Ep. 314 – What Impacts Your Operation the Most, with Tracy Brunet

“I’m listening to Dave Ramsey, Dave I call him Dave the Dipstick. So I’m listening to Dave and I’m like, how come I can’t buy property to cash flow and then I need to be debt free. I just couldn’t figure out how to do that. And then I was reading books about penny stocks and ’08 and ’09 happened and I lost half my money and I was ticked off about that. So I was selling P&C at the time and then of course I heard about the concept and I thought, well there’s no way. These people are going to jail. Cuz Tracy, I had just done some forex trading stuff taken for like three grand, you know? And so I was like, okay, this is a scam. These people can’t even explain this to me. But I went home, I read five books and I’m like, this is legit.”

Hello, hello and welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. All right, today I’m going to play for you an interview I did with Tracy Brunet on the Impact Farming Show last December. I never shared this one with you guys here, so I’m happy to do that today. Go check out Tracy’s show if you haven’t already. Thanks again to Tracy for having me on. Enjoy.

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Impact Farming Show. Today I have an amazing guest here. I have Mary Jo Irmen joining me and she is a speaker, an author, podcaster, a YouTuber, uh certified IBC practitioner and I just told her before coming on camera, she is my financial soul sister. So welcome Mary Jo.

Thank you very much for having me, Tracy. I’m excited.

I’m excited, too. Just so you guys know, Mary Jo is the author of this book as well as another one. I’ll get you to kind of touch on that in a bit. Just read this book and we’re going to be talking about farming without the bank. So excited for this episode. And when I said she’s my financial soul sister, I finally found somebody that’s as passionate about helping farmers be financially successful as I am. So, yay. Welcome, welcome, Mary Jo.

Thank you. I call it German passion, Tracy, cuz then people think I’m yelling at them. It’s just I’m 100% German. It’s how we talk. We yell. Okay. So, it’s not Nobody should take it personal. If

We’re going to yell at each other then the whole episode. I’m part Irish and I kind of blame it on that. I talked to my sister and she’s quiet. She’s like, “Stop yelling.” I’m like, “I’m just talking.”

Yeah. Yeah. My two step kids are like, “Why why are you with my biological child?” They’re like, “Why are you yelling?” I’m like, “We are just having a conversation.” And it is too much for them. They are Norwegian. They are like, “Why is everybody yelling?” It’s just we’re having a conversation. We’re passionate.

I was going to say we’re passionate. If you hear If you ever hear me “So, today on the Impact Farming Show.” Send the doctor, okay? Because I’m near my death. Oh, I love it. This is going to be so much fun. So, Mary Jo, can you talk to us a little bit about your background? And then we’ll roll into the Farming Without the Bank concept. So, tell us about you. Okay.

So, I started this concept or I I was introduced this concept in 2010. Okay. And the second that I heard about the concept, I knew that this would work for farmers. I grew up on a farm ranch operation. My dad had purebred Charolais cattle for It was about 30 years. And then he had a little bit of farm stuff. They dispersed the cattle in the early ’90s and then they just went strictly to farming. So, now him and my dad or my dad and my brother farm together. And they’re fairly They They decent size operation in their area cuz we are the Midwest, we’re not the south, so it’s more than, you know, 500 acres.

And so, they’re farming all of their stuff, and so I knew what it I knew that we had operating costs. I knew that the bank’s name was on the check when it came in. I knew that the banks were saying yes or no, and that they had a lot of the control. So, when I was introduced to this, I was like, “Oh my gosh, this farmers need this, right?” And farmers are very blockheaded. They’re very ornery. They’re very stubborn. And so, welcome. We I will just meet you where you’re at, because I also am stubborn. Ornery meets ornery,

And I was like, “Okay, you guys don’t get it.” And they would keep telling me, “Well, Mary Jo, you don’t look like a farmer. What do you know?” And that you don’t know the numbers. You don’t know how hard it is. And so, I thought, “Well, you know what? Then I’m going to make you read the book.” And so, I just authored my book so that people didn’t just have to read Nelson’s book. So, the Becoming Your Own Banker book is where I started, but it’s very intimidating. And if I put it in farmers’ terminology, then it would make sense. And so, I wrote the book so that they had to understand everything, not just the numbers. And then, of course, when I wrote the book, commodity prices, we had $7 corn, you know. So, then I heard, “Well, I don’t need you, cuz I’m not operating with the bank.” Well, for now. Yeah. Yeah. And here we are.

And here we are. There we are. Here we are. Like, what? 10 years later? I don’t even remember.

I think we’re maybe 10 or 11 years into the book.

Okay. Wow. What were you doing? Have you always been in banking? I’m curious. I I always love like I’m an entrepreneur, and I always love that spark of a moment when the business idea happens or the concept comes about. So, what were you doing at the time and then when you heard about it, what was your thoughts about the concept?

Okay, so I was actually in the P&C world, so I was selling home and auto insurance. And I would not get my life insurance license because I hated it, didn’t see any point in it, just referred all that business to someone else in the office. And then somebody came to me and said, “Hey.” And but at the time, I was obsessed. Since I was 23, I was obsessed with Robert Kiyosaki, cash flow, rental properties, like But at the same time, I’m listening to Dave Ramsey, Dave I call him Dave the Dipstick. So, I’m listening to Dave and I’m like, “How come I can’t buy property to cash flow and then I need to be debt-free?” Like, I wasn’t I just couldn’t figure out how to do that. And then I was reading books about penny stocks and ’08, ’09 happened and I lost half my money and I was ticked off about that. And so, when So, I was selling P&C at the time

And then of course I heard about the concept and I thought, “Well, there’s no way. These people are going to jail.” Cuz Tracy, I had just done some forex trading stuff and got taken for like three grand, you know? And so, I was like, “Okay, this is a scam. These people can’t even explain this to me.” But I went home, I read five books and I’m like, “This is legit.” Then I went on to the states, you know, here in the US we have every state has a life insurance website for a regulation and they were talking about borrowing money and I was like, “Well, maybe this isn’t like and I still was iffy. Yeah. But then I went took my life insurance license and there were questions on the exam about borrowing cash value and I thought, “This must be legit.” Like, I still I knew. I was so excited about it, but I had all the reservations of everybody else. Who’s going to jail? Why don’t people know about this? All the things.

But I, like you, have just been obsessed with money forever. And how are people making money? And they say, “Well, you don’t have to work for your money.” How is that? How does that work? And I’m I was just I’ve just constantly been somebody that reads and learns and listens and talks to people. And so, this just happened it just fit in with everything cuz I hate the stock market. I hate anything to do with rates of return. I don’t I lost my money in ’08 and ’09 when our market crashed. And I thought, “This is the dumbest thing ever. Why are people putting their money here?”

