Life settlements expert Ben Mohr reveals how everyday investors can grow retirement income outside the stock market, no risk correlation, no Wall Street dependency.
GROWTH PILLAR: Real Estate & Wealth Building
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Retirees and pre-retirees / Investors seeking true diversification
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: How to use life settlements as a non-correlated asset, how the buying process works end to end, and why alternative investments belong in every serious wealth strategy.
Most investors think diversification means spreading money across different stock market sectors. Ben Mohr is here to tell you that's still just Vegas, you're just moving between tables.
Ben is the founder and CEO of Life Advisor Solution, a platform that equips investors and financial advisors with modern tools and strategies around life settlements and alternative investments. He spent over a decade as a broadcast news reporter before falling into the financial world, and that background shows. He makes a genuinely confusing topic simple, calm, and actionable.
In this episode, Ben breaks down what a life settlement actually is, how investors can buy policies on the secondary market, and why the returns have nothing to do with interest rates, market crashes, geopolitical events, or anything happening on Wall Street. He explains the three types of life insurance, the difference between a viatical and a standard life settlement, how his team handles everything from self-directed IRA setup to health tracking to death certificate processing — and why Warren Buffett has quietly been doing this for years.
Key topics covered:
Connect with Ben Mohr:Life Advisor Solution | LinkedIn | LinkedIn Company Page | YouTube — Truly Diversified with Ben Mohr | Email: ben@lifeadvisorsolution.com | Equal Life LLC | Life Policy Market
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Bernie (00:18)
Question to the audience. How do you protect your retirement from market chaos and finally grow your money without taking on more risk? And that's exactly what our guest will break down in this episode.
how everyday people can use the same hidden low risk strategies wealth investors rely on, including life settlements and alternative investments that turn old insurance into real retirement income. Our guest today is Ben Mohr from Life Advisor Solution. And tell you a story about him. He's a trusted expert in retirement income planning, known for his leadership in alternative investments and life settlements. Founder and CEO of Ben Mohr.
LLC, he guides clients through complex financial decisions and helps them unlock hidden value in unwanted or unneeded life insurance policies. He's also the creator of Life Advisor Solution, a mentorship and business growth platform that equips financial advisors with modern tools, marketing strategies, and industry insights. Along his work with the RMO insurance and retirement team, is dedicated to helping people approaching retirement, making confident, well-informed choices
with clarity and peace of mind. Ben, absolute pleasure having you here. Welcome, and do you have a favorite quarter saying sir?
Ben (01:30)
Uh, I was just looking at that. Yeah. I would say the one that I probably tell people all the time has really not much to do with business. Just a life advice is this too shall pass. Right. I see people talking about that all the time and I believe in it. It's such a simple thing. But if you look at on both sides, it's what it means is this too shall pass and people think of like, Oh, you're having a bad time. Just wait it through. But you also have to look at it when life is at the very top of this too shall pass as well.
All right. It's it, right. I think we've learned that in life, right? It's like when it's really good, you better realize that it's really good and enjoy the ride until it's over. And then you're going to be back at the bottom. And again, remind yourself of the good times because sure enough, it's, you know, it's just that, right. It's a high wire act life, right. Ups and downs and ups and downs and enjoy the peaks and realize that there's a reason you're at the bottom for whatever reason, find something to learn from that.
And so the next time you're down there, you go, I've been here before. So that's kind of been my motto to everybody I talk to is when they have their problems or when they think they're high on life, it's like, you know, either way it's, it's, it's fleeting. So enjoy the ride.
Bernie (02:37)
kind of exciting seeing in the financial planning business, due to a combination of good planning and stewardship, I can live comfortably the rest of my life with my current finances, which is exciting, providing I die by 6 p.m.
Ben (02:49)
Yes.
Ben (02:51)
Hahaha
Ben (02:52)
Yeah, I mean, it's true. True. mean, yes, I agree with that theory too. I mean, you can only do when people talk planning, right? Planning is only so much, right? It's planning for just the everyday mundane, but there are things that happen, right? I mean, there are people who probably do everything right, right? Rain, they do everything right. And then I don't want to be gruesome, but could get hit by a bus, walk across the street. And then it's all for not for their lives. But I mean, for their families, at least they left something, but they're gone.
