In this episode of Money & Wealth, John discusses how an affordable life insurance policy can lead to dignity and generational wealth.
Welcome the Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. I wish somebody would. Okay, this is a trending topic. This is an evergreen because ignorance last forever. This is John O'Brien. This is John O'Brien on Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network podcast series on iHeart Okay, I wish somebody would bring this in front of me. I wish somebody would. I dare you to bring this to me at dinner. So Brother Man, and we're gonna play the audio clips. You can hear it on the podcast. Brother Man goes to dinner with his wife's girlfriend, and I guess because he knows a number of the girlfriends that are trying to surprise his wife's girlfriend for a birthday dinner. He makes some phone calls and send some emails to say, hey, dinner is at this place at this time. It's a surprise for licious caller Joe Ann. And that's all he says. I mean, that's what I pick up from the exchange. You tell me what you see. But it's sort of common sense. Now we're about to find out the common sense it's not so common, or maybe just people are just self centered and entitled. And I've even gotten to the story yet I've already got a problem with the whole situation. If you can hear my energy here. So here's the story. Man goes to dinner. Somebody's recording this because it's a birthday and the ladies that they think. It's about eight ladies at the dinner with the birthday girl and the wife, and the dude is the only person there. This is very important. The brother is the only man present with his wife. When the dinner's over, anybody's had a very nice time, and they've ordered everything on the menu, plus the wallpaper off the wall. I guess they've just loaded up with goodies from the restaurant. Maybe tried to take a chair. I don't I'm not quite sure. But they they clear cleared the menu, and and you know they were full. And he says to the waitress, well, you know, just bring individual checks. I'll take care of the birthday girl. The girls go crazy. The girls go absolutely out of their mind. I mean all sense of class, taste, and style goes right out the window. Separator, I got the birthday girl, and my wife.
I'm sorry, you're the only man at the table.
Why are we doing Sparta? But it's all women here. I'm not I'm not responsible for paying everybody.
I got the birthday.
Right, Okay, I'm I'm responsible for libr Okay, you're the only man at the table. The red bottom shoes come off. The next starts starts going so hard that they pop their the necklaces off the neck. I mean it is somebody's gonna jump with me for all this narrative, but I mean it's ignorant to me. It's just ignorant. They're going off on this dude. And by the way, if if this, if the shoes were on the foot, just so you're clear, and men responded the same way to a woman, I'd say the same thing about the ignorance. So just to be clear on this. But in this particular case, these women said, you've got to pay to the husband. Well, why do what? What you've got to pay? You you should pay. You're the man here. Now this is where I start having a very serious problem. What you just say you've got to pay, not that these ladies. The next is the jewelry that on one of them is more than the dude's whole outfit, right. I mean, he looks like he's doing okay. It doesn't really matter. He didn't offer to sponsor to everybody for dinner. That wasn't the invitation. He invited them to dinner to their friend. He don't even really know the girl. Clearly he's there with his wife. So they start going off, all of them except include the birthday girl, by the way, and I would have retracted my offer to even pay for her at this point. Actually I probably would have paid for her anyway, because I give love and that's the way I roll. But they all go off in this dude and start calling him all kinds of names and talking down to him and sayd he's basically not a man, and how dare you not pay? You're the man? He's like, why should I pay? And they just basically say, well, you're the man at the table. What does that mean? Somebody explained that to me. How does a man at the table translate into you must pay the bill for everybody? He said he's gonna pay for the birthday girl. Thought it was very gracious of him. I think everybody else should have just pitched in and then pay for their own bill. Also, they should have said thank you to him for doing that. Luckily, his wife steps up and says, no, no, no, wait, hold on, girlfriends, this is my husband, and he's right, he's paid for the birthday girl. And they start coming at him again, and she says, no, no, no no. And when you get a husband, maybe you'll understand. Oh hello, ray, are you gonna let him stity here with a whole paper full of women? I really do like you. It's not the possibility. And when you'll get a husband, I'm sorry, this is my husband and he's paying for me and the birthday girl. Well, she's right. When they get a husband, maybe they will understand. But at this rate they won't get a husband at least won't last, because that's no way to do anything. Let me tell you something. A giver and a taker is neurotic, and a taker and a taker a psychotic. This is psychotic. This is nuts, this is crazy right, it's Craig Crag talking. I wish somebody would tell me that I owe you something, just because I'm me and I have not obligated myself to take care of we. I wish you would I owe you a hello and thank you with respect and consideration to open your door. If you're a lady in front of me, I ope you. I owe you my mother raised me. But I don't owe you a check and I don't