I do not gamble. You will You’ll find me in a casino cuz my husband likes to gamble, but you will never see me put a penny of my money in a machine. Because, you know, I told my husband I said, “If you want to gamble, why don’t you just give me your money? And then I’ll decide if I’m going to give it back.” Because that’s essentially what we’re doing here. You know, I mean, if that makes you feel good, I’ll just take it for months and then I’ll decide, “Oh, I’m going to give you a little.” Just to keep you on the hook, you know? Yeah. And so, the stock market just wasn’t my thing. It’s I want cash flow. I want to buy businesses. I’ve either done some sort of network marketing business since I’ve been 21 or I had a little chocolate candy business while I was a P&C agent. I’ve always had multi stuff going on where I’m always trying to make more money.

I love it. So much there and every minute that you speak, you become my financial soul sister even more. Like the Robert Kiyosaki, all of that. I was reading that in like university. And hey, do you know I want to ask you this. This is important for the episode, guys. Not just girl talk here. Um have you ever heard of David Is it David Chilton, The Wealthy Barber? His concept

Okay, he’s Canadian and he was one of my first financial books. His whole premise is it’s I guess a parable like a business parable, but his whole thing is saving 10% and paying yourself first. So then when I was reading your book and learning from you, I’m like it’s a lot of the same concepts. You’re taking care of yourself first, but we won’t we won’t get go there. And the gambling thing, yeah, I went to Vegas. I’m like, well, why would I put like 20 bucks in there? I could just go buy a a shirt and then have it. Then eventually I got bored. So I’m like, okay, I’ll play the penny machines. What a waste of money. Yeah, I watched the craps game. I love I’ll just stand and watch craps and then people will explain it to me. Okay.

And so then I’m like because it’s craps is very fascinating to me and it’s very complicated. And so I want I think it’s complicated. I mean, I don’t know how to play it, but as I like if you watch craps long enough, I or I did at one casino. And so these old guys are giving me money and then I won and then I gave them all their money back, you know, but it was like, I’ll play with your money, but I’m not playing with my money. But you know, they’re just like, oh, you should play. They must have thought I didn’t have any money. There you go. Just save your money. I’ll sit in a casino for hours just watching people play.

And then you watch people, Tracy, right? Like We were just in the casino and when I when we drive into the parking lot, I look at all the cars. Oh. And I’m like, None of these people should be here. Right? There might be two newer cars in the parking lot. The rest of them not in such good shape. You get into the casino, we all have a walker, we’re smoking, where the last casino we were in, I said to my husband, I went out and I said, “You know, I hope all those husbands that are in heaven, I hope they’re haunting all of these women that are spending the this money, these widows that are at the casino. Their husbands worked their behind off and they’re just out there blowing money.” Like, that that’s all you got to do? Yeah.

You know, it’s just and I don’t know that to be true, obviously, but you see a lot of elderly women and there’s some of them that have walkers and I’m like, I’m pretty sure you can walk without that walker. You know, I mean, they’re just people that don’t have teeth. People that are there and they’re just they’re drinking and it’s 11:00 in the morning when we went through. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. You know, You were so that should not be there that are there.

Yeah. Ooh, I love that and the passion, too. And we were chit-chatting a little bit before on camera. And just I mean, we could go on a whole rant about the school system and financial education. I haven’t even talked to you before and I’m sure we could. Maybe another episode we’ll do Tracy and Mary Jo rants. But you’re so right and it’s like, literally, money affects everything that we do and now I love this. I write your I write your book expecting because when I first heard this, I’m like, “Farming without the bank?” And and the reason I’m being honest is because you get straight to the point and you say it, too. I’m like, “How is this even possible? It doesn’t sound legit, doesn’t sound real.” So, I’m expecting this to be like, really hard and complicated. But if I understand correct, it’s pretty straightforward for my brain. So, I think that’s a good jumping off point. Do you want to talk about this concept and really one-on-one us, Mary Jo like like you’re talking to a kid. How’s this work?

So, the what were what we’re teaching is the infinite banking concept. That was all created by R. Nelson Nash out of Birmingham, Alabama. The There’s two There’s really essentially two pieces to this. The first piece is the piece that people miss. This is a concept which is a thought process around money. So, if we are not using our money correctly and we don’t understand how money works, we’re not ever going to be able to make more money. And so, a lot of the second part of this is life insurance. Okay, so if somebody’s been listening to this and they heard the life insurance piece, just stop just don’t That’s not That is the tool to the concept.

But, when we look at the concept as a whole, we are talking about Parkinson’s Law. Right? Are we buying tractors we don’t need? Are we buying combines we don’t need just to avoid taxes? What is the true cost of doing that? If I run the numbers in the states and I’m going to buy a combine so that I can avoid tax, but I have to go to the bank to borrow money to buy that combine, the amount of tax that I saved, I’m paying an interest to the insurance or to the bank over a five or seven year period of time. Right. We’re not thinking about how to utilize money.

If we want to sell our We say, “Oh, we can’t get rid of our operation until we’re dead. We’re going to pay capital gains. We don’t want We don’t want to pay capital gains. We don’t want to pay taxes, right?” Well, can you owner finance somebody if it’s paid for? charge them interest? And now the taxes are different. And again, I don’t know how that works in Canada. Winnie Lau and Lacy have Winnie co-authored the book with me and she has Lacy that works with her. Between those two, they know all the Canadian version of it all. But it’s the it’s our thought process. We have this 100-year-old thought process that says we need to farm, we need to finance the farm like we did 100 years ago. Who’s still farming with horses and plows? Nobody. We’re not farming that way. Unless you want to, I guess. I mean, there are some people that think it’s fun. But we’re not farming that way, but we’re still financing it that way. We’re still handing it off that way.

So, if we get our thought process correct, if we know what the problem is, if we know that the banks are turning money, and we know that they have control. So, if we’re going to get an operating note from the bank, they have ultimate control of what we put on it, cuz they’re going to tell us how much money they’re going to give us, right? How much fertilizer we need, how much chemical we need. They’re going to tell us when to sell, because if we have to fulfill that note and they don’t carry that note forward, well, we’re selling when commodity prices aren’t going to be the best price because we can’t hold it.

