thing. We’re going to try to slowly get inflation under control, but not cause a recession.” But as you and I, Holly, were talking before the episode, that’s never happened yet. So why would they expect it to happen this time?

Holly: Well, and it’s like history repeating itself. Why do we keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?

Nate: Yeah, it’s crazy. That’s the world we live in.

Holly: And what has happened really and that they were hoping to happen for the soft landing was that by raising those inflations-

Nate: Interest rates.

Holly: I mean, the interest rates, the inflation then would affect employment and you would see some unemployment taking place. But we haven’t seen that happen.

Nate: Yeah. It’s the weirdest timeframe. We had a podcast, I don’t know, maybe it was a couple months ago. I can’t remember when it was launched where we talked about what are the things that are typically hallmarks of recessions? What are the things that you normally see in a recession? A lot of people believe we’re in one. I believe we’re in one by the standard definition of GDP falling for two consecutive quarters.

So the gross domestic product, the actual economic output of the country is slowing down dramatically and it’s going backwards now. So normally people would say we’re in a recession. The stock market would also say we’re in a recession. But one of the hallmarks of recessions is that unemployment goes up. People start losing jobs in recessions and that’s one piece we haven’t seen yet.

The job market’s unbelievably steady and I think the Federal Reserve is essentially saying now they’ve increased rates dramatically super fast, faster than they ever have before. Every time they’ve raised rates, it’s caused a recession. With no exceptions that I know of. Every time they raise rates, it causes recessions. So why do they think they could do it this time? Dumb. But either way, it’s not going to happen. They believe they have some sort of special powers that the world doesn’t know about.

But all of that to say, there’s one piece that’s keeping inflation super heavy right now. And that is the fact that everyone still has jobs. No one is losing jobs. So demand is way out of control. And they’re losing control of it. So we are going to have to cause some pain and suffering to get this inflation under control. We do that by raising rates because raising rates makes everything more expensive. It makes it more expensive to buy homes, makes it more expensive to by cars. Makes it more expensive to do anything in this world.

On top of that, the big key is corporations, it makes it more expensive for them to raise money. So when people can’t really raise money or it’s too expensive to raise money, there’s not enough liquidity in the world and people start losing jobs, people start getting laid off.

We’re seeing some of that, especially in the technology companies, but we’re not seeing that in the economy as a whole. And so here we are, Holly, as we brought up a few weeks ago, this raising rate environment is… It’s going to keep going. Now, essentially, they’ve stopped even talking about a soft landing. They’re essentially saying, “No, we’re going to cause a recession. We’re going to cause people to get laid off. People are going to lose jobs.” And that’s when crap hits the fan.

Holly: Exactly. People get upset and they’re like, “What are you doing?” But it’s our federal government causing it. Here, as the Federal Reserve raises the rates, just be aware they have to have people lose their jobs because of the influx of money in the economy and because the demand is still being met and people are still buying. They can’t have that happen or else they-

Nate: Yeah, you’re right. So they can’t get control of demand if people still have awesome jobs. That’s exactly right. So yeah, if we can still buy stuff, stuff is going to keep going up. So we could talk all day I guess, of just the pain situation that we’re in with inflation and what’s about to come because of it all thanks to Uncle Sam and the bureaucracy that exists. So we’re kind of beating a dead horse there. But I guess what I’d like to say as far as expectations go is understand that risk based assets were super overpriced.

The stock market especially was super overpriced. It’s already had a huge correction. I think it’s down 20% for the year as a whole. So it was super overpriced. But no one cares to put money in risky things when say for instruments like bonds and treasury bills and different things start paying real interest rates, start paying real money to save money there.

So you’re going to start seeing more influx out of the riskier areas, moving more towards interest rate bearing things like money markets, treasury bills and all sorts of things like that. Bonds and so forth, which is going to cause more pressure on the stock market. But then when people start losing their jobs, it’s going to cause even more pressure because now people are going to be selling 401ks, mutual funds inside 401ks because they got to survive. It’s always a hallmark of what happens that people start selling their stuff to live during a period of unemployment. And demand goes down because the stock market is also a supply and demand gain.

So it goes up in price because people buy stocks. But if you have people selling stocks cause they lost their job and they’re no longer buying any because they lost their job, they don’t have any income. I mean I think that you’re going to see a 2008 real great recession style scenario. I would be surprised if you don’t. Right now stocks are down 20%. I think it’s probably going to get down to 40% before this is over with. It’s times like this where people start turning to infinite bank and droves.