owe you dinner because you're a woman and I'm a man. Where does that come from? What entitlement is that? That's nuts. It's not a job to be a woman, and it's not an obligation because you're a man. And the opposite is also true. This was just wrong. I want to hear your thoughts on it. Please add comments, have conversation, or as my friend Charlemagne, that God would say, let's discuss. So let's discuss because this is crazy and we would got to stop having irrational conversations and start talking about things that actually matter. You know, you always tell poor people from everybody else. You go to a barber shop or a nail salon or hair salon into a wealthy neighborhood, irrespective of race. They're talking about their ideas. They're talking about the stock market. They're talking about how their home renovation's coming, how their vacation, or their big idea they've got for their business or whatever. Right the dreams, their aspiration. You go into a poor neighborhood of any race, I might add, and folks are talking about each other. First, are talking about somebody else. Girl, you heard about pookying them? And what is enough? Then some celebrity or whatever who's not paying you a dime to fill your whole day with their conversation. You get paid nothing, nothing, nothing, But you've leashed yourself out to some personality to talk about them and their business all day long. Wealthy people talk about ideas, and poor people talk about other people. In this particular case, they're talking about talking down to this brother about an obligation he never signed up for, and it is raggedy and it is wrong. All right, let's discuss John O'Briant. This is money and wealth. This will be a hot one. You've been bamboozled, you've been tricked, you've been fooled. That is a quote from Malcolm X, by the way, but I'm using it today on this Money and Wealth episode of the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio to tell you there are people who want you to remain unenlightened. My friend who's the CEO, Chris is the CEO of a major financial institution, Chris Gorman is his name, The CEO of Key Bank told me once that financial freedom potentially is the only freedom, only true freedom, because no one can take it away from you. That once you get it, unless you make a mistake, it is yours. Whereas political freedom and religious freedom and other forms of freedom, civil rights, etc. Can be removed from you by others at their whim. Look at what's going on with regard to public policy, people for whom you have no control over can change things for you. But financial freedom, within reason you control, and educations the ultimate poverty radication tool. When you know better, you do better. Here is a prime example of that is life insurance. And it doesn't get more basic than this. So you have people dying, not just poor people. In doing a crowdsourcing now, crowdsourcing was created for many reasons, but one of them was to fund aspirational activity. I can't get a loan from a bank, so I'm going to crowdsource my business idea, my invention with a group of friends and family members and believers and give them some future value that we will define in the crowdsourcing for the investment in me. It's like going to the public markets. It's like your own Wall Street. Crowdfunding was originally this aspirational idea, and it is really devolved into I broke my leg and I don't can't afford to pay the fee, or I you know, my cousin died and there's no burial money. And then you've got celebrities who have lived this incredible aspirational life and you see when they pass away that family members are doing some crowdfunding for somebody who's made hundreds of thousands and in many cases millions and tens of millions of dollars died without a wheel. That's another podcast for another time. But could not afford a proper burial. This is crazy and it is undignified, and we deserve better, and we're going to talk now about doing better. We're not going to talk about just the negative, but the positive, the incredible positives of having a life insurance policy and getting it right now. So in South Africa, about ten years ago I was in South Africa. We had offices there for Operation Hope. Maybe yeah, about ten years ago. I've been to South Africa forty times, and I was noticing that families were buying the entire families were buying life insurance policies and I couldn't figure it out. This was ten years, fifteen years ago, particularly when the AIDS crisis, the age epidemic, maybe even twenty years ago, was at its height, and people were just just dropping, just dying like that. And it sounds rather crude, but it was explained to me, and actually I now believe it is quite intelligent. Poor people are actually not if you can, if you get you've got too much month into your money, and you can figure out how to make it all last and figure it out. You know, a lot of these single mothers deserve Nobel Peace Prizes for how they're able to innovate themselves. So anyway, in South Africa, you had the situations where people were dying of AIDS, and so you have a family that would be very practical family of five or eight or ten. Everybody in the family would get a life insurance policy and cross pollinate across assign rights for the policy to their siblings, to their loved ones, to their mom and dad. So God forbid one of the one or two members of the family, and unfortunately in this situation, aid's got many many members of the family. During this era. If God forbid, somebody passed away, then that at least the proceeds from their death would go to the family. And you might have half the people in that family pass away, and the generational wealth would at least flow resources with at least flow to the surviving descendants and siblings and family members. So there was at least a rainbow after this storm. