May 5, 2025 • 44 mins
Learn the truth about life insurance, financial products, and why financial literacy matters more than ever in this episode of Demystifying Money. Host Misty Lynch and guest Tony Steuer cut through the confusion and provide actionable insights you can use right away.In this episode, you'll discover:
Where to find Tony Steuer
Website: tonysteuer.com
Instagram: @tonysteuerauthor
YouTube: @TonySteuer
LinkedIn: @tonysteuer
Where to find Misty
Websites:
Instagram: @mistylynchcfp
- Why life insurance is so misunderstood and how the industry’s sales focus clouds its true purpose.
- The pitfalls of social media advice on insurance and how to avoid costly mistakes.
- How to review and assess your insurance policies so they actually fit your needs.
- The most overlooked types of insurance—like disability—and how business owners should approach coverage.
- Small, practical steps to strengthen your financial life, inspired by Tony’s “Get Ready Blueprint.”
Where to find Tony Steuer
Website: tonysteuer.com
Instagram: @tonysteuerauthor
YouTube: @TonySteuer
LinkedIn: @tonysteuer
Where to find Misty
Websites:
Instagram: @mistylynchcfp
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Demistifying Money podcast, where each week you
will hear unforgettable conversations with expert guests about success, money, business,
and small steps you can take to elevate your life
and wealth. Now here's your host, Misty Lynch.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us to
the Demystifying Money Podcast. I'm your host, Missy Lynchton. Today
I am joined by my friend Tony Stewart. He is
an author, podcaster, and financial preparedness advocate, and we're going
to talk about life insurance.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
We're going to talk about insurance and we're also going
to talk about financial literacy and things that you can
do to be prepared for anything that can come to
you in your financial life. So Tony, thank you so
much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Misty excited to be here.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
This episode of Demystifying Money with Misty Lynch is proudly
sponsored by Soundview Financial Advisors. Visit www dot Soundview financial
Advisors dot com to learn more.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
As we get started, I was I wanted to see
if you could tell the listeners a little bit about
your career path and how you got to where you
are now. You've written a few books, you have a
podcast and you talk about finances a lot, But what
was your path and you know, what did you start
out doing and how did you end up being where
you are today?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So I started that as a life insurance agent, and
I quickly found that all across the board, nobody really
understood the insurance policies that included the people were selling it,
the insurance companies that are issuing it, advisors that I
(01:39):
was working with, and so I became a fee based
insurance consultant in California has a special license that allows
you to do that, and I spent the majority of
the next thirty years working primarily with wealth and management advisors,
financial planners, litigation attorneys, trust officers, you know, advisors across
(02:01):
the board, and those were primarily my clients. And then
I spent some time with the California Department of Insurance
Curriculum Board where we oversaw producer licensing and education requirements.
And what became clear to me is that, you know,
as I mentioned, is people weren't understanding life insurance or
(02:23):
all these products out there, huge industry, but there wasn't
a lot of non sales information out there. Everything was
geared around like hey, buy more life insurance and everything.
So I wrote my first book and it actually did
pretty well Questions and Answers on life insurance. I was
a little surprised. I was using it more, you know,
(02:44):
I thought would be helpful for the people I worked with,
and I found that there was a real demand for
people to actually talk about, Okay, what is the good
role of life insurance? How does it really fit in?
And then the most common question I got from advisors, well,
I was like, okay, well my client has all these
(03:06):
insurance policies and they don't need all this insurance. What
do we do? And so I really went down that
path about like okay, well, how do we change is
how do we change the way we think about life insurance?
And that got me more involved with greater financial literacy
pictures like okay, well how does this all fit together?
(03:26):
That's a big part of it is financial products are
often sold in isolation, and oftentimes advisors will think, well,
that other advisors is handling this issue, and that's a
client has multiple advisors. And so I really became interested in,
you know, like, okay, how do we organize it? How
do we see how everything fits together, and that's led
(03:49):
me to where I am today.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's interesting that you've spent so much time in this
in this line of work, in this field, because you're
right when I Even when I was working, you know,
when I first got insurance license, all of the training
that I got was about pretty much how to sell
the product, not necessarily like how does this fit into
the whole financial picture, what is the most appropriated how
(04:11):
do you figure out anything besides how do you learn
the product enough to say it out loud and get
and so, you know, I think that there is some
you know, even in the financial world. You know, I
don't sell commission to use products anymore, don't sell insurance,
but I do look at it as a financial planner,
as a large need for most of my clients. I
say most, not some people are you know, self insured.
(04:35):
Maybe they are not supporting anybody financially. You know, there's
there's some different scenarios, but most of the time there
is this need there. But I do feel like it
is an industry that's kind of you know, it it
needed a little bit more education, a little bit of
potentially you know, a little bit of a rebrand even
for you know, what it is, because you know, I
(04:55):
think some of the some of the people who have
come to me with policies really don't understand what they
have and if it's right for them. So I think
that's super important. And I'm curious from your perspective, what
makes you Why do you think life insurance is this
misunderstood product.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think the insurance industry has forgot its purpose. The
purpose of insurance in general and life insurance specifically, of course,
is protecting against a risk. And the insurance industry, especially
the life insurance industry, has gone so focused on adding
(05:36):
all these benefits and bells and whistles and cash value
and investments and all these other things that it's gone
away from risk protection and that that's the big thing.
And people get turned off by the insurance industry because
they're like, you know, it's not really this. He said
(05:56):
it was a good investment, but yet I have a
sixty near surrendered charge, so you know, there's no liquidity,
so you know, it's not really an investment. And you know,
I always mention to people, you know, if you open
up your insurance policy, the first thing it says is
this is an insurance policy. It doesn't say anywhere inside
the actual policy that it's an investment. And I think
(06:19):
that's the biggest issue is that people are not selling
it as insurance. It's not being reviewed as insurance, and
that you know, financial planners that I work with get
incredibly frustrated by the fact that their clients come in
and the only answer like, well, you know, my agent
said I was going to do this, and you know,
(06:40):
and the financial advisors are the ones who have to
break the news that their best friend and golfing buddy
misled them into buying these insurance policies they don't need.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, And that's the thing I remember when I first
when I first got into this into this business, I
really you know, I thought when I was staying, I
liked term insurance and broke to accoun and somebody was like,
you're going to be poor forever because they were like, no,
you need to learn how to sell life insurance and annuities.
They were going on trips. There was all these contests
(07:10):
for these salespeople that were just selling when we got
close to the deadline, like they would sell so many
policies to anybody, and it was just it was wild,
and you know, I quickly moved from like sales to
compliance and saw that side of it, which really gave
me this eye opening perspective about how the product itself
had changed from being something that is, you know, ensuring
(07:35):
against loss, ensuring against basically you know, a loss that
you can't self insure from, to something like this is
you know, this is an investment, this is safety, this
is this, this is going to help you. What keeps
you up at night was like the biggest thing we
were supposed to figure out, so we could really drill
down into that fear. And so I love that you're
out educating people on this important product that I will
(08:00):
say I have a lot of personally, I think is
very important, but has been a little bit warped as
far as how it's sold, what people you know, and
what people are getting. So I think that education piece
is important. I will say, I'm starting to hear a
lot of people getting some education from social media, from
the internet about big life insurance policies, about things like
(08:24):
using your life insurance policy as your own bank, all
of these things. And so people who you know are
curious and want to learn more and want to do
well financially are asking about all of these things. So
are you seeing an uptick in some of the questions
and some of the sales strategies from things like TikTok,
Instagram and social media that maybe are adding to a
(08:46):
little bit more of the confusion when it comes to
these products.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And those are exactly the issues.
Is I'd sort of gotten away from talking about life
insurance for a couple of years because I've burned out.
I'm like, i want to concentrate on financial literacy. But
I've come back because of these as she is. So,
for example, you know, we have a friend who's twenty
five years old single. You know, she's just you know,
(09:13):
no kids, no obligations, just starting out, and yet somebody
sold her a life insurance policy, you know, on that
concept you know, be your own banker. She was paying
five hundred dollars a month in premiums instead of you know,
putting that aside towards you know, other accounts, retirement accounts,
whatever you want to call them. And you know, when
(09:37):
we went through it, she's all like, well, I was
told that I'd be able to get access to the
money that you know it would fund you know, all
these different things, and we looked at it and I'm like, well,
you know, you have the surrender charges for fifteen years,
you're going to be paying for the cost of insurance.
And that's the thing that's often admitted from these things,
(09:58):
is like, well, you're buying a life insurance, so the
insurance company is going to charge you for the insurance.