And then there's other people who've never planned who then realized they might live to a hundred years old and kind of got to figure it out. Right. So yes, planning is planning, right. It's not a guarantee, right. And nothing, nothing out there. mean, these people can, in my industry can tell you that if you do this a hundred percent, blah, blah, blah, that's just not true because there's always the unforeseen. Correct.
Bernie (03:44)
So what brought you into this space? it really like in grade school going, you know what, I think I'll be a retirement planner. That's the ticket. Yeah. Yeah.
Ben (03:52)
No, no, not not at all if I think like a lot of us, right? mean, I'm sure Bernie you weren't sitting there in third grade going I'm gonna do a podcast because they didn't exist if you did you should be making we should you should be on an island somewhere because you came up with an idea no one could ever foresee right No, not not at all I'll give you the quick 20 seconds like any child. I was a pretty good baseball player growing up
went to college on a scholarship, et cetera. So that was the game plan, right? Till about 20, right? That I'm just gonna play baseball the rest of my life. ⁓ Then I actually got into ⁓ being into broadcasting and wound up being a news reporter around the country for ⁓ maybe 10, 15 years around there and was successful at that. And then literally just fell into this business. ⁓ I always say to people,
you know, like how did you get into this niche or whatever you do? And I always say, ⁓ I force gumped it, if you understand from that movie, right? I force gumped it. That's life, right? I mean, people are always asking, you know, younger people, I mentor a lot of younger people, and I just tell them, hey, I'm telling you right now, if you, it's really about who you know, and I don't mean like nepotism, but it's like, if you just go out there,
and put good vibes out there, you'll be shocked. I mean, I sit back and look at the connections I have guys with people in life and 90 % of it was I met them somewhere, somehow randomly and was a person that they liked and you know, and then you realize, whoa, here's an opportunity. I'm not going into meeting people with the manipulation of I'm gonna put on this face and salesy. It's just.
Ben (05:34)
You
Ben (05:35)
I can't
tell you every single day I meet somebody and then I'm like, hmm, that's an opportunity for us to possibly work together, right? And 90 % of the time it never pans out, but that 10 % is a lot. mean, the major relationships I have in my life are pretty much completely random, right? That I look at today and go, here are the 10 people I work with all the time. And if I think about how did I meet them?
It wasn't because of my education. It wasn't because I read some book or went to some networking meeting. was relationships met. It's kind of like a natural organic LinkedIn, right? Just I met somebody who knew somebody and then I found somebody and I'm like, whoa, this is a relationship I'm gonna have for the next 10, 20 years because both of us see eye to eye on how we see business, right?
Bernie (06:27)
I just had this mental image of an organic LinkedIn. It sounds like a bad horror film. know, worse than AI. One thing I'm interested in language, language changes. And the language of yours is life settlements. I've never heard it structured that way and alternatives. I'm so unpack what that means in your vernacular.
Ben (06:50)
Sure, so when you hear alternatives, it's just a euphemism for saying that we help people invest in things outside of what is considered the average norm. And what the average norm is this in America is, you know, almost most people who work have retirement plans within their companies that they work for.
and where are those retirement plans? Where does that money go? And it almost always goes into the stock market. So the stock market is the norm. So we don't work in the stock market. The other thing, and so anything outside of the stock market is considered an alternative, an alternative to the normal, know, Wall Street. So first off is alternatives are ⁓ additional ways that most people go, I didn't even know I could invest that way.