We’re not in control. And so, we have to get into a different mindset of what’s happening. Nelson talks about the fact that we have the Willie Sutton law, right? Willie Sutton went and robbed a bunch of banks. Why did he rob the banks? Because that’s where the gold is. Those with the gold make the rules. Who’s got the gold? The banks. Who’s determining what you can plant, when you can plant, how you can cash that check, how much of that check you can have. The banker.

So, when you borrow from the bank, you are in business with the bank, and you end up being the employee. And they tell you what you can and can’t do. And so, when we start thinking differently, and you and I are already there, right? That’s why when you read the book, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.” Because your thought process was already like, “Oh, well, the government schools are teaching us what they want us to know, right? We need to create some cash flow. We already need to think about money differently.” But, the people that are just that are struggling all the time, they just think it is what it is. Oh, this is just how it’s always been. But, we can’t see a solution if we’re not opening our eyes past the problem. We can’t think positive and negative at the same time. And so, with a negative mindset, all we’re hearing is the problem. But, then we have the solution, it’s right here. It’s in the book. Right?

So, we have to look at all of our numbers. We have to know our numbers. So, that again, running it like a business. We cannot farm to you to It’s not a lifestyle. Farming is not a lifestyle. It is a business, and start treating it like a business. The banks can only take advantage of people that don’t know their numbers. Have you ever thought about that? I had never thought about that till just recently. Okay. We have all these people that are Oh, the bank is taking all my stuff. The bank didn’t apply my grain check correctly. They applied it instead of applying it all to my line of credit, they applied some of it to my equipment payments.

But, I don’t know what they’re doing with it. The bank just gets the check. What do you mean you don’t know what they’re doing with it? Why is your check going to the bank? You should be going You should be walking in with your check and saying, “I want to apply it here, here, and here.” Yeah. So, if the bank is going to file bankruptcy and take your land, have you paid attention to all of your numbers? Right?

And so, the first portion of everything that we’re talking about is a concept. The second side of that is when we have our money money has a cost to it. We finance everything we buy. We either give up interest by paying cash, or we pay somebody interest by financing it. Okay? So, what we want is we need a tool. Now we know how to think about money correctly. So, now we need a tool of where do we put this money so that we have liquidity, control, guarantees, uninterrupted compound interest. That just so happens to be whole life insurance, dividend-paying whole life. Not universal life, not variable, not indexed. Whole life. And so, a lot of people think, “Oh, I’ve heard about the infinite banking concept. It’s whole life. I’m just going to go to any old agent in the world and buy some whole life.” That is not how this works. It needs to be structured correctly. You’re going to need some coaching on how to borrow it, how to pay it back, and how to stay an honest banker.

But, the policy then builds your bank. So, you become the banker. You now have to run your amortization schedules. You’re going to have to manage your interest. You’re going to have to pay it back. Nobody’s saying, “Hey, knocking on your door. Hey Tracy, you need to get this paid back.” No, you don’t. They don’t care. Right? So, that is if that summed it up in a whole Wow. And it’s kind of long, but a lot of people missed the first half of that.

I like that. And a lot of Well, a lot of everything is unlearning what we know, because it’s the status quo.

I’ll ask you a question, Mary Jo. Why haven’t they taught us this? I’m sure I know your answer. Just like everything we’re taught a structured set of knowledge and subjects and nobody taught us this. So, same thing. I’m open, but when I read that or heard the concept, I’m like, “What? I haven’t heard of this.” Why didn’t they teach us this? I’m like, “Oh.”

Yeah. I don’t get that question a lot anymore, but you’re the fourth person in 2 days to ask me that question. And obviously needs to be talked about. I just did a TikTok about this this morning, but it is I contribute I don’t have an exact answer, but this is what I contribute it to. Here we had here in the states IRAs and 401(k)s were born in ’74 and ’80. Okay? So, we have old people, 80, 85, 90. They had whole life. They all had whole life. Pensions used to be put in a whole life product called an annuity, okay? When the stock market when all these 401(k)s and IRAs took off, everybody swooped to the market. The market went like this and we had these massive rates of return. Well, now all of a sudden the rate of return in the whole life was very minimal compared to what was happening in the market.

Human nature is I got to go get that right now. So, we don’t think, “Hey, once everybody gets in, what’s going to happen? Is it going to go down? It’s going to stabilize?” And we’ve never seen those big rates of return. Dave the Dipstick still talks about them, right? Like he’s still talking you’re going to get this 16% rate of return. I Where? The market average isn’t even that. Yeah.

And so, then life insurance companies people were canceling whole life and they’re moving all that money to the market. So, now life insurance companies said, “Oh, we need to create a product that competes.” And that’s when the universal life products started and they’re all based on some sort of rate of return with no guarantees and they lapse constantly. And so, now life insurance companies quit teaching agents about this whole life product. Yeah. So, that’s my only explanation. As Nelson calls it the noise. You have all this noise out there, and noise of chase a rate of return, chase a rate of return.

But, we’re chasing a rate of return for what? I mean, think about it. We’re paying the bank. We have loans on all kinds of things. And when interest rates were low, we would have a loan on a vehicle, a camper, we might have a loan on some land and some cows and whatever. The amount of interest does not matter. The volume of interest is what matters. So, you can have a whole bunch of 2% loans. But, over all those loans, the volume of what you’re paying out is huge. Right? That’s what we’re not So, what we’re doing is saying, “We’re going to go buy all this stuff, and then we’re going to take this tiny little bit of our income, and we’re going to put it in the stock market and hope for a rate of return. So, we’re going to go gamble with our retirement money.” Why don’t you gamble to go buy that combine? Why don’t you just put that money in the stock market and hope that it’s there?

Amen to that. Or crypto for that matter.

You know, I’m not a big crypto fan cuz there’s no stability in it.

Right. I haven’t gone there, either. I love that part of the book, too, where it really explains the market and If I I’ll say what I’m going to say, and then it kind of shows my thinking nature, skeptical nature, but everybody taking our money into the market benefits who? The biggest investors, right? If we knew there was other places that made sense to put our money, wouldn’t benefit people with the bulk of the interest in the market. Ooh, who said that? Yeah.

And there’s a And here’s the thing, when you’re When the market is going up and down, it’s really just a few companies. Yeah. And when we have companies that are selling off their stock to buy back their stock to make their company look good, we don’t know that. We don’t know that there are buybacks. We have to pay attention to that because that’s just when people say, “How is the The economy must be okay. The market’s doing great.” Or how come the market didn’t drop right now? It should have dropped, right? Think about it. Because we’re fake propping that up. And you guys think everybody thinks it’s just fantastic because we lost we don’t look when we lose money, but we look when we gain money. We just don’t understand the impact that the ups and the downs and the interruption of growth has.