The other thing that they tell you that is completely
misleading is that you're borrowing your own money, becoming your
own bank. Except if you're your own bank, you're not
going to charge your self interest. And insurance companies charge
(10:18):
you interest on policy loans and that can be up
to eight percent, sometimes even a little bit higher. So
you're paying Are you paying eight percent on your own money?
I don't think so, it's the insurance company. You're taking
money out of your policy, and I think that's one
of the other misconceptions. And then you looked at the
cash value it was going to take I think like
(10:40):
seventeen or eighteen years before the cash value equaled the
summer premiums paid, and that's if everything went well. So
this was an index universal life policy, which depends on
stock indexes, and as we all know, indexes go up
and go down, and so you don't get that nice
steady return that's projected, So the return is almost always
(11:03):
lower than projected. And a lot of this is they
say it like, well, this guy, now I can't remember
his first name, now you know, he was an Austrian economist,
and there's this whole myth Yeah, well when he said
he wrote his first book about this, he said it
was based on this really obscure economic theory, so it's
(11:26):
not even a real theory. But that's that's what I'm seeing.
And those are just some of the basic issues with it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and that you know, you hear about somebody who's
twenty five years old trying to make a very you know,
smart decision, has five hundred dollars a month that they're
putting somewhere and then this whole you know, finding out
really what's happening here. It's so frustrating because that could
cause that woman to change her total mind about who
(11:55):
she about investing, period, about talking to financial professionals. And
I've seen with some people who've bought expensive insurance products, annuities,
life insurance and then felt like they'd gotten you know,
the row end of the deal. So I do think
that that's where this education and literacy piece can be
so important. And for some people, like this obscure economic policy,
(12:18):
maybe for some you know, depending on their wealth, their
tax bracket, how much money they're actually stuck so it
doesn't take seventeen years for it to have cash value.
There's differences that I don't think that everybody understands might
not apply to them. Same thing happens with tax advice.
You're seeing these things, but they're not necessarily appropriate for you.
(12:39):
They're just you know, getting clicks or views or like
somebody's getting paid for all of these things that we're seeing.
And insurance professionals can get paid quite a bit on
these life insurance these life insurance policies, so definitely important
to really understand what, you know, what you're buying and why.
(12:59):
And I do think for insurance that the first thing
should be in the need for insurance. And there is
a big need for insurance. So I'm curious your thoughts on,
you know, because there is this big need for it.
A lot of people who've unfortunately needed life insurance or
had life insurance and it came in and it helped them,
Like that is that is something that can change the
(13:21):
whole troduction for your family and for your whole life.
So why why isn't this conversation approached in that way
more often? Why is it avoided when it comes to
thinking about your finances and literacy? Why is insurance not
talked about more for the true need of it?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Well, I think you hit on it is I think
so many people get turned off by the life insurance industry.
So take this friend of ours for example, is she's
going to have a very negative view of the life
insurance industry, and so she's going to be resistant. Probably
even when a financial planner says, hey, you need the
life insurance policy, she's going to remember this. And what
(14:03):
I've seen is that financial planners, also because they've seen
so many bad policies for their clients, is that they're
often like, well, you know, I don't really want to
deal with the insurance because it's a bad experience. I
don't know who to refer my clients to to have
a good experience. And that's a huge issue. So I
(14:25):
think a big part of it is also that we
don't look at this from the goal first that clients have. Rather,
we oftentimes talk about the product first, and what you
alluded to. In the insurance industry, their job is to
sell insurance policies. And you know, so when you go
(14:46):
to let's say, a Mercedes dealership, you're not surprised if
they try to sell you a Mercedes car. That's what
they're there for. But an insurance agent will say, well,
we're here to help you take care of your insurable
needs and blah blah blah. You know, or we're a
financial advisor, but their job is to sell you an
(15:09):
insurance policy. And so of course, if your only tool
is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And
that's what happens is we're going to insurance people instead
of thinking holistically about our financial plan. And this gets
back to why I became involved with financial literacy movement
(15:29):
is because there's a root cause is that we don't
realize people don't talk about like, well, insurance is just
a tool in the tool box and it fits a
specific need. It's not it's not anything beyond that. And
I think that's the bigger problem is that we have
to join everything together in our financial journey and then
(15:52):
just to use tools we need at the time we
need them.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I think that's true, and I have felt sometimes where
I've seen insurance needs that I have wondered who to
send people to. I have a fantastic property and casualty
insurance person. I have people that I know exactly how
they and life insurance. It's a little bit different because,
like you said, they are working for insurance companies. There's
sales goals. It's sort of a different product than what
some people you know who are selling other insurance products
(16:19):
can be very straightforward, and I do think that that
is something that could be missing. But obviously I feel
like that is part of our job as financial planners
or independent advisors to find those people and figure out,
you know, what we could do to make sure that
our clients have what they need because insurance is such
a such a huge need. And I noticed though, even
(16:41):
with the property and casualty side, a lot of people
they have something, but they don't look at it, they
don't pay attention to it. So from your perspective, how often,
like should somebody review their life insurance policy and what
do they need to look for if maybe they have
one but they don't really understand what they have.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Well, I think you should review all of your financial
products on a regular basis, at least annually or when
you have a major life event. But if you're not
sure what you have is that should be a red
flag to you if you're not sure what purpose it's serving. So,
(17:18):
you know, let's say you do have a whole life
insurance policy. You know, whole life insurance in and of
itself is a great product, but only for specific needs.
So ask yourself like, Okay, well, what problem I trying
to solve? So don't start with a question of like
is this whole life insurance policy good or bad? Because
that's not really the first question. The first question to
(17:41):
be like, okay, do I need life insurance? How long
do I need it for? Then you can take a
look and go, okay, what is this enough life insurance?
Is this too much life insurance? Is this insurance going
to last as long as I need it to? Or
do I need insurance for five years? Because I want
(18:03):
to make sure I have enough coverage until my children
graduate from college and then we're done. My wife and
I you know, I'm just using my wife as an
example here. Don't need life insurance beyond five years? But
yet I have a whole life insurance policy that's going
to go to age one twenty? What purpose is at serving?
So those are the questions that you really need to
(18:24):
ask is to come back to, like, Okay, what problem
am I trying to solve? And is this the right
product to meet that need? And then with life insurance,
the next question is do I understand the product that
I have? And with any product or service, you know,
my belief is that if you don't understand it, it's
(18:47):
probably not the best product for you. You know that
you should understand all the products and services you're paying for,
and if you don't that that's an issue and that
you know, then you may need somebody who can help
you walk through your options. But that's really it is, like, Okay,
(19:08):
what am I trying to accomplish? Is this right thing
to get me to my goal? And do I understand it?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah? And even Warren Buffett doesn't invest in things he
doesn't fully understand. So it's not a question of oh,
these people are smarter than me, I should just do
what they say. It's really you should understand what you
what you own, why and how it fits. And I
think sometimes a lot of the people listening to the
show are business owners. So I do think a lot
of times we think about our mortgage primarily for when
(19:35):
we need life insurance or a baby. But there's other
ways that people can, you know, think about life insurance
when they're when certain things like change as far as
different stages in their life. What are some ways that
it can be useful for business owners or maybe partnerships
or anything like that that people can use it in
their business, not just for protecting their home or their family,
(19:55):
but in other ways for that type of planning.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Well, the most common way is to fund by sell agreement.
And you know, one of the things we haven't talked
about that often gets overlooked from the conversation is beyond
life insurance is disability insurance. And that is, you know,
I think one of the most overlooked, you know products
in the whole financial services world. But both of those
(20:23):
fund against the death or disability of a partner or
multiple partners, you know, if you have a larger partnership.
And so it's very common for partnerships to maintain life
insurance and sometimes disability insurance. Another popular use is key
person indemnification. So let's say you have a rain maker
(20:46):
in a firm, the person who's bringing in a lot
of business is it may be hard to replace that person,
so you buy a life insurance policy to replace them
or the founder you know who brings you know, something
unique to it, like let's say Steve Jobs with Apple.
That was a huge transition when he passed away because
he brought so much to it. And so life insurance
(21:08):
policy can provide some extra cash to keep the business going,
especially with a smaller business, to pay the cost of
just keeping lights on, paying the employees, but also to
recruit some new talent. So those are a couple of
the most common uses.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, they can be very important, very helpful in keeping
a business going. I mean, same way you would think
about it for keeping your household. So definitely important. And
I'm glad that you brought up disability insurance. This is
something that I talk with my clients about all the time.