Holly: Or what’s the other option? What is another safer method that we can do it if we don’t want to tie up our money in a bond for years. You don’t want to tie it up in a CD where it has to stay there and you can’t really access it or use it unless you lose that interest. So really the reality is you have to start thinking of what are my other options other than these safer areas to invest in something that’s still going to give me access to my money but still is going to be beneficial where it’s still growing even if I’m using it.

Nate: Yeah, exactly right. I mean there’s so few… As we’ve said on this podcast, we are Kool-aid drinkers. We love infinite banking. We’re biased. Take whatever you want with that. But I would say that it’s so rare to find an asset that is good in good times and is good and bad times. It’s been here for a long time. Dividend paying whole life policies have been great when times are good and they’ve been great when times are bad. And that’s rare to see.

Now, the fact that you can leverage the money you have stored up in policies to buy cheap discounted assets after recessions is really where a lot of wealth can be made. I mean, there’s a lot of people who lost a whole bunch, lost everything in the last great recession in ’08. A lot of people are multi- millionaires set for life because of what they did during that crisis. A lot of times it depends on how much liquid capital you have to take advantage of the opportunities that are going to present themselves.

If all your capital is stored up in those assets that are losing value, there’s no way to save yourself. You’re just going to lose money. You can’t take advantage of it. You’re falling prey to the poor situations. So it’s rare to find an asset that grows really well in good times and grows really well in bad times. I think we’ve got something pretty cool.

Holly: And Nate, I think, having lived through the ’08 recession and stuff like that, I’m realizing that because we drink the Kool-Aid, I’m going to say or because I have these infinite banking policies, I have my banking system in place, it didn’t really affect anything in life other than, yes, it’s more expensive. But the reality is the same thing I had back there in ’08 is still performing well right now today, irregardless of the interest rate that takes place, it’s still going to keep improving and it’s still going to give me the ability to have liquid asset and to be able to do things that I wouldn’t be able to do. You guys have to get ahead of that curve ball. Right now the federal reservist said this is going to happen.

Nate: We’re going to cause pain.

Holly: We’re going to be doing this. We have to keep raising the interest rates and people are going to start losing your jobs. So you have to start thinking ahead or futuristic to get ahead of it or else you’re going to be in the majority that is like, “Oh my goodness, this just happened.” Now we’re the ones selling all our stuff at a loss just to be able to survive.

Nate: Yeah, I agree. I mean, that’s why we called the show Dollars and Nonsense, if you follow the herd, you’ll get slaughtered. There’s danger all along the financial world. Most time people don’t talk about it. Most time people just fall prey to it. I mean, it’s a shame. But I think all this to say the economy is destined for some real trouble. We haven’t even started to see it yet. I mean, it hasn’t even totally been priced in yet, but I’ve read some articles, different things where the pros are essentially saying right now the market, all the leaders of the professional investors are pricing in the fact that the Federal Reserve will be starting to lower interest rates again next year.

They’re all pretty much saying if that does not turn out to be true, the stock market is still dramatically overpriced. So we’ll see what happens. We’ll see if they can get inflation under control without causing a massive sell-off and massive unemployment. We’ll see.

Holly: But, Nate, they’ve been doing this for a year and nothing has actually happened in regards to the economy. Yes, I agree. We’re in a reception, but nothing’s happened with people losing their jobs. People are still being employed and there’s still so much money out there that they really don’t have an option other than to be more aggressive. So that’s why we’re really talking about this is what are your options to prevent this from dramatically impacting you and your family and how do you keep your money safe during this time? I mean, Nelson wrote a book on it, right?

Nate: Yeah.

Holly: The banking concept. And back then when he wrote the book, the dividends and all that from the insurance company were a lot higher. But you could go to the bank and get a CD for 5.5%. So you had way better options. I think you’re going to see that start coming into play and that’s why you want to be ahead of it instead of behind it.

Nate: That’s right. I remember a story Ray told me too, back when he was hanging out with Nelson. I think they were all in a trip. I want to say maybe in Italy or something. And it was during the great recession, I want to say. Don’t quote me on this people, but-

Holly: They were in Vienna.

Nate: Yeah, okay. They were in Vienna and the world was going down the crap hole. Everyone was losing that ton of money and they would just wake up jokingly stretch and just say, “Ah, my cash values went up today.” I was like, “That’s the life you can live.” Right now, whenever you’re an infinite maker, you almost look forward to recessions. You’re like, “Yeah, man, I hope it happens.” Because you’re like, “I want to-”

Holly: I’m going to help my policy.

Nate: I know. I’m going to go out and I’m going to have all this money. I’m going to go take advantage of things. And so it doesn’t mean that we are not looking for opportunity beforehand, but it’s like opportunity is all over the place when people are afraid.