When I hear people say, “Oh, the market compounds my money.” There’s a difference between uninterrupted compound money and com- and interrupted compound money. Okay, I always explain it like my weight loss system. Okay, I might do good all week and I might lose some weight. And then on the weekends, I might have some pizza. Right? And I’m going to gain back everything I lost. I just interrupted my progress. Yeah.

What happens when we put money in the market and then it it drops and then we have to start from here to get back to here? That takes time and effort. So, if the market drops 25%, I think it’s I think you need 33% gain to get back the 25 you lost. People think, “Oh, it’s back 25. I’m good.” No, it’s not. You’re still below the eight ball because you started here. So, it’s just a matter of it’s they’re not teaching us. They’re not We’re not being told the truth of how that works. Because you’re exactly right. The more money we put in the market, it benefits who? The big companies, the central banking system, all the elites that are running the world.

Yeah. Two things on that really quick and then I want to dive into the concept a little bit more. I had a business partner, one of the wealthiest men I know, and I had asked him about investing. I was pretty young, right, and starting to make money and wise guy. I said, “Do you invest in the stock markets?” And he said, “I will never invest in anything.” This was his, he’s a property guy, right? So, that’s his skew. He said, “I won’t invest in anything that I can’t hold physically.” And that has kind of stuck with me and I I’m so thankful as farmers that I have the ability to invest in cows that I hold but literally but they’re right there, right? And I can sell them. Markets Yeah. Neither here nor there, but that was a smart concept and I loved how you shared that in the book cuz that’s a good piece of information for people to understand the money system. So, anyways,

But you know cattle. I know cattle.

So, here’s the difference. Yeah. You don’t know the market, but you’re in the market. You don’t know anything about stocks, but you’re in stocks. Right. Warren Buffett says you shouldn’t be in it if you don’t know it. So, farmers want to build a farm, they want cattle. They know how to buy and sell cows. They know how to market grain. But they’re putting money in the market for retirement? Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you put that money into more farm ground? Why wouldn’t you put that money into marketing your grain, fertilizer, chemical, whatever? You’ve got money sitting in an IRA or some sort of investment for retirement, but then you go to the bank and borrow an operating note at 5, 6, 7, 9, 10%, whatever it happens to be at the moment.

Yeah. Love it. Yeah. That makes I love it. I guess that’s a that’s a perfect step in. Do you want to talk about how this works?

So, it’s just a matter of figuring out where is our money going? How are we utilizing money? So, when clients meet with myself or Winnie or Lacy in Canada, we’re going to look at everything that they’re doing with money. Cuz farmers will always say, “Well, Mary Jo, I don’t have any money.” Well, I know you don’t cuz you put it all right back in. But, it’s going through your hands. And so, can we set up a life insurance policy, pay a premium, 50 to 75% of that money is going to be available to you right away. We’re going to borrow against that, and then we are going to use it to buy equipment, buy cattle, feed, fertilizer, chemical, operating, I don’t care what you use it for.

Nobody cares what you use it for. Because the insurance company says, “Well, you have some death benefit.” So, if you die, and the loan is not paid back, your heirs are going to get the difference from the death benefit to the cash value. So, in all reality, if you buy cows with it, your cows are not collateral to that note. Your death benefit is collateral to the note. And guess what? No one gets out alive. So, they know they you’re going to die. It’s just a matter of time.

And so, we want to use the policy cuz the other thing that happens is once we put money once we pay our premium, the cash value of that policy grows and grows and grows. Even if we borrow against it, we borrow the life insurance company’s money. So, they lend us their money. They charge us an interest rate to do that, but our money is growing. So, what’s happening is our money’s doing this, we’re paying them back, and they’re the interest they’re charging us is going down. So, long-term, we’re making money, way more money than we put in, and we’ve created the death benefit for the estate piece, which we’ll probably talk about in a sec. But, within the policy, you have uninterrupted compound interest, you have liquidity, you have control.

So, if we don’t want to sell commodities, if cattle prices are low and we want to just feed them out for a little bit, we can feed them out for a little bit and sell them when prices come back up. Maybe we’re like, you know what, prices are so bad, we’re just going to do direct to consumer, and we’re just going to slaughter them ourselves and package them and sell them, cuz we’ll make more money that way. You have the ability to do what you want. Nobody cares. The insurance company doesn’t ask any questions.

You know, and I’ll admit my ignorance on life insurance has been something I’ve never cared about. To be honest, I got a policy because I needed to get a loan, and they suggested I tied it in whether or not I needed it, and it was a sales tactic, whatever. It was cheap. So, I’m guessing Let me walk through this because I think for me this was kind of like my Oh, okay. So, I got I think what is a term policy. You got life or term to a So, a lot of times if you get a bank If you have a bank loan, I don’t mean to interrupt you, Tracy. But,

If you have a if you have a bank loan, they want life insurance because you probably don’t have enough assets for them to take if you pass away. And so, e- even the cows may not be the value of that loan if you had a cattle note. And so, they want credit life where the bank will sell it to you, or you just go get some term, but then you make them for just to make it easy, they’re basically the beneficiary on the policy. So, if you die, they automatically get that death benefit to pay off the note.

Yes, this is this wasn’t for the farm. I bought my partners out of this media company. And what is this media company? It’s a website, which they can’t do nothing with. So, I think that’s where it came in. They said, you know, you need to take this insurance. Of course, if something happened, they don’t want to sell a website. They can’t sell me and my services. They will get their loan paid off that I used to buy out the partners, and then whatever’s left I get. So, that’s my knowledge about life insurance, right? You pay a premium. It’s It is fairly cheap, this stuff. In your book, you say it goes up towards the end as you get old. And then, if all of a sudden I die, I get my five Well, Anthony gets 500,000. Whatever it is, not me. God. But, this is I didn’t even realize this type of product exists.

Like, here, uh let me walk through it, if you don’t mind, Mary Jo, to see if I understand it. So, let’s say I’m just going to guess a number, 5,000 a year. I pay in premiums, okay? So, I put in 5,000, I pay 5,000 for the year. That kind of builds in a I’m going to call it like an invisible bank account. And then, 80% I forget what the book said of that value every year goes into this account. And then, I can take and borrow against that, right? From Correct. This company. So, let’s say I put in for 5 years, $25,000 is sitting there.