A lot of times, especially my self employed clients. There's
such a bigger risk for them experiencing a you know,
(21:45):
or temporary disability, and this policy doesn't seem to be
one that a lot of people have picked up, learned about,
know how to get or feel like it's you know,
a good use of the money. I personally got a
disability policy because I understand if I can't you know,
I can't work. There's there's things that I'm going to
have to pay somebody to help me do or and
(22:06):
then a lot of times with you know, other other
professions that are more I know I work with hairdressers.
Other people that are using that are that have physically
demanding jobs, massage therapists, other things where you're actually you know,
if you can't move your shoulder, you can't work for
a while. So talk to me about how somebody might
want to go about finding disability is it? You know,
(22:29):
should you look at professionals? What are some of the
ways that people can look at disability insurance if they
think it might be something that they need but they're
really not sure where to where to access it in
an affordable way.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, that is a great question because there are not
a lot of people selling disability insurance and that is
a huge problem. Is you know, so the starting places,
as you mentioned, associations can sometimes offer a disability insurance program.
So that's a great way. Is you know, check with
(23:01):
your employer. If you work for a larger company, you
have some disability insurance. However, if you have group disability
insurance with your employer, it usually has a cap of
coverage as well as it usually provides maybe fifty percent
of your pre tax income. So you probably don't have
enough disability insurance, especially if you're a higher earner or
(23:24):
as you mentioned, with a self employed person. I'm working
with a firm, a fintech firm that's going to introduce
a solution. Unfortunately we don't have it ready yet, so
you know, I'm trying to think of the best place
to find disability insurance beyond an association right now is
(23:48):
really I would say, you know, just checking with your network. Yeah,
that's that's a tough one. I don't have a getting
as freight and it is a huge problem because disability
insurance is you know, well needed. So I would say,
you know, just try.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To Yeah, it isah, getting curious about it, kind of
asking around finding and yes, for people who do have
some coverage at work, like you said, sometimes it's fifty percent. However,
like if you're you're you're still alive, your bills aren't
probably going to be reduced by fifty percent. If you're
just you might your expenses might go up because of
(24:30):
this disability. So I do feel like increasing that is
one of the things that we do with my clients
when we review their workplace benefits every year, is we
increase that one. And it's actually in the group plans
usually pretty pretty affordable to do that, but for some
people that are looking to shop for it independently, I'm
glad to hear that you do have some fintech solutions
(24:52):
are in the pipeline and working. Because I did want
to talk about fintech because we you know, we talked
about insurance agents and possibly you know, like selling products.
But I have seen a lot of people come to
me with the idea of, you know, some of these
online insurance companies, some of the fintech that's selling life
insurance and asking, you know, what is this any good?
Is this worthwhile? So I'm curious your thoughts on fintech,
(25:14):
how it might be disrupting the insurance industry and are
there any bright spots here for people who are looking
to get coverage simply that want to make sure they
have enough. What are some of these solutions, how are
they looking to you?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, that is a wonderful question, and you know, like
with everything else, you know, there's good and bad side
with life insurance. Some of the more popular platforms have
made the buying process easier, however, the coverage oftentimes has limitations.
(25:47):
They use something called accelerated underwriting. However, because they don't
do the same underwriting as you would for an individual
insurance product, is sometimes, especially if you're in great health,
you're going to pay a little bit more because the
insurance companies have to offset that risk. So you know,
(26:08):
that's the job of an insurance company is to assess
risk and then to price that risk accordingly. And sorry
wandering off the reservation a little bit, but here in
California is you know, homeowners insurance rates are going up
because there's more wildfires, so the insurance companies are pricing risks.
So to walk that back to the fintech solution, that's
(26:30):
something where the insurance companies aren't able to assess the
risk to the same depth, then they're going to be
more conservative and conservative and they're pricing, which means that
they're going to charge more. So that's the offset that
you're paying sometimes for that convenience. But it is a
nice smooth process with a lot of these companies, and
(26:51):
I think it is going to long term have a
good positive impact because Misty, it sounds like you've dealt
with a lot of insurance companies, you know, they're very
archaic with their whole process, you know, I mean some
of the insurance companies still use fax machines.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yes, so yeah, no, And I do think that there
I like to see the innovation. I know with my
life insurance, and I have personally and I worked for
John Hancock for years, and so I might have a
little home scene bias, but I feel like they are
getting more innovative with the pricing and the term policies
and the you know, wearing your watch and if you're active,
(27:28):
your policy rates go down. So I do feel like
there is this like potential for the industry to really
change really help people live longer, healthier lives and and
try to obviously that's the goal for the insurance coming up.
I hope my term policy never pays out, you know,
once the And so I do think that there is
(27:49):
some there are some things that are happening that are
actually pretty pretty interesting and pretty cool to see in
a lot of these spaces that have been very very
kind of archaic the way they do business. So it
is good to see that, but yeah, more to come
probably in the fintech. I do see it. I do
see a lot of different different different innovations, different ways
(28:11):
to make it simpler, make it, you know, less barriers
to entry. But like you said before, you know, sometimes
if you are healthy and active or young, when you're
getting these policies, just like a group health insurance plane
at work, you're paying for everybody, the healthy people then
and everybody in between. Sometimes, you know, getting your own
insurance could be could be better if you you know,
(28:35):
if you do look externally for those things. So it's
an interesting space. I did want to talk to you
though before before we move away from insurance. I just
want to see is there any other things, any other
tips you have about insurance for people to make sure
that they're properly insured, anything that you think that they
should do is like the best practice when it comes
(28:56):
to you know, their life or disability policy. And then
and I want to talk about financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For all that definitely, well, you know to you know,
the bottom line on insurance is that for people to
really think about what their need is and then to
find the product the fits your need instead of you know,
walking back to where we're talking about social media is
getting a product and then trying to make it fit
(29:23):
into our lives. And I think that's a big thing,
you know, Like we talk about disability insurance and long
term care insurance. Sometimes you know, for somebody who's aging,
you know, is to think about like, okay, well, what
is my exposure, what are the risks that I have
in my life, and is it worth it to get
(29:44):
insurance Like you mentioned property and casualty insurance, which is
auto insurance, homeowners insurance and those types of risks. Is
we know, okay, like with our house, it's a risk
of burning down, so we need a fire insurance. But
in California, you know, there's a risk of earthquakes, so
(30:04):
we have an earthquake insurance policy. So it's also knowing
what your coverage is, what your policies include, because the
average homeowners insurance policy doesn't cover earthquake or flood. So
it's important to say, okay, well, these are the extra
risks that I have. But if I live in the
middle of the country and there's no earthquakes and buying
(30:25):
earthquake insurance makes no sense. So you can apply that
rule across all the insurances. Think about like, Okay, what's
at risk? What can I not pay for out of pocket?
And if I can't pay for it out of pocket,
then I need an insurance company to help me offset
that potential huge risk.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, now those are definitely good points. There aren't all
different types of insurance. I know that that's something when
you look at it. You know, in Massachusetts where I
am a lot of people, it's their homeowners insurance is
now flood and the prices are going quite skyrocketing, you know,
So people are paying attention to insurance now, I think
in some ways, at least in New England because they
(31:07):
have to California, same thing. It's right, it's front center
as far as their budget and their expenses. So I
think it is always important not just to shy away
from it and be afraid if you look at it,
it's going to go up. If you look at it
or try to see what's out there that it's going
to it's gonna get worse. Sometimes it is important to
take a look at what you need. Maybe you still
maybe need more, maybe need something different, and just to
(31:28):
make sure that like get like you said that you're
properly protected for these risks that you know could be
financially devastating. I want to talk about your latest book
that Get Ready to Blueprint. It lays out fifty two
weekly actions to help build a better financial life. So
I'm curious why did you lay this book out in
this in this way, in this manner and tell me
(31:49):
a little bit more about how it can help people
who are trying to take positive action in their financial life.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Well, the whole goal is, you know, as we talked
about earlier, is tell people make sure that they review
all areas of their financial lives. Is there so many
things financial products where we set it and forget it
where you know, like how often if you reviewed your
bank accounts? You know, like most of us have, you know,
(32:18):
have used the same checking account for twenty years, thirty years,
and so that's part of it, you know, that's one
of the weeks actually in the book, is you know,
like review your bank accounts. You know, you know people
aren't using ATMs as much, but you know that's one
of the things. You know, do you still have an
ATM close by? Or are you paining four dollars every
(32:40):
time you would draw cash from your ATM. You know,
is there little actions that you can take, you know,
like high savings account high yield savings accounts are another
example of bank accounts. But that's just one of the weeks.