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first. So that's a scientific fact, by the way, So at least something positive. I know this sounds rather crude, and you might think it sounds rather heartless, but I think it's actually heartful. I think it's very thoughtful. They didn't want on the negative side or the liability side. They didn't want to leave their family members with some burden tied to their ailment and their death. Maybe they were sick for a long time, and maybe that cost members of the family money to take care of them. At least with the life insurance policy had reimbursed the person who took care of them, taken care of them for the cost of that care, and allowed them to be buried with dignity. Let's now come to the United States of America. Let's come to something very basic. Now, we have a problem in the black community in America, African Americans. We're not talking about South Africa now where the sixty five million people went about six million taxpayers and their issue is truly poverty after apart time. We're not talking about a developing country or or you know, an emerging economy somewhere in the world. We're talking about the largest economy in the United States of America. And we're talking about African Americans who have had a shot at the big ring of aspirational activity, gone to good schools and all that stuff. And we're dropping like you know, I can't say what I really want. We're dropping faster than we should have. We're dying and dying broke. Well, let me before you get to the dying part, because now you have grant used to be the children would bury the grandparents. Now grandparents are burying their children. That's another discussion for another day. But it is estimated by twenty fifty or so, if we do nothing in the Afrimerican community, but what we have done so far, average net worth of Black America will be zero. I hope you heard that clearly. I'm gonna say it again, if we do nothing more than what we're not not poor people now all black people, if we do nothing more than what we have done and what we are doing right now on average, So you can have somebody in the block who's your block is worth you know, million dollars, and five other people on the block worth because of all their debt and whatever worth combined, you know, negative five million dollars. You now have a negative net worth of four million dollars on that block, if you understand the logic, So the average net worth when when you mix in those who are doing well with all those who aren't doing well, it's scheduled to be zero z row and we're one point six one point seven trillion dollar consumer spending for us, but most of that's consumption. This is a solvable problem right now. So if you're thirty five years old, please get a pencil out and tell me why this is not achievable. Because my friend, Sir James Buchanan, who's an assistant of mine, the chief Community officer for Operation Hope, has done this for his grandchildren right He has went and gotten a twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy for each of his grandchildren, right, but I'm gonna be more. And God bless him for doing that. And that's one hundred thousand dollars for his four grandchildren and it costs him. I think it's twenty dollars a month. So let's look at you. You're thirty five years old, you're gainfully employed. You've got a career, you said, John, I can't afford I say, you know, I'm gonna get you a You should get a million dollar life insurance policy. You want to be a millionaire. You want to build generational wealth. You want to pass generational wealth down to your children. If you have some of your wife or your husband, or you're leaving for your parents and you can't make that much. You don't think and live, so you make money during the day. You bill wells in your sleep. It's compounding. Here's a sim way to compound wealth, a term life, so you have whole life, which builds equity in the insurance policy. I want you to think now about a term not a whole life policy, which is also a savings vehicle. And I'm not telling you which insurance coming to go with. I don't care which one you use, or you get a term life policy. I'm talking now about term life policies ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Here you're in this example, you're thirty five years old. I've already said you've gainfully employed. Right, you know you're not a millionaire. You know you're making you know, middle class wages, working class wages even right, you're an hourly work. I make this really simple for you. You want a million dollar policy. You're thirty five years old, you're reasonably healthy, you don't smoke. That's going to cost you about give or take twenty five thirty dollars a month. Did you hear me? Between twenty and thirty dollars a month for a one million dollar life insurance policy, which will set your family up for success for the rest of their lives. You'll send your kids to college, it'll put a down payment for a home for the ones you leave behind. It'll pay for your burial costs. You can lay it all out in your will. What you want your million dollar life insurance policy to do, you can literally direct it like a baller. You become a baller in advance. So out of this so called negative things called death, which we all deal with, I can't you don't know how long you're gonna live, but I guarantee you know you're gonna die. You don't know how long you're gonna live, but you damn sure