Number two is life settlements. Now life settlements as a whole has two sides of the street. One side of the street, which we do not work on, which a lot of people think is a life settlement, which it is, but it's the other side. Think of it like buying or selling a house. If somebody has a life insurance policy that is a permanent policy, they can sell off their policy when they get older because they want to take money now.
and use it for end of life care or whatever. So an example for your listeners at home, give me a real simple example. John Smith, he's 80 years old. He's got a million dollar life insurance policy, but it's not worth anything unless he passes away, right? Protection for his family. Now maybe he bought it when he was 50 because he had a mortgage and he has kids. if he gets, you know, again, I use the gets hit by a bus, you know, something like that.
his family gets a million dollars and are taken care of. Well, now let's look at him when he's 80. When he's 80 years old, why does John Smith need the million dollars? The other thing is he's still paying the premiums, the annual cost every year to keep that thing going, which might be 20, 30, $40,000 a year. It's expensive at that point. So he instead can just dump it to somebody like me. Maybe we pay him 300K. He now has the 300K for end of life care and now we own the policy. Now.
That is the sad street, I do not work. Where I work is we get those policies and then investors come in and buy those policies from us, right? So for instance, like right now I've got a policy where it's on ⁓ an 84 year old male life expectancy, I think is about four years. And if somebody came in and we could sell it to somebody right now for 60,000 and when that guy passes away, they get $150,000.
That's how it works, right?
Bernie (09:28)
Does it also go by a name like Bioticles or something?
Ben (09:32)
Very good, Wayne. Yeah, so when we say life settlement, it's generic. It's like saying a vehicle, right? When you get into viaticals, it's more like saying, I'm gonna buy a Honda. A viatical is ⁓ a specific area of life settlements. And so a viatical ⁓ by definition is somebody who has a life-threatening illness who's expected to pass away in two years or less.
So we're not really in the viatical space. We are in a more generic space of, you when you talk about a viatical, you're gonna be like, oh my God, this person has some kind of cancer and they're gonna sell their policy. We don't really work that area. We're more expansive where we're just dealing with people who I hate to use the term, but are elderly, so to speak, 75 years or older, who don't have a specific, if I showed you one of our medical reports, you're not gonna go, oh my God, it's just, it's a,
amalgamation of many, many medical issues that you go, this person is less than healthy for someone in their age group, right? Where viaducts all became the rage, Wayne, was, and that's where a lot of people heard about it, is when the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 80s, there was a lot of young males in America, so to speak, who were selling off their policies.
because they needed money to pay for things like AZT or whatever it was. The problem with a viatical, the risk there is usually you're getting a person who is younger, right? Meaning that they've now have some medical issue that hit them that it could be cancer, it could be something like AIDS, it could be whatever. The problem with that from an investment perspective, and I don't mean to be ghoulish, is...
with medical advancements, things can change. And I think the AIDS epidemic shows you that exactly, that we now know that with HIV, is not, know, in 1985, if you had HIV, was a death sentence, right? There was nothing you could do and you're lucky if you lived three to five years. Now we see on commercials all the time with like medicine like Victoria, where if you were diagnosed with HIV today, you can be taking medical medicines that would make you undetectable.
and you're going to live an almost a normal lifestyle, if you will, and could live to your age expectancy. So that would be a bad investment, right, so to speak, because now you own somebody's life insurance policy, you might be 40 and that person could easily live to 80, you know? So we're dealing more with people who are already advanced in age, right? So just naturally, they're not expected to, you know, the average life expectancy, I'm gonna guess for Canada and it's much like in America,
for a male is probably 80, 81. So as I just mentioned, we've got an 84 year old. He's already lived beyond what is expected. He's just on borrowed time and he has also medical issues. long story longer, that is what a life settlement is. A viaductal is part of that, but there is some risk there because yes, well, they might have a life expectancy of less than two years. Something can come around with medical advancements that turns that life expectancy into 10 years, right?
Bernie (12:44)
Ben, just as an, because I have some understanding of the industry, you start with a large insurance company where they gave you a binder and a phone book and said, go do it. Where to cut the, to learn, cut your teeth or how did that journey start?
Ben (12:49)
Yes.
Absolutely not, I did not come in from that angle, which I think helps me in some levels because you kind of get trained on what that group does, whether it's a New York life or a transit, whoever it is, it's like they have their way of doing it, absolutely not. How I started in this was ⁓ I decided I wanna get out of the TV industry, kind of searched around, fell into a group that was doing annuities, which is an insurance product. I was just a...