So what I am trying to do is help people.
And the thing is because it repeats exactly exactly the
(33:00):
same way every year. People can subscribe to my newsletter
by joining and get Ready Movement. It's completely free. I
sent out the same weekly action item. You know, is
that if you miss a week, you can review it
the following year. But the idea is to encourage people
to look at these different things once a year to
think about it, you know, one of the weeks, for example,
(33:21):
as health insurance, because I did in open enrollment years ago,
missing I don't know if you ever did open enrollment.
But employees tend to just choose the same thing when
they had the year before. Or the more common thing
is like they ask their coworker like, what do you choose? Yeah,
exactly because they have no clue. But and how would
(33:43):
they possibly know? And I think that's a basic thing
with financial literacy is our industry expects people to know
things that how could they possibly know what a certain
financial service or product is. Where in our lives would
we have ever possibly learned that? And so you know,
that's part of it is I cover the basic concept
(34:04):
of something. You know. I I so with health insurance,
for example, I say, you know, think of these things
that open enrollment. I don't go through every product, I
don't go through every permutation, but you know, with a book,
I'm trying to encourage people when they review these different areas,
is these are the questions that you want to think about,
because I believe that that's the most powerful thing we
(34:28):
can do for people as members of the financial service
community is help people to understand the right questions to ask.
And that's what I do each week is say, hey,
this is the thing, here's the thing to think about,
you know, and the questions to ask. You know. So
when it comes to your taxes, talk to your accountant,
(34:49):
but these are things that you want to bring up
with your account because your accountant isn't going to know
every single thing about you and so they may not
be covering everything well. So you know, that's that's the
goal is for people to understand, you know, like hey,
look at this and here's what to think about.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I think that's important because a lot of times, like
you mentioned, where we haven't necessarily learned how to do
this or what to say, people think that for some
reason they should know what to ask, and then they
feel like, well I don't, so I'm just not going
to say anything, So prompting them with these are the
questions to bring to your CPA. These are the questions.
And I will say when I did work through open enrollment,
(35:32):
when I was at a larger corporation, people were there
ready to help anyone with questions, Like they knew these
policies in and out. They knew everything, what you know,
And somebody did go through it with me once about
the differences, what the cost would be, what the you know,
the worst case scenario, if we had this policy, we'd
(35:53):
pay seven thousand in the year. If we've paid this
you know this policy, this would be the maximum output.
It was so helpful, and I felt like, why isn't
everybody asking these question Why isn't everybody like getting this
sort of personalized help from this bird who was really
ready to kind of help everybody go through benefit sea
And they send the postcards, they send the emails, they
send all these things and then people again usually like
(36:14):
you said, just roll into what they had last year,
and it could be a totally different scenario. So I
think it is really important to give people questions, give
people prompts, things to think about, because sometimes we just
don't really know what we don't know, and so I
think that's where we could have We could have a
lot of help available to us if we know who
(36:37):
to talk to and when to ask the right questions.
So I think that this is a really really important
and a really nice way to lay it out with weekly,
you know, weekly ideas, because I know a lot of
people feel like everything is just adding to the to
do list every day. It's getting longer and longer. But
I do think that for the financial end of it,
this might not take long. Some of these prompts might
(36:59):
be checking something it takes you two minutes to log
into and see, you know, do you have a beneficiary
in your checking account? Now add one. I mean, some
of these things take minutes. So I think it's a
nice way to kind of break down instead of having
it feel so overwhelming and impossible, which keeps people from starting.
(37:19):
Do you have a few favorite prompts or a few
favorite things that you think you know that you've shared.
As far as some of the bite sized tips that
people have found really helpful.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Well, you know, in terms of the tips, I think
the thing that people have felt, you know, has benefited
them the most is that it's broken down. Like you mentioned,
you know, I tried to make it bite size, and
I think that's super important. One of the tips you
brought up is actually one of my favorite tips is
to check the beneficiary on your checking account and retirement account.
(37:53):
Most people don't go and check the beneficiaries on their phone, kese. Now,
you may see your estate planning attorney but every ten years,
every twenty years to update your will entrust and they'll say,
you know, I can't you done this? But I can't
tell you how many life insurance policies I reviewed were
an ex spouse with a beneficiary on a life insurance
(38:14):
policy and it's never a popular choice.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
No, it's not like they're going to give that to
somebody else out of the goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
No. No, yeah, no, people accidentally disinherit, new family changes, fly,
all of these things, and I think, yeah, that's one
of my favorites too, is with the beneficiaries, because if
you've ever had somebody past, like if you're not a beneficiary,
you're not listed, like you've got to wait until states
(38:42):
are closed, all of these things. So there's so many
different things that you can do that really are Again,
if you're looking at everything you need to do, it
can feel like way too much, completely overwhelming. But if
it's a small thing, I think that can be helpful.
And I have noticed, you know, with changes in the
in the stock market, a lot of news, a lot
(39:02):
of headlines, a lot of you know, people fearing recessions.
People want to take action on something, and so sometimes
that doesn't mean selling everything and going because it's not
necessarily the action you could take. These are the actions.
These are the things you could do, reviewing things, making
sure you understand your finances, making sure that you're doing
the like filling these holes that could sink the ship slowly,
(39:27):
like one at a time. I really feel like that
could be the positive action that you take when you
feel like doing nothing feels wrong or it feels it
feels like you should be doing something. A lot of
times people then make these radical changes instead. It might
just be kind of fixing up and creating a better
(39:48):
strategy with what you've got going on. So I really
appreciate that you've wrote this book and that you share
these tips with your newsletters. And yeah, I just wanted
to thank you for joining us. If you, if if
the listeners can take one small step, what do you
think that they should do today in order to get,
you know, to get on the right track with their finances,
and if it's signing up with your newsletter, please let
(40:09):
us know how to do so.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Well. Definitely, I would love everybody to join get what
I call the Greaty Movement and sign up for my newsletter.
You get these tips for free. I have a lot
of free resources on my website. You know, this is
my way to give back. But what I really am
encouraging people to do is to really change the way
they think about money and to feel like they can
(40:34):
take control of their money. I think that's the biggest
thing is so many of us go, oh my gosh,
there's so many things to learn and to take care
of that it becomes just like you said, it's overwhelming.
People lock up, they make poor choices, but it's like,
take a breath, be curious, and to ask questions. And
(40:57):
asking questions gives you, I think power if you and
that's that's the other part is you have to know
the right questions to task. If you don't ask the
right questions, you're not going to get the right answers.
So that's that's really one thing I'd love people to
walk away with is to be curious and to learn
the right questions task.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I think that's such a great tip. I think being
curious because a lot of times there is that shame
and guilt we don't know anything. I should have learned
this in high school. They should have taught and we
blame everybody in the world. But I think that that
doesn't help you to get curious now. And then you're
right asking if we know we're asking the right questions
and we don't, we still don't get a clear answer,
or we still don't understand things. That should be that
(41:39):
flag for you that maybe you need to learn more,
maybe you need to really, you know, ask things different,
or really kind of stop instead of saying, Okay, I guess,
I guess I'll trust you. You know, because it is
our money, it's really important that we understand what we're
doing with it that we make that we feel empowered
to make the right decisions. And I think asking questions
and kind of learning what you can from people who
(42:00):
are providing these, you know, accessible affordable resources is a really,
really great place to start. So if you don't mind,
can you tell people how they can you know, how
they can reach you and learn more about you if
they're looking to follow you online or connect with you personally.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Well, I'm definitely very active on LinkedIn, so that's a
great place to follow me. And or you can go
to my website Tonystewary dot com. That's a great place.
You know, you can sign up for my newsletter and
find all the resources that I mentioned. I have one
(42:37):
hundred plus worksheets and anybody can get for free just
by signing up and joining the get Ready movement. And
also I've watched something that's pretty cool is I have
a AI clone that I've uploaded all my books, all
of my articles. It's connected to my YouTube and LinkedIn,
so you know, it's free. You can go in and
(43:00):
play with it. It's called ask Tony. I've got very
creative on it, and you can play with that and
you know, get some of my thinking on some of
these questions.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
That's cool, all right, Well, yes, everybody, I think it's
a great I think it's a great idea to Yeah.
Go go to the website, check it out, talk to
virtuals Tony, sign up for the newsletter. Thank you Tony
again for coming on the show and talking about this subject.