know you're gonna die. What's the mystery? So let's plan for it. When you're being run out of town, get in front of the crowd and make like a parade. It's not nex necessarily negative. Okay, I don't want to get spiritual on you here, but we're not human beings having a spiritual experience. We're spiritual beings having a human experience. Back to the topic. Don't don't. If you don't deal with it, it's gonna deal with you. So address it. Address life and death, plan for it, create a will. I know you're young, and you think your bulletproof you'll lift forever. Let me mystery, mystery solve. You're gonna die one day. You may die early if you hang around the wrong crew. There's a whole bunch of young people dropping like flies right now. Parents, grandparents raised burying children at the least, don't leave anybody with an obligation. Don't leave them with debt. So they got a crowdfund your funeral. Flip the script, create a simple will. You can do it easily on the internet. My team and Operation Hope will help you for free to create a budget and a will will help you figure out out your choices for a term life or a whole life insurance policy. In this example, talking about a term life insurance policy, you make the choice, and we're not going to direct you to which one you're gonna use. You can decide which one that you want to use. We just want to educate you. So let's assume you want to aim a little lower. Right, you want one hundred thousand dollars policy. Right, that's even more reasonable. One hundred thousand dollars insurance policy would cost you. Again, it depends on the policy. Don't hold me to it. But between ten and twenty dollars a month, you spend that on Starbucks, one drink at a club that's watered down, that you won't remember tomorrow. That will leave your body the first time you go to the restroom. Yes, I said it, there's no staying power. And you didn't even like it. It wasn't even a good drink. This is building wealth for you, and this is you can be proud for this every time you write that ten dollars check. Wow, look at what I'm doing for my family. I'm not leaving them with a burden. I'm leaving them with generational wealth for the future. And as long as you don't die, no suicide, no hanky panky, as long as it's legit, like you just drop dead, you natural causes, accident, or whatever, then your family's gonna get the money or whoever you directed. Think about the power you've got of directing where you want this money to go. It's powerful. You can aim a little even lower, at least do this twenty five thousand dollars policy. We're literally talking about dollars a month dollars for a term life policy, ten year, twenty year, thirty year term life policy. Operation Hope, like many employers, has an emergency life insurance policy. God forbid, you pass away. Check with your employer. If you, or or with somebody who passes away, check with their employer. Most employers that are reputable, like Operation to Hope, have a twenty five thousand dollars life insurance policy that is baked into their insurance policy, their health insurance policy. And you get twenty five thousand dollars if you just ask for it from the HR department. You've got to ask for it. You have to know what you're asking for. You've got to read the health insurance policy and its benefits, and there's normally a death provision in it, with reputable health insurance plans that provide for up to twenty five thousand dollars of a one time check. So now you get twenty five thousand dollars from your employer matched by twenty five thousand dollars that you've paid for or more, and now you're not begging somebody for basic human dignity. And if you want to be a real baller, you can do more than a million dollar policy. And the younger you are, the cheaper the policy, and once you lock it in, they can't change the deal on you. But they're hoping that you don't buy the policy early. They're hoping that you wait to buy the policy when you're fifty or six, and they're going to wrack those fees up. You should still buy the policy, by the way, to a much much higher monthly rate because your chance of dropping dead I hate to say it, or bluntly, or just much higher life expectancy, particularly if you haven't taken good care of yourself, and so on and so forth. If you live in a five eighty credit score neighborhood, you lift a sixty one years old. You live in a seven under credit score neighborhood, you live to eighty one years old. These neighborhoods are often fifteen minutes apart. Guess who lives in the five eighty credit score neighborhood. Who lives a sixty one who doesn't even get Social Security? Because Social Security, I believe is at sixty five years old. Another podcast for another day. But go to the Hope Financial Wellness Index and type in your zip code and I'll tell you your credit score. This is a game, and I want you to master it. Right. This is the Ministry of Finance, right, and this is my sermon. And I've just given you a sermon for the week on insurance, practical applicable life insurance discussion that you can afford, that everybody can afford. Everybody should be doing this. Don't say you can't and then just put this on auto payment. You don't want to pay for this term policy, and then find you've missed some payments, they'll cancel it. There's cancelation clauses. Now that I've just taken your premium, put it on auto pay right and have that check. Have it just taken as an ACH or some other auto payment out of your account. Make sure prepay it if you can ten dollars a month. It's one hundred and twenty dollars a year. Just prepay the thing on things you pay for more than that than