I didn't work for an insurance company. I was, was known as an independent agent and where I cut my teeth and became very good at what I did because I had that broadcasting background so I can present, right? That's essentially what, that's what a reporter does, right? It explains in two to five minutes, something that went on in the day into a very easy to understand situation. So all I did is transformed that into dinner seminars.
⁓ and did my own thing. And so for a long time, was selling insurance products like annuities on my own independently and then fell into this pot, this, this investment in my journey, tried it out, put it into my seminar and it took off like wildfire. All of a because here's the thing, Wayne is people come to dinner seminars. And I asked this all the time when I do it, I'm like, how many of you have been to a dinner seminar? Almost all raised their hand. How many of you have been pitched annuities? They all grown.
and go, ⁓ you know, yeah, okay. So I have joke and say, guess what? The good news tonight, whether or not you do any business with me is we're not doing that. And they all kind of clap. So I, yes, I kind of was like, I'm the, if they, everyone's zigging zag, right? So my angle is the reason I think I came into this was I like what I do, but also I have a message that no matter if they're interested or not, it's something that they will admit they've never been, they've never talked about.
And that's always a great thing to have, right? Is that if you have a product that you're at least gonna get people's attention, right? And go, I've had people come to dinner center and they say, it's not for me great, but they go really interesting, right? And that's at least, that to me is the catch is that I can sit with anybody anywhere and they're like, what do you do? And I explain it, it's not the basic, well, I sell life insurance, retirement planning for life insurance, blah, I'm like every other guy down the street. I mean, I could probably,
throw a rock from here and find five guys on my block who sell annuities and IULs and all that. So then I'm just like everybody else, right? So with my thing, I'm never having competition of anybody who are like, yeah, I met a guy yesterday who does what you do. That's not possible. There's not a lot of us out there.
Bernie (15:31)
Well, there's not a lot of you out there. a couple of questions come to mind. How do you find somebody? How do you know that, yeah, that's the Real McCoy? And ⁓ who's looking? Is it grandpa, grandma? Or is it the offspring? What?
Ben (15:51)
You mean for people who are selling their policies? Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely ⁓ a buyer's market because there's just so many life insurance policies out there. So that side of the street, I have a partner who does all of that. But what they do is they don't really have to prospect. There's a lot of, mean, you see commercials on TV here all the time for companies like Coventry that are, you know, sell your policy now kind of stuff. They're all out there.
Betty White who passed away maybe a year or two ago was the national spokesman for life settlements. So there was commercials with her. They're all over the place. So the way that they usually sell Bernie is your life insurance salesman on that side, the guy that you bought it from, you'll probably come to him or your, you know, your CFP, your CPA, maybe your trust attorney. They know this is an option for you.
And so you'll sit down at 80 and go, I need, I know maybe I need long-term care. need somebody to help out. Well, I don't want to sell the house. I don't want to reverse mortgage the house. I don't want to tip dip into my retirement accounts because that's a tax bomb. What can I do? And they're looking at this thing and like, well, how bad do you need this? I don't need it. Well, you know, you could get money for it. So we are approached and there's a database that we're signed into. Think of it like here in America, we call it the MLS. If you guys don't have that there.
is, you know, that's like real estate, right? So we, we, we plug into a database and what it does is it just tells us, you know, what the framework of we're looking for, right? So it'd be like, Hey, we're looking for, you know, Wayne talked about viaticals. You could, there's an area where you could probably just be like, I'm looking for two years or less, Ellie's life expectancies. And boom, you're into a viatical space. Our angle is going to be more like we're looking for 75 year olds with life expectancies under eight years.
⁓ with, permanent policies and whittle it down on that. And then those lawyers, CPAs, et cetera, are placing those policies in that basket. And then we're able to obtain from there and start the conversation. Right. But to give you guys an idea, I mean, from what I understand with my partner, he's analyzing policies all the time because insurance policies have a lot of catches, right? I mean, there's a lot of them that can implode, meaning that
Yeah, it's permanent policy, but it's only permanent to 95 or the escalating cost later on. So he has to analyze these things to make sure they don't blow up 10 or 15 years from now. And I would say after negotiations and everything's done, maybe 5 % of the policies we actually wind up buying. So he's got to go through a hundred policies to find five that meet our criteria, one, and that the negotiations actually go through.