I think it's definitely provided a lot of clarity on
some pretty complicated and confusing and expensive topics. So thank
(43:32):
you so much, and thank you everyone for listening. If
you want to learn more about your personal finance, you're
looking to do a financial plan for yourself, or catch
up on old episodes of the podcast, please head over
to Misty Lynch dot com. I would love to connect
with you there and see if we can't help you
get your insurance and all the other financial pieces of
your life on track. Till next time. We'll talk again
(43:53):
next week. Thank you for joining us on another insightful
episode of Demiss Buying Money. If you enjoyed this episode,
please subscribe, rate and leave a review. Stay tuned for
more engaging conversations on our next episode, and remember knowledge
is the key to financial empowerment.
Welcome to the Demistifying Money podcast, where each week you
will hear unforgettable conversations with expert guests about success, money, business,
and small steps you can take to elevate your life
and wealth. Now here's your host, Misty Lynch.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us to
the Demystifying Money Podcast. I'm your host, Missy Lynchton. Today
I am joined by my friend Tony Stewart. He is
an author, podcaster, and financial preparedness advocate, and we're going
to talk about life insurance.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
We're going to talk about insurance and we're also going
to talk about financial literacy and things that you can
do to be prepared for anything that can come to
you in your financial life. So Tony, thank you so
much for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Misty excited to be here.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
This episode of Demystifying Money with Misty Lynch is proudly
sponsored by Soundview Financial Advisors. Visit www dot Soundview financial
Advisors dot com to learn more.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
As we get started, I was I wanted to see
if you could tell the listeners a little bit about
your career path and how you got to where you
are now. You've written a few books, you have a
podcast and you talk about finances a lot, But what
was your path and you know, what did you start
out doing and how did you end up being where
you are today?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
So I started that as a life insurance agent, and
I quickly found that all across the board, nobody really
understood the insurance policies that included the people were selling it,
the insurance companies that are issuing it, advisors that I
(01:39):
was working with, and so I became a fee based
insurance consultant in California has a special license that allows
you to do that, and I spent the majority of
the next thirty years working primarily with wealth and management advisors,
financial planners, litigation attorneys, trust officers, you know, advisors across
(02:01):
the board, and those were primarily my clients. And then
I spent some time with the California Department of Insurance
Curriculum Board where we oversaw producer licensing and education requirements.
And what became clear to me is that, you know,
as I mentioned, is people weren't understanding life insurance or
(02:23):
all these products out there, huge industry, but there wasn't
a lot of non sales information out there. Everything was
geared around like hey, buy more life insurance and everything.
So I wrote my first book and it actually did
pretty well Questions and Answers on life insurance. I was
a little surprised. I was using it more, you know,
(02:44):
I thought would be helpful for the people I worked with,
and I found that there was a real demand for
people to actually talk about, Okay, what is the good
role of life insurance? How does it really fit in?
And then the most common question I got from advisors, well,
I was like, okay, well my client has all these
(03:06):
insurance policies and they don't need all this insurance. What
do we do? And so I really went down that
path about like okay, well, how do we change is
how do we change the way we think about life insurance?
And that got me more involved with greater financial literacy
pictures like okay, well how does this all fit together?
(03:26):
That's a big part of it is financial products are
often sold in isolation, and oftentimes advisors will think, well,
that other advisors is handling this issue, and that's a
client has multiple advisors. And so I really became interested in,
you know, like, okay, how do we organize it? How
do we see how everything fits together, and that's led
(03:49):
me to where I am today.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
It's interesting that you've spent so much time in this
in this line of work, in this field, because you're
right when I Even when I was working, you know,
when I first got insurance license, all of the training
that I got was about pretty much how to sell
the product, not necessarily like how does this fit into
the whole financial picture, what is the most appropriated how
(04:11):
do you figure out anything besides how do you learn
the product enough to say it out loud and get
and so, you know, I think that there is some
you know, even in the financial world. You know, I
don't sell commission to use products anymore, don't sell insurance,
but I do look at it as a financial planner,
as a large need for most of my clients. I
say most, not some people are you know, self insured.
(04:35):
Maybe they are not supporting anybody financially. You know, there's
there's some different scenarios, but most of the time there
is this need there. But I do feel like it
is an industry that's kind of you know, it it
needed a little bit more education, a little bit of
potentially you know, a little bit of a rebrand even
for you know, what it is, because you know, I
(04:55):
think some of the some of the people who have
come to me with policies really don't understand what they
have and if it's right for them. So I think
that's super important. And I'm curious from your perspective, what
makes you Why do you think life insurance is this
misunderstood product.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think the insurance industry has forgot its purpose. The
purpose of insurance in general and life insurance specifically, of course,
is protecting against a risk. And the insurance industry, especially
the life insurance industry, has gone so focused on adding
(05:36):
all these benefits and bells and whistles and cash value
and investments and all these other things that it's gone
away from risk protection and that that's the big thing.
And people get turned off by the insurance industry because
they're like, you know, it's not really this. He said
(05:56):
it was a good investment, but yet I have a
sixty near surrendered charge, so you know, there's no liquidity,
so you know, it's not really an investment. And you know,
I always mention to people, you know, if you open
up your insurance policy, the first thing it says is
this is an insurance policy. It doesn't say anywhere inside
the actual policy that it's an investment. And I think
(06:19):
that's the biggest issue is that people are not selling
it as insurance. It's not being reviewed as insurance, and
that you know, financial planners that I work with get
incredibly frustrated by the fact that their clients come in
and the only answer like, well, you know, my agent
said I was going to do this, and you know,
(06:40):
and the financial advisors are the ones who have to
break the news that their best friend and golfing buddy
misled them into buying these insurance policies they don't need.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, And that's the thing I remember when I first
when I first got into this into this business, I
really you know, I thought when I was staying, I
liked term insurance and broke to accoun and somebody was like,
you're going to be poor forever because they were like, no,
you need to learn how to sell life insurance and annuities.
They were going on trips. There was all these contests
(07:10):
for these salespeople that were just selling when we got
close to the deadline, like they would sell so many
policies to anybody, and it was just it was wild,
and you know, I quickly moved from like sales to
compliance and saw that side of it, which really gave
me this eye opening perspective about how the product itself
had changed from being something that is, you know, ensuring
(07:35):
against loss, ensuring against basically you know, a loss that
you can't self insure from, to something like this is
you know, this is an investment, this is safety, this
is this, this is going to help you. What keeps
you up at night was like the biggest thing we
were supposed to figure out, so we could really drill
down into that fear. And so I love that you're
out educating people on this important product that I will
(08:00):
say I have a lot of personally, I think is
very important, but has been a little bit warped as
far as how it's sold, what people you know, and
what people are getting. So I think that education piece
is important. I will say, I'm starting to hear a
lot of people getting some education from social media, from
the internet about big life insurance policies, about things like
(08:24):
using your life insurance policy as your own bank, all
of these things. And so people who you know are
curious and want to learn more and want to do
well financially are asking about all of these things. So
are you seeing an uptick in some of the questions
and some of the sales strategies from things like TikTok,
Instagram and social media that maybe are adding to a
(08:46):
little bit more of the confusion when it comes to
these products.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And those are exactly the issues.
Is I'd sort of gotten away from talking about life
insurance for a couple of years because I've burned out.
I'm like, i want to concentrate on financial literacy. But
I've come back because of these as she is. So,
for example, you know, we have a friend who's twenty
five years old single. You know, she's just you know,
(09:13):
no kids, no obligations, just starting out, and yet somebody
sold her a life insurance policy, you know, on that
concept you know, be your own banker. She was paying
five hundred dollars a month in premiums instead of you know,
putting that aside towards you know, other accounts, retirement accounts,
whatever you want to call them. And you know, when
(09:37):
we went through it, she's all like, well, I was
told that I'd be able to get access to the
money that you know it would fund you know, all
these different things, and we looked at it and I'm like, well,
you know, you have the surrender charges for fifteen years,
you're going to be paying for the cost of insurance.
And that's the thing that's often admitted from these things,
(09:58):
is like, well, you're buying a life insurance, so the
insurance company is going to charge you for the insurance.
The other thing that they tell you that is completely
misleading is that you're borrowing your own money, becoming your
own bank. Except if you're your own bank, you're not
going to charge your self interest. And insurance companies charge
(10:18):
you interest on policy loans and that can be up
to eight percent, sometimes even a little bit higher. So
you're paying Are you paying eight percent on your own money?