Announcer: Is the money in your bank account losing value instead of growing? Are inflation and taxes going to get better or worse? Conventional banking makes the bank rich using your money and pays you little to nothing in return. We believe in challenging the status quo. After all, most of those conventional tools only seem to make someone else rich. Let us show you how to beat the banks and inflation.

Visit livingwealth.com/beatinflation. You’ll receive instant access to what we call the beginner’s course. This in-depth and easy to follow course teaches people how to create and profit from infinite banking. You can become debt free in control and achieve financial security and significance. Stop letting the banks in Wall Street dictate your financial future. Go to livingwealth.com/beatinflation today to instantly receive free no obligation access to this priceless course on infinite banking. Again, that’s livingwealth.com/beatinflation. Now, back to Nate and Holly.

Nate: So I guess that does lead us to the next part of the podcast is we’ll often get questions, well, what does raising interest rates in the economy, what does that do to policies? How does that impact IBC? Doesn’t it at all… And Holly, you already kind of started to allude to that too, that typically some things you can expect during times of raising interest rates and a higher interest rate environment that’s been different than what we’ve lived for the past 10 to 15 years. Because interest rates have been incredibly low since 2009. Artificially low.

We’re just now getting back to a normal interest rate period in the history of… I mean we’re not even there yet, actually. We’re still low. But all that to say, so how does rising interest rates impact infinite banking? How does it impact policies? One of the big ways, Holly, is that, which obviously we talk about all the time, is that in times where in rates are higher, dividends from the insurance companies are also a lot higher, which makes logical sense.

If you go back to the basics of IBC and you understand that we’re plugging into a company that’s essentially just a big bank. That’s what you say, describe all the time. The only difference between a mutual life insurance company and a bank is the sign out front. They have the same business model. They take other people’s money. They lend it out to other people. They get paid interest back in and they credit some to their deposits and they make a profit.

Obviously, what we’re after and the reason why you only want to use mutual insurance companies is because we want the profit. And so you buy a policy from a mutual insurance company, you become an owner of the company. And it’s only owned by US policy holders. That means all the profits that the company is able to make trickle their way down in the form of dividends to policy holders.

That doesn’t go anywhere else. It only goes back to us. There’s no third party taking advantage of it. So all this to say though, it does seem logical that as rates go up and the insurance company is able to invest this big gigantic pool of money, which is what the insurance company be really is just a big giant pool of money. They’re able to go out and invest it for higher yielding investments. Because the main thing they do is lend money through the form bonds, mortgages, US treasuries, all sorts of things like that.

Higher interest rates will start to impact the profitability of the companies. They’ll become more and more profitable when they can get higher yields on their investments. So that would say, Holly, that’s pretty good news for us.

Holly: That’s good news. But I think the same hand, Nate, we want to say, “But it’s not instantaneously.” Just because interest rates are going up, doesn’t mean that instantly your dividends are going to go up, that it takes a period of time. Just like when we’re in a recession, it takes a while to get out or as we keep raising inflation, you start to see what happens. The same is true of the life insurance company that it is not instantaneously, “Oh, tomorrow my dividends are going to go up.

Nate: That’s right. You’re exactly right. So that’s a good point and that’s a point I wanted to make too, Holly, was that your policies are not tied to the interest rates. So the interest rate is going up, interest rate is going down, that does not have a direct impact on anything inside of your policy. What it does have an impact on is the profitability of the company, which shows up in the form of our dividends every year. But as you brought up, it’s a lagging thing.

So as interest rates go up, the insurance company still has all of these old loans, all these old bonds and all these old things at the previous interest rates, so the low rates. And so they saw have the majority of their account. It’s called the general account of the insurance company. The big investment pool of money. It’s still all at the low rates. They’re slowly replacing it with the higher rates. It’s not like as soon as rates go up, well my dividend next year is going to be bigger.

I mean, it may or may not, but that’s not the real… It’s not a direct impact. So it’s going to take some time for the insurance company profits to start realizing a higher interest rate environment. And the same thing is true in reverse as well, Holly, at times of… Back in Nelson Nash’s day when he wrote the book that started this, dividends were way higher, but he wrote the book in the year 2000. What were interest rates back in 2000? I mean, as we already brought up, he compared in his book practicing IBC to practicing it with just a CD at a bank that was paying you five and a half percent.

And of course IBC blew it out on the water. But that’s what we’re saying is in times, why was the policies in the year 2000 look so incredibly good? When you compare them to today… Which they still are great today, but I’m saying why were they so much better back then? Well, that’s because you could get five and a half percent out of a CD. What does that tell you that interest rates were back in the year 2000, significantly higher. So you would expect dividends to a bench significantly higher than as well. So all that to say, as rates rise, it actually makes infinite banking I think a little bit stronger, which we’ve all been hoping for, which we publicly said as well that being in a super low interest rate environment, everything is still great, but it’s like, “Man, we miss the days when we could get actually high dividends on the policies.”