paying for Netflix or you know, going out on the date that you can't remember, or our other club that you would never put set foot on during the day because it's filthy. But you'll pay you know, one hundred bucks to go to the VIP area at night. Okay, I just went into a whole another direction. I just want you to do this. I want you to step into your own greatness, right. This is a way for everybody pass a word now to get generational wealth. I also want you to pre order my book Financial Literacy for all. It's out. It's number one in Economics already, yay, so thank you for that if you've pre ordered it. But make it a New York Times bestseller. It's a value of bestseller Economics and Amazon. But I want you to buy it from Walmart a Bars and Nobles, or a black bookstore, minority owned bookstore, wherever you happen to get your books if you can. If there's a black bookstore in you, please give them some business. But pre order it today. All these little hacks, I cover some of them, a lot of them in this book, and I fold these topics out in fullness, one by one on this podcast series. I want you to take your life back, starting right now. Go to Operation Hope for full coaching and counseling. It's all scholarship, because scholarship for you, because of our partners. This is the John O'Bryant Money and Wealth podcast as series on the Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio. This is a civil rights movement, from civil rights to silver rights, from the streets to the suites. Hey, hey, John Hope Bryant. This is a fan question for Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network. Here is a fan question from at vinett or ig at B E N N E T underscore. What are some assets to hold that most people overlook? Good question. It's simple things actually, like an insurance policy. You may I think that insurance policy is an asset. It is, and you have term and you have whole Now, term life is an indirect asset because even though it's term insurance is not building any wealth. If you pass away.
It still pays out a payment to your heirs, to those who are your survivor, and that creates generational wealth.
That is an asset. The easiest way to recreate generational wealth is probably an insurance policy. And if you're if you're a young person, you get an insurance policy, it won't cost you much. You're twenty to thirty years old, you get an insurance policy, it will cost you next to nothing. You're in decent health, and you can get a you know, one hundred thousand dollars two hundred thousand insurance policy as a young person and at a very reasonable rate. But you get into, you know, sixty years old, that insurance cup policy seventy years that same insurance policy is going to cost close to a fortune because you will you may drop dead. An insurance company, it's an actual area they're and analyzing risks and return and so you still you should still get an insurance policy. By the way, if you're older, because you just don't want to, you don't want to leave your family and friends and loved ones with debt. You want to leave them as an asset. And as I keep saying, your asset cannot be on your figure out what I just hit it right? You got to have real assets. So whole life policy actually builds wealth in the insurance policy. In other words, the policy itself has value. Is an asset. It's a financial instrument. It's not just when you die. If you sell a policy, you still get benefits. But whether it's term, a hole, insurance policy, something everybody should have. It is an asset. A will is an asset. Everybody should have a will. I mean, it's crazy that Prince draw died without a will. I believe Aretha Franklin died without a will. A number of our heroes and she Rolls had passed away without a will. And it becomes a fight for what's not right. I mean, I'm sure that Prince was crawling, you know, rolling over his grave. We're trying to figure, you know, like, why are these people I didn't want to have my assets now controlling them because you didn't have a will. It doesn't matter whether there's somebody you're you know, your kin and you love them, you may not want them managing your your money, your finances, and directing your estate. So you should have a will. That's an asset, indirect asset, and in my opinion, and you should definitely have an insurance policy. Uh. And forty one percent of black people, forty one to forty four percent of black people own a home. So I'm going to say that that's an asset that some people, oh most people overlook it because seventy five percent of are our mainstream CALIBARX own a home. And it's the number one easiest way to build wealth is home ownership. So I think you check those three boxes like before you talk to me. And I have a fourth suggestion, which is probably a fractional ownership of stock. You can't afford to buy stock is you know, like you know one hundred and forty you know you can't afford to buy five shares of Apple at whatever the going rate is Apple stock or whatever it is you love, then then buy a fractional share look that up now, fractional share investing and buy you know where they could eat ten bucks, twenty five bucks, fifty bucks every month. Oral invest what you can afford, but don't do it. Don't do nothing because you can't do the perfect something. Don't let the perfect become the death of the good. Okay, I just give you three or four good suggestions there, answer it to your question. I will maybe over answer your question. Ultimately, go to Operation Hope with my coaches. They'll get you, They'll get you on the right track. One love. This is John O'Brien. I'm Out Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.