There’s a holdback. So, essentially, after 5 years, I could borrow 20,000 or bigger numbers obviously for bigger farms policies, but that’s sitting there for me to borrow against. My value stays there. It’s not that I take the money out and I stop earning interest. That value sits there and continues to earn interest uninterrupted. I take a loan from the insurance company, pay the interest. And I get to dictate how and when and how fast and how much that I pay that back. And I can even say, “Well, I had four bad years on the farm. I can’t afford to pay this back.” And then you start paying in 4 years. Like Correct. Did I understand it right?

Yep. That is 100% accurate. Yep. And so, the cash value portion of the policy and this is whole life. Again, not universal life, not variable universal, not indexed universal. So, if we just break down life insurance, there is term insurance and there is permanent insurance. There’s only two kinds. Okay. Term insurance is what you got super cheap. 2% of those policies ever pay out. That’s why they’re so cheap. When you get to be 65, they get very expensive because you’re likely to die. They’re going to pay out. Okay. So, whole in under permanent insurance, there’s a whole life, there’s a variable universal, indexed, okay? So, whole life with a mutual company pays a dividend. Oh, yes.

So, the whole life piece of it the reason we’re using whole life is because it’s a guaranteed product. The costs are guaranteed, the fees are guaranteed, everything is guaranteed inside their premium doesn’t go up. So, you’re correct. You put let’s just say you put $10,000 in, you’ll have access to $8,000 right away that we can borrow against. That’s year one. Okay? By year 10, you’ve put in $100,000, you may have $105,000. Well, how can you have more cash value than what you put in? Because you’re earning compound interest and dividends. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve borrowed it or not, you’re going to have the extra $5,000 because you didn’t take your money out.

When we use money when we use cash, we put money in a savings account and we take it out and when we take it out, we stop earning interest on it. So, even though we paid cash, we still financed it because we lost the opportunity for interest. Okay? So, back to your Sorry, I got sidetracked.

So, No. the cash value of your life insurance policy, it’s not necessarily an invisible account, what it technically is is they’re allowing you to use some of your death benefit while you’re alive. Okay? So, as you get older, your cash value and your death benefit get to a point where they’re going to equal one another. Okay? So, the older you get, the more cash value you’re going to have. Because eventually, if you outlive the policy, they’re going to just cut you a check for the death benefit amount. Okay? But, that account is a contract that life insurance policy is a contract between you and the insurance company. You have first right to that cash value, not the shareholders of the insurance company. Right? I mean, you are part of the shareholders because it’s mutual, but like right at the bank, the bank has first dibs, you know? They’re like, “Oh, we can’t give you any cuz we need it.” or whatever that the case may be there. But, you have first right to that. And so you can just go online, ask for a loan, they transfer the money to your account. No questions asked.

So as you’re paying premium, you’re earning compound interest and dividends to the point where depending on your age, by the time you’re 85, your money might double, it might triple, it might quadruple. It just depends. How much are you putting in? How old are you? You know, people in their 20s and 30s, man, you have a lot of time to compound that money. Where if you’re 60, you’re not going to have as much time to compound. Is it worthwhile? Yes. You’re just not going to see the huge doubling, tripling, quadrupling of money.

I like this. So obviously there I’m trying to I get my brain going through. So you’re investing in an insurance policy, and then you have access to that. And then your pool of money is earning you uninterrupted interest. You can borrow against that, so it’s a your own bank, your own loan. And then at the end of this, then it pays a death insurance benefit to your beneficiary.

Yep. Your beneficiaries are going to get a death benefit minus any loan. Right. So this is the piece that’s extremely important for farmers and ranchers. Because we are losing farming we are losing farms on a daily basis, right? People don’t want to farm. Or they want to, they just can’t because it’s expensive. Our estate plans are awful, absolutely awful. Estate planners need to actually do their homework and do what’s right for people.

And so what’s happening is we’re not passing the farm on with any kind of death benefit. Right. Why does that matter? Because how what are you paying for every dollar of death benefit? I call them discounted dollars. So I might put in you know, I I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head. Let’s just say that I’m going to put in a dollar and the life insurance company is going to give me $2. Okay. So I just paid 50 cents for every dollar of death benefit. Right? Now if I’m young, I might be paying 20 cents for every dollar of death benefit.

That goes income tax free to our heirs. And so we in the states, I’m not sure how it works in Canada. Okay. I’m pretty sure it’s income tax free. But you have we’re not passing on discounted dollars. Instead, we’re saying Tracy, I’m just you’re going to have to buy out your siblings and you’re going to need to go to the bank and you’re going to need to borrow money to buy out your brother or sister. Yeah. Well, you just paid top dollar for that farm Again. How many times are we going to sell the place? And when we do that, who makes money? The bank. The bank loves it when somebody dies because somebody else has to come in and borrow money to buy it again.

Why are we not using a discounted dollar? If I can buy it if I can have mom and dad buy a policy and give the kids a 40 or 50 cent dollar, that’s fantastic. Because if I’m sitting on the street corner and I’m saying Tracy, you know, if you give me two quarters, I’ll give you a buck. What are you going to do? Two quarters for a buck? Right on. Let’s do this. Right? You’re going to go around pick up quarters. Yeah. Dimes, pennies, nickels, whatever. You’re going to be like, there’s this crazy lady giving out dollars. Yeah. I don’t know. She just must be really rich. What a doorknob. Right? Instead of but we’re we don’t think that way. We’re like, oh, insurance is so expensive.” Is it? How are you looking at it? Because if you don’t understand it, the mentality is, “Oh, it’s so expensive.”

We get to use it to operate. We get to use it to buy cattle. We get to use it to expand the operation. And then we’re using it to pass it off. And those discounted dollars can go to the off-the-farm kid as, “Hey, you know what? This is what you get and your siblings are getting the farm.” Or we’re going to leave it to the kid on the farm to use it for operating, to buy out equipment. Because just because mom and dad died doesn’t mean that there’s not any expenses. Even if and oh my god, German passion is going to flow.

So, you go, girl.

Even if I cannot stand it when somebody says, “Oh, must be nice. You got the farm.” Let’s just say that that happens. It does. In 14 years, I’ve seen it twice, okay? But if they do get the farm, they got handed everything for free. They didn’t have to pay a dime. They still have an operating cost. Yeah. And if dad was paying for operating, who now has the bill for fertilizer, chemical, seed, feed? Who’s got to put fuel in the equipment? The kid that inherited everything free, but he’s not the one that ended up that died with the pool of money to operate. And if dad was borrowing operating, the kid now gets to go to the bank and hope and pray the bank gives him operating money because if he never had a relationship with the bank, Yeah. the bank’s going to say, “No, I don’t even think you know how to farm.