I was having another thought, that’s why I kind of stopped there. The other thought was also, it’s actually rare that you can get loans for things like cars and homes for less than the policy loan rates at the insurance companies. That’s actually rare historically. But we were in this period of time where banks were offering such cheap money for things like cars and homes and so forth that it would actually sometimes make more sense just to use the bank’s money as opposed to your policy to go do something.

We’re still proponents of, “Hey, if the bank is going to offer you extremely cheap money, go ahead and take it. Use the money.” Some people think that there’s some sort of magic about the policy loan. That’s not really true. But it has been true historically that having policy loans has been cheaper than most other types of loans you can get. So now we’re seeing that too. It’s actually cheaper to get a policy loan to buy a house with all cash than it is to go borrow money from a bank. That’s actually been the way it’s normally been. That’s just not what you’ve seen lately.

Holly: Well, you haven’t seen it really, Nate, in the last 20 years really. Or really 12 years. I mean, you look at ’08, right? You’re talking about 10, 20, 12 years, 15 years where it hasn’t actually been that way. So now you’re seeing it revert back to that. And that is what really helps even with the policy loans. Because even right now if the interest rate went up on the policy loans, most of the time right now it’s still going to be lower than if you had to go to the bank and use their money. It’s going to be a lot harder to get the money from the bank than it is to be able to borrow from your life insurance policy.

Nate: So it used to be that’s always the thing is that policy loans have some amazing benefits besides just the interest rate, partly because it’s no credit, no application, no anything, no hoops whatsoever. You just ask for money, they send it to you. Whereas if you do go to a bank, you got to kind of do some different things. Go through the financial Proctology exam to get the money. So some people would still choose to use policy loans, even if the bank was offering super cheap money for different things. They would just pay cash for a real estate investment property just cause they didn’t want to deal with the bank at all, even though the bank could have maybe offered them cheap money at the end of the day. Now though, as you brought up, now it’s not even really a question. You should just use policies to fund it all.

Holly: Yes, absolutely. It’s not even a, “Can you compare and contrast what I should do?” No. I mean, it’s always better to use the policy loan right now.

Nate: Yeah. Pretty much.

Holly: And I’m qualifying it, but it is better right now. Your money still grows and all that and you can get it relatively, and I say relatively, but seriously you can get it quite quickly.

Nate: A few days, yeah.

Holly: Versus how long am I going to have to wait to get this money from the bank and what am I going to have to disclose to do it?

Nate: That’s right. One thing I also like to say too, Holly, is that infinite making is not about the interest rates. Nelson Nash talked about it all the time and it’s hard to get people to believe it. It’s not about the rate of the policy loan. It’s not about the internal rate of return on the policy. It doesn’t only work in times of low rates. It doesn’t only work in times of high rates. It just works because it’s built on a concept. And we don’t really have time to delve into every little detail. Go read Nelson Nash’s book if you haven’t yet and read it multiple times to really get what we’re trying to say here.

But with that being said, I guess what I was trying to say is some people get confused because we may be in it like it’s been a confusing thing to them that I could go get a mortgage for 3%. Why would I borrow money from my policy to buy a house when I could get a mortgage at 3%? And it’s been a bit confusing. They’re like, “Does that mean making banking doesn’t work anymore?”

And what I’m saying is, guys, you can’t use short term things that are happening in the environment to determine whether a strategy makes sense or not. So in that moment we could say, “Well, yeah, just go ahead. Anybody who’s going to offer you 3% money, take as much of it as you can get because that is not a normal scenario.” That was a federal reserve induced scenario that we are unwinding right now. We’ll see what happens.

But infinite banking has never been about… It wasn’t about the policy loan rates being cheaper than money you could borrow elsewhere. That wasn’t what it was about. It wasn’t about the internal rate of return being greater than a policy loan rate. That’s not what it was about. Sometimes that’s happening, sometimes it’s not. But the strategy is what we’re trying to implement.

So rising rates impact the economy extremely negatively because it always causes a recession. We’ve never once not done it. Interest rates go up, recessions are the next thing you would expect. Very painful. Infinite banking though kind of operates as a contrarian idea. Once again, that’s why we call the show Dollars and Nonsense. Once again, it’s a contrarian idea. It looks even better when other things start to look bad.