I don't think so, it's the insurance company. You're taking
money out of your policy, and I think that's one
of the other misconceptions. And then you looked at the
cash value it was going to take I think like
(10:40):
seventeen or eighteen years before the cash value equaled the
summer premiums paid, and that's if everything went well. So
this was an index universal life policy, which depends on
stock indexes, and as we all know, indexes go up
and go down, and so you don't get that nice
steady return that's projected, So the return is almost always
(11:03):
lower than projected. And a lot of this is they
say it like, well, this guy, now I can't remember
his first name, now you know, he was an Austrian economist,
and there's this whole myth Yeah, well when he said
he wrote his first book about this, he said it
was based on this really obscure economic theory, so it's
(11:26):
not even a real theory. But that's that's what I'm seeing.
And those are just some of the basic issues with it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, and that you know, you hear about somebody who's
twenty five years old trying to make a very you know,
smart decision, has five hundred dollars a month that they're
putting somewhere and then this whole you know, finding out
really what's happening here. It's so frustrating because that could
cause that woman to change her total mind about who
(11:55):
she about investing, period, about talking to financial professionals. And
I've seen with some people who've bought expensive insurance products, annuities,
life insurance and then felt like they'd gotten you know,
the row end of the deal. So I do think
that that's where this education and literacy piece can be
so important. And for some people, like this obscure economic policy,
(12:18):
maybe for some you know, depending on their wealth, their
tax bracket, how much money they're actually stuck so it
doesn't take seventeen years for it to have cash value.
There's differences that I don't think that everybody understands might
not apply to them. Same thing happens with tax advice.
You're seeing these things, but they're not necessarily appropriate for you.
(12:39):
They're just you know, getting clicks or views or like
somebody's getting paid for all of these things that we're seeing.
And insurance professionals can get paid quite a bit on
these life insurance these life insurance policies, so definitely important
to really understand what, you know, what you're buying and why.
(12:59):
And I do think for insurance that the first thing
should be in the need for insurance. And there is
a big need for insurance. So I'm curious your thoughts on,
you know, because there is this big need for it.
A lot of people who've unfortunately needed life insurance or
had life insurance and it came in and it helped them,
Like that is that is something that can change the
(13:21):
whole troduction for your family and for your whole life.
So why why isn't this conversation approached in that way
more often? Why is it avoided when it comes to
thinking about your finances and literacy? Why is insurance not
talked about more for the true need of it?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Well, I think you hit on it is I think
so many people get turned off by the life insurance industry.
So take this friend of ours for example, is she's
going to have a very negative view of the life
insurance industry, and so she's going to be resistant. Probably
even when a financial planner says, hey, you need the
life insurance policy, she's going to remember this. And what
(14:03):
I've seen is that financial planners, also because they've seen
so many bad policies for their clients, is that they're
often like, well, you know, I don't really want to
deal with the insurance because it's a bad experience. I
don't know who to refer my clients to to have
a good experience. And that's a huge issue. So I
(14:25):
think a big part of it is also that we
don't look at this from the goal first that clients have. Rather,
we oftentimes talk about the product first, and what you
alluded to. In the insurance industry, their job is to
sell insurance policies. And you know, so when you go
(14:46):
to let's say, a Mercedes dealership, you're not surprised if
they try to sell you a Mercedes car. That's what
they're there for. But an insurance agent will say, well,
we're here to help you take care of your insurable
needs and blah blah blah. You know, or we're a
financial advisor, but their job is to sell you an
(15:09):
insurance policy. And so of course, if your only tool
is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And
that's what happens is we're going to insurance people instead
of thinking holistically about our financial plan. And this gets
back to why I became involved with financial literacy movement
(15:29):
is because there's a root cause is that we don't
realize people don't talk about like, well, insurance is just
a tool in the tool box and it fits a
specific need. It's not it's not anything beyond that. And
I think that's the bigger problem is that we have
to join everything together in our financial journey and then
(15:52):
just to use tools we need at the time we
need them.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I think that's true, and I have felt sometimes where
I've seen insurance needs that I have wondered who to
send people to. I have a fantastic property and casualty
insurance person. I have people that I know exactly how
they and life insurance. It's a little bit different because,
like you said, they are working for insurance companies. There's
sales goals. It's sort of a different product than what
some people you know who are selling other insurance products
(16:19):
can be very straightforward, and I do think that that
is something that could be missing. But obviously I feel
like that is part of our job as financial planners
or independent advisors to find those people and figure out,
you know, what we could do to make sure that
our clients have what they need because insurance is such
a such a huge need. And I noticed though, even
(16:41):
with the property and casualty side, a lot of people
they have something, but they don't look at it, they
don't pay attention to it. So from your perspective, how often,
like should somebody review their life insurance policy and what
do they need to look for if maybe they have
one but they don't really understand what they have.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Well, I think you should review all of your financial
products on a regular basis, at least annually or when
you have a major life event. But if you're not
sure what you have is that should be a red
flag to you if you're not sure what purpose it's serving. So,
(17:18):
you know, let's say you do have a whole life
insurance policy. You know, whole life insurance in and of
itself is a great product, but only for specific needs.
So ask yourself like, Okay, well, what problem I trying
to solve? So don't start with a question of like
is this whole life insurance policy good or bad? Because
that's not really the first question. The first question to
(17:41):
be like, okay, do I need life insurance? How long
do I need it for? Then you can take a
look and go, okay, what is this enough life insurance?
Is this too much life insurance? Is this insurance going
to last as long as I need it to? Or
do I need insurance for five years? Because I want
(18:03):
to make sure I have enough coverage until my children
graduate from college and then we're done. My wife and
I you know, I'm just using my wife as an
example here. Don't need life insurance beyond five years? But
yet I have a whole life insurance policy that's going
to go to age one twenty? What purpose is at serving?
So those are the questions that you really need to
(18:24):
ask is to come back to, like, Okay, what problem
am I trying to solve? And is this the right
product to meet that need? And then with life insurance,
the next question is do I understand the product that
I have? And with any product or service, you know,
my belief is that if you don't understand it, it's
(18:47):
probably not the best product for you. You know that
you should understand all the products and services you're paying for,
and if you don't that that's an issue and that
you know, then you may need somebody who can help
you walk through your options. But that's really it is, like, Okay,
(19:08):
what am I trying to accomplish? Is this right thing
to get me to my goal? And do I understand it?
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah? And even Warren Buffett doesn't invest in things he
doesn't fully understand. So it's not a question of oh,
these people are smarter than me, I should just do
what they say. It's really you should understand what you
what you own, why and how it fits. And I
think sometimes a lot of the people listening to the
show are business owners. So I do think a lot
of times we think about our mortgage primarily for when
(19:35):
we need life insurance or a baby. But there's other
ways that people can, you know, think about life insurance
when they're when certain things like change as far as
different stages in their life. What are some ways that
it can be useful for business owners or maybe partnerships
or anything like that that people can use it in
their business, not just for protecting their home or their family,
(19:55):
but in other ways for that type of planning.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Well, the most common way is to fund by sell agreement.
And you know, one of the things we haven't talked
about that often gets overlooked from the conversation is beyond
life insurance is disability insurance. And that is, you know,
I think one of the most overlooked, you know products
in the whole financial services world. But both of those
(20:23):
fund against the death or disability of a partner or
multiple partners, you know, if you have a larger partnership.
And so it's very common for partnerships to maintain life
insurance and sometimes disability insurance. Another popular use is key
person indemnification. So let's say you have a rain maker
(20:46):
in a firm, the person who's bringing in a lot
of business is it may be hard to replace that person,
so you buy a life insurance policy to replace them
or the founder you know who brings you know, something
unique to it, like let's say Steve Jobs with Apple.
That was a huge transition when he passed away because
he brought so much to it. And so life insurance
(21:08):
policy can provide some extra cash to keep the business going,
especially with a smaller business, to pay the cost of
just keeping lights on, paying the employees, but also to
recruit some new talent. So those are a couple of
the most common uses.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, they can be very important, very helpful in keeping
a business going. I mean, same way you would think
about it for keeping your household. So definitely important. And
I'm glad that you brought up disability insurance. This is
something that I talk with my clients about all the time.
A lot of times, especially my self employed clients. There's
such a bigger risk for them experiencing a you know,
(21:45):
or temporary disability, and this policy doesn't seem to be
one that a lot of people have picked up, learned about,
know how to get or feel like it's you know,
a good use of the money. I personally got a
disability policy because I understand if I can't you know,
I can't work. There's there's things that I'm going to
have to pay somebody to help me do or and
(22:06):
then a lot of times with you know, other other
professions that are more I know I work with hairdressers.