We’re not giving you any money because you were you’re going to lose it. Instead, you know, you should probably start selling stuff. Or maybe you should rent it out.” Yeah. And so even though even if we gave it, we still need the discounted dollars.

But what if it’s not paid for and we do have to buy out equipment? Leave that money to the kid on the farm and they can buy equipment out. I use it a lot. The death benefit is the estate planning is huge. I will do a lot, let’s just say that. Do you and Anthony farm on your own or do you farm with parents?

We farm with them, but on our own. We have all our own cattle, land, we have all our own everything, but we use some of his land and then pay the whole operating cost of that farm as well.

Okay, so when he dies, you will most likely have to buy out a sibling to get that land. Okay, so now let’s say that dad says that you’re absolutely insane. This Mary Jo lady has lost her ever loving mind. She’s just trying to sell you some life insurance, right? I’m going to come in and say, well, you know what? Dad doesn’t have an estate plan. So you guys should buy a life insurance on him. And so when he dies, you’ve paid the premium, you’ve used it to do all of your farming, but when he dies, you’re going to get a check for the death benefit. They’re going to write you a check and you’re going to use that check as a down payment to buy out the siblings. You’re going to use it for operating, whatever, but you paid a discounted dollar for that. So you, if dad is 50 or 60 years old, you might be paying 40 to 50 cents for a dollar. So the life insurance company is over here saying, “Hey, give me some quarters and I’ll give you dollars.” Clever.

But we’re not saving farms by what we’re doing. We’re losing farms. Suicide rates are extremely high because of why? Money. Because at the end of the day, the last generation and the generation before did a horrible job of estate planning, so the current generation, all the stress is on their shoulders and they’re going to lose this farm and they don’t have the money. They have no idea how they’re going to buy out these siblings. So, what do we do? We have suicide rates that are astronomical because the generations before didn’t plan and it’s not the current generations fault sometimes. It’s the generations before. So, if you’re a generation that’s struggling and thinking, oh, the only way out of this is suicide, it’s not your fault. Because if they would have planned correctly, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

I’m going to clip that right there. Ooh. To advertise this episode.

Yes. That is huge. It makes me It makes me very angry cuz estate planners, Yeah. they’ll put term in a plan. If they put any death benefit at all in a plan, they’ll put term in a plan.

What I have?

Term runs out. Right. And then when we’re 65, we’re like, oh, we don’t have any debt. Show me a farmer not buying land at 65 years old. If that stuff right across the fence comes up for sale, they’re going to buy it. My dad will be buying land at 80 if he needs to. It doesn’t matter. It’s stuff he’s farmed forever and it finally comes up for sale. He’s not going to let that go. So now, my brother is going to have to pay for that.

Mary Jo, that’s amazing. I on my show here, so I do farm business management, mental health cuz of course, if the farmer’s healthy, the farm is healthy and I felt like I had to do that as a service and a desire with this platform. But, I just started a deep, deep dive on transition planning. Like as much as you just said you’re a passionate and you get angry, I’m angry, too, because we look at everything against farmers, the costs, how in debt the majority of farms are because land’s so expensive, machinery, everything. And you’re just You’re right, like it’s been put on this generation, and here they are. And then now maybe they don’t even have ownership, but they’re like, I need to continue this farm, but then I got to buy out siblings, and it doesn’t make sense.

And then, Mary Jo, we wonder why the older generation doesn’t talk about transition planning and ignores the conversation because they don’t have the answers. They can’t figure this out. And why the heck do you want to talk about something that you can’t figure out and don’t have the answers and you’re going to cause World War III between the children. I’m sitting here trying and I’m going to go into every single little sub niche of transition planning. I’m trying to figure out how to help these farmers make this happen so we don’t lose farms, so people don’t commit suicide, right? Cuz they’re going to I told I told the guy the other day. I said, “You can go to an attorney, and you can pay three to five thousand dollars for an estate plan, or you can die and the whole thing is gone

Because they’re going to sell it to satisfy the buyout. So, you can decide what you want to do. It’s either five thousand dollars today to do an estate plan, or your son is going to have to sell acreage to pay off the siblings. And they’re all going to hate each other anyway. So, you’re not saving anything.” And when you do an estate plan, divide it. I don’t want to see some undivided interest thinking, “Oh, they’ll be able to figure it out.” No, they won’t. Because you always have one vulture in the group, and you better be preparing for that vulture.

Every meeting I have, nobody wants to tell me all their dirty laundry, right? And I don’t necessarily want to hear all your dirty laundry. But I’m looking for the vulture. Because is it the sister-in-law? Is it the daughter that doesn’t work on the farm, has no idea anything about it, doesn’t even come home for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Where is the vulture? Who are we worrying about?

You know, I had a client yesterday. This is the second time I’ve met with them. I met with the kids first. I met with the parents yesterday. And he’s like, “Oh, he’s so proud of the fact that he’s an eighth They’re going to be eighth generation.” I said, “You’re not going to be eighth generation.” There is no way you’re going to be eighth generation if you don’t figure out how to buy out these three other members of this LLC. And one of them won’t sell. And I said, “And that all depends on you dying last, and you’ve already had a heart attack?” I said, “There’s not eight generations. So, I said, you explain to me why your son should continue to get up every day and work because you’re not visiting an attorney to figure out what needs to be done to save the place.” Ooh.

And then he told me, “When we filed bankruptcy, the first thing we got rid of as was our life insurance.” I said, “That is ridiculous. The thing you should have kept was your life insurance because what We’re going through bankruptcy? The highest time in our life that we’re stressed, most likely going to have a heart attack and die, and we get rid of our life insurance? You think that the farm probably hasn’t gone through enough? If you died, the life insurance would be the saving grace in that situation.” Uh-huh.

But they’re probably just seeing costs, and they’re cutting costs, right?

It’s Oh my goodness. It is like But how do we make more? The question becomes, what can we do? Nobody is asking, “What can we do?” Cuz remember I said we can’t think negative and positive at the same time. Right. I love So, when we’re thinking negative, we can’t come up with solutions.

So, we have to reframe the question. If it’s hard and we don’t know what to do, what can we do? Who can we call? Do we call Tracy, and she has the contact of an attorney of an estate planner? What do we do? I don’t I talk about a lot of stuff that I don’t I don’t do estate plans. But my friend Heidi does. And so I’m going to transfer you to Heidi, right? I am not an accountant. But I have an accountant that you can talk to. I’m going to surround myself with all of those people.