Because once you enter negotiations, they can fall out all the time, right? We do find on that side that their expectations a lot of times are extremely unrealistic on how much money they're gonna get, you know? And it's like, no, you know? And it's funny, because I talk to people all the time, I just talked to somebody yesterday and a guy was like 60 years old and he was very healthy and he was like, well, I've got an old policy that, and I always say, I'm not buying policies that way, right? Number one, I wouldn't buy a 60 year old who's healthy, why would I buy it? You know, it doesn't make sense.
So it's gotta be the perfect situation and that's work. So we don't have a hard time ⁓ finding policies that people want to sell at all.
Bernie (19:10)
In a perfect world, you're on this podcast. I assume our charms are part of the attraction.
Ben (19:13)
Yes.
Absolutely Wayne
Bernie (19:18)
But
what would you, I mean, are you trying to inform? Are you trying to find the ideal customer? you trying? Why are you, why do you want to spread the message you're spreading? What can we do for you?
Ben (19:30)
Sure, the whole thing for us is to educate investors that this is an opportunity, right? And then that's it, realistically letting people know that if you're sitting around with money sitting around, could be in a bank, could be in a CD, could be that you have money in the market and realize, hey, that's where I am. We find that people are overexposed in the market. So I always talk about, what I talk about is true diversification, right?
So if somebody's sitting on a million dollars, including their IRAs, et cetera, and I'll do analysis and find out that literally their money usually is in one of three places. It's gonna be a lot of money in the market. Maybe they've bought some real estate investment and maybe they even have an insurance policy or an annuity for some type of retirement planning. That's great, okay? That money winds up in three different buckets. We call it the risk bucket, which is the market. We call the other bucket, you know, your income bucket.
which is what you want to have money down the road. That's gonna be your annuity. And then they have safe money, which is great. Like money, hey, in case I just need money and sometime soon, that's gonna be your CDs. What we say is you need to have an alternative bucket. Maybe five to 10 % of all of your money should be in a place because what we offer Wayne and Bernie is what we call a non-correlated asset, right? If you sit down with me, like I just explained, hey, somebody can come to me tomorrow with their IRA or with just straight cash.
and they can own an 84 year old guy's policy who it's going to be for $150,000 is what you're going to get. You're going to pay upfront $60,000. I say to somebody, implore you to tell me that whatever happens in the economy in the next couple of years, how does that affect this investment? It doesn't, right? Period. I mean, I don't want to be morbid. The risk you have here is longevity. All you care about in this situation is when does this guy pass, right? Which we do all the tracking for you and the servicing. So
It's you just sit back and we get you payments. And ⁓ we just, we just paid out on a policy $3 million back in October. And the APR on that for the average person who was invested was 20 % compounded. That's twice as much as what the market will do in an average year. So that was double the returns and that's five to six times the amount you're going to get in a safe product. I can't guarantee those results, but we have plenty of examples of that.
So that's what we're trying to let people know is don't think that just the vanilla way of doing things that your advisor tells you this is how it is that they're diversifying you by spreading your money around the market. The analogy I give there is that's, why don't we go to Vegas and I'll have you play on the craps table for 15 minutes and I'll pull you off and put you on the roulette table for 15 minutes and we'll play some Keno while we have lunch. And then when you're down 500 bucks, you go, well, wait a sec. I go, well, Wayne, Bernie, we were diversified, were we not? Right?
We're still in Vegas, right? So that's kind of our angle is why not take a portion of your money where you can own something that is by the way paid from some of the strongest companies in the world, right? You understand that there is a timeline on these people. They're not gonna live forever. And there is a payment at the end of that rainbow. And it has nothing to do with the economy, politics, ⁓ interest rates that are going on, ⁓ foreign wars, Ukraine.
COVID, nothing like that. That's what we stand on. And by the way, this is exactly what ⁓ Warren Buffett does. He has bought over a billion dollars of life settlements himself and what all the large financial institutions do, but they just do it behind closed doors because they don't wanna sit there and say, yeah, the market had a bad year, but we did great because X amount of people died this year. I mean, they're never gonna say that. They're never gonna say that.