Other people that are using that are that have physically
demanding jobs, massage therapists, other things where you're actually you know,
if you can't move your shoulder, you can't work for
a while. So talk to me about how somebody might
want to go about finding disability is it? You know,
(22:29):
should you look at professionals? What are some of the
ways that people can look at disability insurance if they
think it might be something that they need but they're
really not sure where to where to access it in
an affordable way.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Well, that is a great question because there are not
a lot of people selling disability insurance and that is
a huge problem. Is you know, so the starting places,
as you mentioned, associations can sometimes offer a disability insurance program.
So that's a great way. Is you know, check with
(23:01):
your employer. If you work for a larger company, you
have some disability insurance. However, if you have group disability
insurance with your employer, it usually has a cap of
coverage as well as it usually provides maybe fifty percent
of your pre tax income. So you probably don't have
enough disability insurance, especially if you're a higher earner or
(23:24):
as you mentioned, with a self employed person. I'm working
with a firm, a fintech firm that's going to introduce
a solution. Unfortunately we don't have it ready yet, so
you know, I'm trying to think of the best place
to find disability insurance beyond an association right now is
(23:48):
really I would say, you know, just checking with your network. Yeah,
that's that's a tough one. I don't have a getting
as freight and it is a huge problem because disability
insurance is you know, well needed. So I would say,
you know, just try.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
To Yeah, it isah, getting curious about it, kind of
asking around finding and yes, for people who do have
some coverage at work, like you said, sometimes it's fifty percent. However,
like if you're you're you're still alive, your bills aren't
probably going to be reduced by fifty percent. If you're
just you might your expenses might go up because of
(24:30):
this disability. So I do feel like increasing that is
one of the things that we do with my clients
when we review their workplace benefits every year, is we
increase that one. And it's actually in the group plans
usually pretty pretty affordable to do that, but for some
people that are looking to shop for it independently, I'm
glad to hear that you do have some fintech solutions
(24:52):
are in the pipeline and working. Because I did want
to talk about fintech because we you know, we talked
about insurance agents and possibly you know, like selling products.
But I have seen a lot of people come to
me with the idea of, you know, some of these
online insurance companies, some of the fintech that's selling life
insurance and asking, you know, what is this any good?
Is this worthwhile? So I'm curious your thoughts on fintech,
(25:14):
how it might be disrupting the insurance industry and are
there any bright spots here for people who are looking
to get coverage simply that want to make sure they
have enough. What are some of these solutions, how are
they looking to you?
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, that is a wonderful question, and you know, like
with everything else, you know, there's good and bad side
with life insurance. Some of the more popular platforms have
made the buying process easier, however, the coverage oftentimes has limitations.
(25:47):
They use something called accelerated underwriting. However, because they don't
do the same underwriting as you would for an individual
insurance product, is sometimes, especially if you're in great health,
you're going to pay a little bit more because the
insurance companies have to offset that risk. So you know,
(26:08):
that's the job of an insurance company is to assess
risk and then to price that risk accordingly. And sorry
wandering off the reservation a little bit, but here in
California is you know, homeowners insurance rates are going up
because there's more wildfires, so the insurance companies are pricing risks.
So to walk that back to the fintech solution, that's
(26:30):
something where the insurance companies aren't able to assess the
risk to the same depth, then they're going to be
more conservative and conservative and they're pricing, which means that
they're going to charge more. So that's the offset that
you're paying sometimes for that convenience. But it is a
nice smooth process with a lot of these companies, and
(26:51):
I think it is going to long term have a
good positive impact because Misty, it sounds like you've dealt
with a lot of insurance companies, you know, they're very
archaic with their whole process, you know, I mean some
of the insurance companies still use fax machines.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yes, so yeah, no, And I do think that there
I like to see the innovation. I know with my
life insurance, and I have personally and I worked for
John Hancock for years, and so I might have a
little home scene bias, but I feel like they are
getting more innovative with the pricing and the term policies
and the you know, wearing your watch and if you're active,
(27:28):
your policy rates go down. So I do feel like
there is this like potential for the industry to really
change really help people live longer, healthier lives and and
try to obviously that's the goal for the insurance coming up.
I hope my term policy never pays out, you know,
once the And so I do think that there is
(27:49):
some there are some things that are happening that are
actually pretty pretty interesting and pretty cool to see in
a lot of these spaces that have been very very
kind of archaic the way they do business. So it
is good to see that, but yeah, more to come
probably in the fintech. I do see it. I do
see a lot of different different different innovations, different ways
(28:11):
to make it simpler, make it, you know, less barriers
to entry. But like you said before, you know, sometimes
if you are healthy and active or young, when you're
getting these policies, just like a group health insurance plane
at work, you're paying for everybody, the healthy people then
and everybody in between. Sometimes, you know, getting your own
insurance could be could be better if you you know,
(28:35):
if you do look externally for those things. So it's
an interesting space. I did want to talk to you
though before before we move away from insurance. I just
want to see is there any other things, any other
tips you have about insurance for people to make sure
that they're properly insured, anything that you think that they
should do is like the best practice when it comes
(28:56):
to you know, their life or disability policy. And then
and I want to talk about financial literacy.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
For all that definitely, well, you know to you know,
the bottom line on insurance is that for people to
really think about what their need is and then to
find the product the fits your need instead of you know,
walking back to where we're talking about social media is
getting a product and then trying to make it fit
(29:23):
into our lives. And I think that's a big thing,
you know, Like we talk about disability insurance and long
term care insurance. Sometimes you know, for somebody who's aging,
you know, is to think about like, okay, well, what
is my exposure, what are the risks that I have
in my life, and is it worth it to get
(29:44):
insurance Like you mentioned property and casualty insurance, which is
auto insurance, homeowners insurance and those types of risks. Is
we know, okay, like with our house, it's a risk
of burning down, so we need a fire insurance. But
in California, you know, there's a risk of earthquakes, so
(30:04):
we have an earthquake insurance policy. So it's also knowing
what your coverage is, what your policies include, because the
average homeowners insurance policy doesn't cover earthquake or flood. So
it's important to say, okay, well, these are the extra
risks that I have. But if I live in the
middle of the country and there's no earthquakes and buying
(30:25):
earthquake insurance makes no sense. So you can apply that
rule across all the insurances. Think about like, Okay, what's
at risk? What can I not pay for out of pocket?
And if I can't pay for it out of pocket,
then I need an insurance company to help me offset
that potential huge risk.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Yeah, now those are definitely good points. There aren't all
different types of insurance. I know that that's something when
you look at it. You know, in Massachusetts where I
am a lot of people, it's their homeowners insurance is
now flood and the prices are going quite skyrocketing, you know,
So people are paying attention to insurance now, I think
in some ways, at least in New England because they
(31:07):
have to California, same thing. It's right, it's front center
as far as their budget and their expenses. So I
think it is always important not just to shy away
from it and be afraid if you look at it,
it's going to go up. If you look at it
or try to see what's out there that it's going
to it's gonna get worse. Sometimes it is important to
take a look at what you need. Maybe you still
maybe need more, maybe need something different, and just to
(31:28):
make sure that like get like you said that you're
properly protected for these risks that you know could be
financially devastating. I want to talk about your latest book
that Get Ready to Blueprint. It lays out fifty two
weekly actions to help build a better financial life. So
I'm curious why did you lay this book out in
this in this way, in this manner and tell me
(31:49):
a little bit more about how it can help people
who are trying to take positive action in their financial life.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Well, the whole goal is, you know, as we talked
about earlier, is tell people make sure that they review
all areas of their financial lives. Is there so many
things financial products where we set it and forget it
where you know, like how often if you reviewed your
bank accounts? You know, like most of us have, you know,
(32:18):
have used the same checking account for twenty years, thirty years,
and so that's part of it, you know, that's one
of the weeks actually in the book, is you know,
like review your bank accounts. You know, you know people
aren't using ATMs as much, but you know that's one
of the things. You know, do you still have an
ATM close by? Or are you paining four dollars every
(32:40):
time you would draw cash from your ATM. You know,
is there little actions that you can take, you know,
like high savings account high yield savings accounts are another
example of bank accounts. But that's just one of the weeks.
So what I am trying to do is help people.
And the thing is because it repeats exactly exactly the
(33:00):
same way every year. People can subscribe to my newsletter
by joining and get Ready Movement. It's completely free. I
sent out the same weekly action item. You know, is
that if you miss a week, you can review it
the following year. But the idea is to encourage people
to look at these different things once a year to
think about it, you know, one of the weeks, for example,
(33:21):
as health insurance, because I did in open enrollment years ago,
missing I don't know if you ever did open enrollment.