But we’re not losing farms because farming is hard. I don’t believe that. Farming is hard. That I’m not saying it’s not. We’re losing farms because we’re not estate planning and we think those off-the-farm kids deserve some born when we lived there. I am an off-the-farm child and I should get nothing. Nada, zero, zilch. Because I come home once in a while to help drive truck, right? What’s the point? I’m not there every day with my parents. I’m not there.

My brother, oh my god, I love him. He is he puts up with my folks every day. Every day. All day long, right? They live in the same yard. He is there telling my dad what to plant, how to harvest, what equipment to buy. My dad just says, “Yep, okay, good to go.” You know, he doesn’t question anything. But does he get to farm it? Nope. My dad’s still taking all the money off of it. He’s never gotten a dime in his entire life. He doesn’t get payroll, he’s never gotten payroll. He farms his own ground. He has built his own enterprise, right?

But when dad dies now, he’s put in all that work. Guess what that ground would be worth if it wasn’t for my brother? Probably nothing. Not nearly what it’s worth today because my dad’s not looking at what chemical and fertilizer to use. He’s not looking at farm practices. He’s just banking on my brother to do that, which then increases the value of the land. And then my brother gets to buy it at a higher value because he made good decisions so that mom and dad would have money? Wow. Yeah. What Why is he paying me for that? These off-the-farm kids shouldn’t get anything. Unless you’re helping to some extent. When mom and dad’s breaker box was on fire, I’m not the one that got called at 2:30 in the morning to come down and fix that. No, no, no. That was my lucky brother. Right?

And so we as the non-farm kids are like, “Oh, well, we were born there.” I don’t care if you were born there. What have you done since you left? Would there be a farm without the farm sibling? Because dad can’t do it all on his own. And mom and dad think, “Oh, we need to give them something or they’re going to be mad at us.” Let them be mad at you. They’re going to be pissed off one way or another. They’re either going to be fighting when you’re dead or you’re going to know that they’re fighting when you’re alive. What does it matter? There is a great book written by a Canadian author.

I always forget the name of the book. Winnie gave it to me. And he said every year he would have a meeting on his birthday and they would talk about their estate plan. He’d talk about dying every day every year on his birthday. And he said it was great because if there was one kid that was going to be the problem, I knew that before I died. And I could accordingly plan my estate. Clever. Cuz it’s not fair or equal. It’s deserving. Who deserves to get whatever portion they’re going going get.

I’m just going to like let you continue on and all the uncomfortable things that nobody wants to say. But Mary Jo, okay. can say them cuz I don’t live on the farms. Right. You can’t You can’t say them cuz you live on the farm and then you look at like the bad guy, right? Yeah, and there’s so much discussion about fair and equal now and a lot of the advisers I talked to, I’m going to go a different way. Your view as an off-farm child, I’m going to say is unique and fair and very enlightened. I don’t think that a lot of off-farm children are going to think that way for the most part. Because for their lake home. Well, and fair, right? They’re all children. So I’ll leave it at that,

But a lot of the advisers I’m talking to are now totally down the path that we are splitting this. We are not advising parents to leave it to one child and that’s where it seems like the market mindset is right now and all the advisers I’m talking to, we they and farmers should be planning to give the off-farm children something. So then, here’s where I’m getting I’m trying to piece this together live uncomfortably with guests like you so farmers can get answers.

So here’s the thing. There’s three children, one farming child. It now needs to be split three ways. Okay, fair. That You can argue that is great because they’re all children dot dot dot. But now the problem is the farming child in the farm, chances are the income and the expenses are probably pretty darn close. You’re going to have years where you make a lot of profit. You’re going to lose. So we’re going to assume that the farm needs every cow, every piece of land to operate and we’re not millionaires at the end of the day, I’m going to guess. So, here’s the problem. Now, you got to take and get a huge loan to buy out child two and child three. Chances are you just put yourself in an extremely unprofitable position. Now, this, looping back to what we’re talking about, this type of policy is where one, we could either help the farming child, or two, we could handle the off-farm children. you could leave the off-the-farm kids a death benefit. Yeah.

If you wanted, and let the farm kid the farm. Yeah.

Or you could leave it to the farm kid, and he could use it as a down payment to buy out the sisters. Okay.

Or you could do a trust and say, “Hey, this is how much money the sisters are going to get.” Let’s just say that’s their sisters, that’s not always the case, but the off-the-farm kids, let’s just say that they’re going to get, you know, the down payment needs to be $200,000, that’s what the death benefit is, and then in the estate plan it says that the off-the-farm kids have to finance the one on the farm, and they’re going to have to finance him over 20 years at X amount of interest, X per acre. There needs to be some guidelines set within a trust. Okay.

So, that it’s not just a free-for-all, but the life insurance policy plays a part in all of it. It plays a part in farming today, buying everything out today, but it’s a huge part in saving farms. Cuz at the end of the day, mom and dad want to make people happy instead of saving the farm, and I don’t understand I do not understand why we are so concerned about pissing off the off-the-farm kids when we’re going to piss off the kid on the farm, and he’s there every day helping us making it survive. We have our objectives completely wrong, and it makes me mad. We should be concerned about the kid on the farm more than upsetting the kids that aren’t on the farm. So, I have said this for years. Like, why are you guys working so hard to build it? The stress, the debt, the physical labor, working so hard to build it and maintain it, but you do nothing to protect it.

Why? What’s the point of getting up every day? And going out in a blizzard and finding your cows and feeding them. If you died tomorrow, it’s all gone because we have to sell it to buy somebody out? What’s the point? Wow, that’s a lot of good information.

So, I’m a little bit hard I like I’m not a softy and I’m a little bit hard on parents because and estate planners, obviously, because the thought process is so broken.

The off-the-farm kids need to understand the expense and the time and the effort it takes to keep that place going. You don’t show up for the holidays and get to go sledding and it’s all good and great, right? Oh, I get to go out and hug a cow. The cow wouldn’t be dead if it wasn’t for the farm kid feeding the cow. Like we have forgotten the hard work of it all. And not every farm Not every off-the-farm kid I’m using that generally, but there are some off-the-farm kids that are very active. Great, fantastic. Then include them and make it fair or equal or whatever you want to do. But when we look at deserving, it’s a whole different mindset. Do I deserve it? Does my other brother deserve it? That comes home once every 3 years? I don’t deserve anything.

Yeah. Is it getting split?