It looks good all the time, but then it looks even better when everything start to go bad. So that’s what’s happening when enter rates started to go up in the insurance company world. It’s going to take some time, but it starts to settle in at a higher dividends when rates go up, which we enjoy quite thoroughly. So it is like you can actually look forward to it because at some point you may be able to make so much money tax free in your life insurance policy that you wouldn’t even care to borrow from it to go invest in something else that would be even more risky. 

So right now that can make a lot of sense because of what the Federal Reserve was doing. With low rates, it was assets were going up like crazy. You could borrow money to buy Bitcoin. You could borrow money to buy stocks. You could borrow money to buy real estate from your policies and make a lot of money. But at some point when rates get to a certain level, there’s not even really much of a purpose to get to that risk because your dividends and growth of the policy can be seven, 8% tax free like it was in Nelson Nash’s book, like it was back in the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s.

We just haven’t been there because of the low interest rate environment. That doesn’t mean infinite banking isn’t as good now. Once again because you could get a five and a half percent CD back then. So it’s always relative, but it’s always relatively better is the whole point of Nelson Nash’s book.

Holly: I think too, Nate, the process too is… And we say this a lot. We’ve said this, it is a concept. Like you said, it’s a process. It is not the investment, it’s the process of what you’re going to use to be able to do other things. So you have to start somewhere. If you don’t have a policy, you can’t even do what we’re talking about because you haven’t even implemented the concept in order to be able to take that next step. And that’s what we really want to encourage you guys with as the interest rates are going to rise, that you guys start thinking, how can we get ahead and what can we do to not only protect ourselves, but to protect your family or the people even around you so that it’s not as a dramatic impact versus all I’ve got is 401k, all I’ve got is these stocks. Because what you’ve seen happen is people start panicking and they start selling those things off and then they have even less than they had before when all of it’s said and done.

Nate: That’s right. So I guess a couple of takeaways from this episode would be expect some more pain and misery. We haven’t even entered the fullness of the recession. We’re still teetering on the edge. We’ve gotten a little bit of a flavor of it. But if things stay this course and the Federal Reserve really does have to start impacting employment in order to get rid of this high level of inflation we’re in for, that’s when stuff gets fun. So that’s when stuff is going to… We’re going to learn a lot of things in that time. So because of that, now might be a good time to consider turning into more safe environments.

If you have money in the stock market, if you have money in retirement programs, you might want to move out of growth funds and mutual funds, different things into safer places. You might even want to start transitioning more money into things like policies that would be protected not only in this environment, but also in every environment.

And that we could then leverage those out to take advantage of the opportunities that I do hope start to surface once the recession actually hit starts to impact asset prices even more dramatically. So that’s one takeaway. The other takeaway is just to understand that raising rates also impacts IBC. It’s not a direct correlation to policies. Policies are not tied to interest rates. They grow guaranteed and they earn dividends.

So the dividend function benefits from higher rate periods like Nelson Nash wrote in his book and so forth. When rates are higher, you can save money in a bank can earn high rates of interest, but the policies are also proportionately better than that because dividends are also much higher. It’s always more profitable to be the owner of a bank than it is to be a customer of the bank. In a nutshell, someone asks, “What’s infinite banking?” It’s always more profitable to be the owner of the bank than it is to be the customer of the bank. I’ll leave it at that.

But all that say, infinite banking is affected by it and normally in positive ways as rates go up. And so you can expect that. You don’t expect that in the next couple of years. It would have to be kind of a sustained environment where a lot of the old bonds at lower rates start to turn over and start to be reinvesting to higher rates. And so if the cash flow and the insurance company starts going up then dividends started to go up. That’s what we’re all hoping for. That may cause some pain to those who are only in volatile areas. Their pain is our gain. So we’ll enjoy it. Anything else, Holly, before we close it down?

Holly: No, you summed it up perfectly.

Nate: All right. That’s cool. Well, thanks so much for joining us. As always, guys, we’d love to get this word out. If you enjoy this podcast, go ahead and subscribe or like it wherever you’re consuming it, whether it’s on YouTube, whether it’s on Apple Podcast or Spotify, wherever it is you’re getting it, if you would like it, if you’d leave a review, if you’d leave a rating, that would really bless us. That’s the best way to get the word out and best way for us to grow the brand. So we’d love to have that. This has been Dollars and Nonsense. If you follow the herd, you will get slaughtered.

Holly: For free transcripts and resources, please visit livingwealth.com/e156

Announcer: Listeners, one last thing before you go, start your journey towards financial security and wealth today. Visit livingwealth.com/beatinflation. You’ll gain instant free access to the beginner’s course with Ray, Nate and Holly made just for you. Again, that’s livingwealth.com/beatinflation.