But employees tend to just choose the same thing when
they had the year before. Or the more common thing
is like they ask their coworker like, what do you choose? Yeah,
exactly because they have no clue. But and how would
(33:43):
they possibly know? And I think that's a basic thing
with financial literacy is our industry expects people to know
things that how could they possibly know what a certain
financial service or product is. Where in our lives would
we have ever possibly learned that? And so you know,
that's part of it is I cover the basic concept
(34:04):
of something. You know. I I so with health insurance,
for example, I say, you know, think of these things
that open enrollment. I don't go through every product, I
don't go through every permutation, but you know, with a book,
I'm trying to encourage people when they review these different areas,
is these are the questions that you want to think about,
because I believe that that's the most powerful thing we
(34:28):
can do for people as members of the financial service
community is help people to understand the right questions to ask.
And that's what I do each week is say, hey,
this is the thing, here's the thing to think about,
you know, and the questions to ask. You know. So
when it comes to your taxes, talk to your accountant,
(34:49):
but these are things that you want to bring up
with your account because your accountant isn't going to know
every single thing about you and so they may not
be covering everything well. So you know, that's that's the
goal is for people to understand, you know, like hey,
look at this and here's what to think about.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I think that's important because a lot of times, like
you mentioned, where we haven't necessarily learned how to do
this or what to say, people think that for some
reason they should know what to ask, and then they
feel like, well I don't, so I'm just not going
to say anything, So prompting them with these are the
questions to bring to your CPA. These are the questions.
And I will say when I did work through open enrollment,
(35:32):
when I was at a larger corporation, people were there
ready to help anyone with questions, Like they knew these
policies in and out. They knew everything, what you know,
And somebody did go through it with me once about
the differences, what the cost would be, what the you know,
the worst case scenario, if we had this policy, we'd
(35:53):
pay seven thousand in the year. If we've paid this
you know this policy, this would be the maximum output.
It was so helpful, and I felt like, why isn't
everybody asking these question Why isn't everybody like getting this
sort of personalized help from this bird who was really
ready to kind of help everybody go through benefit sea
And they send the postcards, they send the emails, they
send all these things and then people again usually like
(36:14):
you said, just roll into what they had last year,
and it could be a totally different scenario. So I
think it is really important to give people questions, give
people prompts, things to think about, because sometimes we just
don't really know what we don't know, and so I
think that's where we could have We could have a
lot of help available to us if we know who
(36:37):
to talk to and when to ask the right questions.
So I think that this is a really really important
and a really nice way to lay it out with weekly,
you know, weekly ideas, because I know a lot of
people feel like everything is just adding to the to
do list every day. It's getting longer and longer. But
I do think that for the financial end of it,
this might not take long. Some of these prompts might
(36:59):
be checking something it takes you two minutes to log
into and see, you know, do you have a beneficiary
in your checking account? Now add one. I mean, some
of these things take minutes. So I think it's a
nice way to kind of break down instead of having
it feel so overwhelming and impossible, which keeps people from starting.
(37:19):
Do you have a few favorite prompts or a few
favorite things that you think you know that you've shared.
As far as some of the bite sized tips that
people have found really helpful.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
Well, you know, in terms of the tips, I think
the thing that people have felt, you know, has benefited
them the most is that it's broken down. Like you mentioned,
you know, I tried to make it bite size, and
I think that's super important. One of the tips you
brought up is actually one of my favorite tips is
to check the beneficiary on your checking account and retirement account.
(37:53):
Most people don't go and check the beneficiaries on their phone, kese. Now,
you may see your estate planning attorney but every ten years,
every twenty years to update your will entrust and they'll say,
you know, I can't you done this? But I can't
tell you how many life insurance policies I reviewed were
an ex spouse with a beneficiary on a life insurance
(38:14):
policy and it's never a popular choice.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
No, it's not like they're going to give that to
somebody else out of the goodness.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
No. No, yeah, no, people accidentally disinherit, new family changes, fly,
all of these things, and I think, yeah, that's one
of my favorites too, is with the beneficiaries, because if
you've ever had somebody past, like if you're not a beneficiary,
you're not listed, like you've got to wait until states
(38:42):
are closed, all of these things. So there's so many
different things that you can do that really are Again,
if you're looking at everything you need to do, it
can feel like way too much, completely overwhelming. But if
it's a small thing, I think that can be helpful.
And I have noticed, you know, with changes in the
in the stock market, a lot of news, a lot
(39:02):
of headlines, a lot of you know, people fearing recessions.
People want to take action on something, and so sometimes
that doesn't mean selling everything and going because it's not
necessarily the action you could take. These are the actions.
These are the things you could do, reviewing things, making
sure you understand your finances, making sure that you're doing
the like filling these holes that could sink the ship slowly,
(39:27):
like one at a time. I really feel like that
could be the positive action that you take when you
feel like doing nothing feels wrong or it feels it
feels like you should be doing something. A lot of
times people then make these radical changes instead. It might
just be kind of fixing up and creating a better
(39:48):
strategy with what you've got going on. So I really
appreciate that you've wrote this book and that you share
these tips with your newsletters. And yeah, I just wanted
to thank you for joining us. If you, if if
the listeners can take one small step, what do you
think that they should do today in order to get,
you know, to get on the right track with their finances,
and if it's signing up with your newsletter, please let
(40:09):
us know how to do so.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Well. Definitely, I would love everybody to join get what
I call the Greaty Movement and sign up for my newsletter.
You get these tips for free. I have a lot
of free resources on my website. You know, this is
my way to give back. But what I really am
encouraging people to do is to really change the way
they think about money and to feel like they can
(40:34):
take control of their money. I think that's the biggest
thing is so many of us go, oh my gosh,
there's so many things to learn and to take care
of that it becomes just like you said, it's overwhelming.
People lock up, they make poor choices, but it's like,
take a breath, be curious, and to ask questions. And
(40:57):
asking questions gives you, I think power if you and
that's that's the other part is you have to know
the right questions to task. If you don't ask the
right questions, you're not going to get the right answers.
So that's that's really one thing I'd love people to
walk away with is to be curious and to learn
the right questions task.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
I think that's such a great tip. I think being
curious because a lot of times there is that shame
and guilt we don't know anything. I should have learned
this in high school. They should have taught and we
blame everybody in the world. But I think that that
doesn't help you to get curious now. And then you're
right asking if we know we're asking the right questions
and we don't, we still don't get a clear answer,
or we still don't understand things. That should be that
(41:39):
flag for you that maybe you need to learn more,
maybe you need to really, you know, ask things different,
or really kind of stop instead of saying, Okay, I guess,
I guess I'll trust you. You know, because it is
our money, it's really important that we understand what we're
doing with it that we make that we feel empowered
to make the right decisions. And I think asking questions
and kind of learning what you can from people who
(42:00):
are providing these, you know, accessible affordable resources is a really,
really great place to start. So if you don't mind,
can you tell people how they can you know, how
they can reach you and learn more about you if
they're looking to follow you online or connect with you personally.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Well, I'm definitely very active on LinkedIn, so that's a
great place to follow me. And or you can go
to my website Tonystewary dot com. That's a great place.
You know, you can sign up for my newsletter and
find all the resources that I mentioned. I have one
(42:37):
hundred plus worksheets and anybody can get for free just
by signing up and joining the get Ready movement. And
also I've watched something that's pretty cool is I have
a AI clone that I've uploaded all my books, all
of my articles. It's connected to my YouTube and LinkedIn,
so you know, it's free. You can go in and
(43:00):
play with it. It's called ask Tony. I've got very
creative on it, and you can play with that and
you know, get some of my thinking on some of
these questions.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
That's cool, all right, Well, yes, everybody, I think it's
a great I think it's a great idea to Yeah.
Go go to the website, check it out, talk to
virtuals Tony, sign up for the newsletter. Thank you Tony
again for coming on the show and talking about this subject.
I think it's definitely provided a lot of clarity on
some pretty complicated and confusing and expensive topics. So thank
(43:32):
you so much, and thank you everyone for listening. If
you want to learn more about your personal finance, you're
looking to do a financial plan for yourself, or catch
up on old episodes of the podcast, please head over
to Misty Lynch dot com. I would love to connect
with you there and see if we can't help you
get your insurance and all the other financial pieces of
your life on track. Till next time. We'll talk again
(43:53):
next week. Thank you for joining us on another insightful
episode of Demiss Buying Money. If you enjoyed this episode,
please subscribe, rate and leave a review. Stay tuned for
more engaging conversations on our next episode, and remember knowledge
is the key to financial empowerment.
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My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com