Yeah. It’s getting split. I’ve told them not to. It’s getting split. So, therefore, I will figure it out on the back end. To make sure that my brother doesn’t have to have this massive expense and start at Here’s the thing. My family lives forever. Like, we’re talking 98 years old forever. For you, Mary Jane. my I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s two sides. One is 98, one is 77. So, we’re already like But, we my brother could be in a position My mom’s side of the family lives forever. He could be in a position where he’s only he’s 70 years old before he gets it. Wow.

What’s the point of buying it at that point? Right? We’re not thinking about that. I have clients that transition stuff. They start at 55. It’s a 10-year plan. By 65, it’s all transitioned. That’s what we should be doing. That’s how it should be done.

I think we chose to do it a different, harder, more expensive way and just build all our own land, everything, because both Anthony and I, we are high on control. We’re not sitting there in that 70 going, “Oh, we’re inheriting.” Like, not our jam. And okay, scales of operation, I’ll respect that. I mean, we live in cattle country. Our land is couple thousand versus 30,000 in acres. So, there’s things to be said there, but my point is so much of what is done in this industry is just backwards and cruel and unfair and not smart. Like, who wants to work Let’s say you go back to the farm when you’re 25, 30, whatever, 20. Who wants to work till you’re 60 and then hopefully get something or find out it’s split three ways and yeah. I don’t know. why we can’t? We can’t because of taxes. Right? And the land is our retirement. So, renting out the land is going to create our retirement paycheck. So, even if we quit at 75 or 80, now we’ve got land rent to help us buy groceries. So, but and we can’t sell it cuz of capital gains.

But, what if we bought that life insurance policy and did infinite banking? Cuz all the money we’ve used to operate, buy cows, feed, seed, fertilizer, whatever, now at retirement it’s just sitting there and we don’t need it to operate cuz the kids are operating. Now, what if we use that to supplement our income? Cuz we can. And it’s tax-free,

I think I read in the book, right? You get that in Canada it’s a little bit different. Okay.

It does end up tax-free in a roundabout way, but yes. Okay.

But, you can use it to supplement income. Instead, again, if you’re taking rent from the land and maybe that farm child paying that rent now becomes unprofitable again. I mean, fair That’s probably a great solution, but this is probably even better. Supplement it or if your policy’s big enough, can you live? Cuz cuz here’s what happens, the rent isn’t enough to buy groceries. Right. So, now the farm kid gets to help mom and dad maintain the house and you know, take them to doctor’s appointments and all this other stuff. Maybe that Maybe I’ve had clients where they’re like, “Oh, my rent had to be increased because mom and dad are That’s not enough for them to buy groceries. It’s not enough for them to pay all their expenses.”

Because guess what? We’ve avoided paying taxes, so we’re not getting any social security. Because we don’t want to pay taxes, so we don’t have enough social security to help. And so, now the kid is actually paying more. And think about it,

If we do rent and we live 10, 20, some you know, let’s just say some clients will say, “Hey, I’m going to retire at 65.” And you’re going to pay rent for 30 years. That’s a long time. Thank goodness. And then at then at 30 years I buy it. Did I just buy that twice? Ooh. I paid rent for 30 years and now I had to buy my siblings out. I just bought that twice. Why wasn’t I doing a rent-to-own type scenario? If I was renting it and you didn’t want to sell it, why wasn’t I doing a lease-to-own? Why isn’t what I’ve already paid over 10, 15 years deducted from the cost of my purchase price?

Wow. Another one.

If we even if we did even if all we did was owner finance them and charge them 5% we double our money per acre because the interest over 30 years at 5% will double your money. Okay? We don’t pay capital gains. We have interest income of 5%. We only pay capital gains on the principal of that payment. And so we can pay we’re going to pay capital gains, but we’re going to do it much slower than just doing a a huge sale.

So if we have a million dollars worth of ground and we do for sale by owner at 5% over 30 years the land owner just got $2 million because a million of it is going to be interest and a guaranteed pension because that land payment’s coming in every single year.

And worst case scenario I default and you get your land back. I mean, how bad can I destroy land? Right? I mean, you could, but it’s not going to be like destroying a house and burning it down. So you’ve just doubled your money.

So we’re saying here’s another one. We don’t like the big farmers. Those guys, they’re buying everything up. The small guy doesn’t even get an opportunity. The big guys can’t buy it if you don’t sell it to them. Ooh. But you’re selling it to them because they’re paying you more per acre. You could get more per acre if you owner financed the little guy and charged him interest. You would make the same amount of money. Wow. I think we’re solving all the world’s problems there. One thing I got to add to that because I think we just about have it all solved right here. You talk a lot of people are talking about who’s paying for the nursing home, the high cost of that. And if I looked at it and we needed to come up with money to pay for the nursing home, oh my, right? Like right now, we’re quite nice where we’re at and it’s all appropriate, but I’ve been hearing some insane costs of nursing homes, especially in the US. So, that’s where again this policy can come in, right?

Right? The policy, the cash value can be used to pay for the nursing home. You’re looking at 10 to 8 to 10 to 12,000 dollars a month for nursing home costs down here. Depends if you’re dementia, if you’re like high if you need high care, you’re at 12, 13,000 dollars a month. That’s insane. Um

But let’s just talk about that for a sec. Let’s just say that we own all this ground and we don’t have long-term care insurance. So, now we have to sell the ground to have the government Medicaid system kick in to pay for the nursing home. They have to deplete their assets to 3,000 dollars. So, now the ground has to be sold and the kid has to buy it or the kid has to pay so, if we got 2 million dollars worth of ground and the kid can’t afford that, the kid’s going to pay for the nursing home. Which kid is going to pay for the nursing home?

Is it all three of them? Or is it just the one that’s on the farm? So that he can at least save the ground. And he will have the ground because he doesn’t have to he can’t buy it now. They’re going to have to sell it to somebody else cuz he doesn’t have the money, right? Maybe he’s younger, whatever. And so if we can’t do that transfer now, somebody’s going to pay for the nursing home out of pocket so that we don’t force the sale so Medicaid can kick in. Wow.

And who’s that going to be? Sometimes maybe it’s all the kids. Maybe it’s not all the kids. It just depends.

Mary Jo, this has been amazing. I think I’m going to end my show and just air this episode every single week cuz I almost feel like you covered it all. Thank you so very much for your time. I’m going to put show links where people can find you and learn and buy your book. Thank you. Thank you.

You are so very welcome. Happy to keep going on the conversation. We could have went for days.

Oh, we could have. I love it. My financial soul sister, thank you. Thank you guys in the audience and we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

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