Bernie (23:16)
That doesn't sound like a marketing pitch whatsoever. Grim Reaper here. Thank you. So when you're setting this up and there's a lot of process here, what are the regulations that are wrapped around it? Is it based on local? Is it based on federal? Is this just in the US of A? You see this happening in other countries like Canada?
Ben (23:38)
Yeah. So it's, that's a great question. So when it comes down to regulation, just depends on how the offer exists. So there's two ways you can go about it. If you buy into essentially what I would call a portfolio or a fund, which is one of the companies I work with does that. So if you do that, for instance, let's say in California, there's a company I work with.
If you buy into their fund, it's going to be regulated by the state of California. Now the federal government can come in as well and pick at it as well. They have the right to do that, but mainly California would do that. And so California has its restrictions there on how it can be bought. So in the California offering, you have to be a California resident. You have to have a certain amount of net worth $250,000. And then there is a limitation on how much you can buy because obviously this is not a liquid product, right? So.
If I'm sitting in front of somebody and they've got a million dollars and they go love it, I want to put half a million dollars in number one, that would be irresponsible. So it's more like they could invest about a hundred grand. If you go outside of the state of California and again, into a fund, you are dealing with federal laws, right? And it's what's known as a PPM, a private placement memorandum. You have to be an accredited investor. You have to show that you're an accredited investor for your people at home. That means they'd have to show they're worth more than a million dollars.
and then there's restrictions on how much they can put in. Now, if you buy whole policies through us, there isn't really anything there because you're not investing with us, we're just the broker, right? So it's like real estate in that sense is that I can sell to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Obviously we're gonna do our own suitability to make sure that you're suitable to buy it, right? But what we're doing there is brokering. It's literally, go, I've got a person over here wants to sell this policy I brought up before.
This guy, you know, it's $150,000 death benefit. You're going to buy the whole policy yourself for 60 grand. We're just the brokers in the middle. So there really isn't any regulation there. And on, on any of these, by the way, yes, around the world, anybody can come and invest with us. Obviously we're, we're, we're America based. So we deal with a lot of them, us clients, but we do have clients. We've had clients in Canada. We've had clients in China. We've had clients in Japan. ⁓
you know, Mexico, etc. It just depends on to be honest, is it's fluctuating is that when we bring in the funds into our bank and the trust and all those things, the bank has regulations on certain countries we cannot do business with and that fluctuates day by day, right? Makes sense. Like, obviously, if it's a country where there, if people want to get into it has to do with, ⁓ you know, anti money laundry training kind of situation, which is they
don't want to deal with certain countries where they know it could be like drug money or a terrorist kind of situation. I know it sounds kind of weird, but so every once in a while, certain countries are on the list. I'll explain this. We do business with people in Mexico, but obviously that is a situation where the bank takes a while to look at it because they have to get the person's passport, look at it, make sure they're not on like the narco, uh, you know, list. literally do. So I don't want.
I don't want to be silly, if, if I get a guy named, you know, Juan Sanchez from Mexico, we know when we get that passport, it's going to be about a two, three week process because there's probably somebody within the cartels named Juan Sanchez. They have to go through, look at the passport, make sure it isn't that Juan Sanchez and then come back and say, okay, he's all right to invest, right? It's a process, but we already know that's a problem. In Canada, know, you can't go people up there. You've got people around the world.
Canada, England, these first world countries, not gonna be a problem, right? We don't have to go through that kind of vetting.
Bernie (27:27)
So Ben, I love finance and I love unlocking the things with a different mindset. Now, most people know that good old vanilla whole life was paid. So you got a cheap rate when you were 21, when you bought the policy, because that's when your insurance agent told you to buy it. Yes. And you overpaid for it. then that money, part of that went into a fund that they loaned out, the insurance company loaned out.
that that was their income that gave everything liquidity. And then the idea was there was a school that says, okay, you can go in this policy for 30 years and you've had some values and cash value that, because you didn't die and that you can actually take that cash value out. This is the next step.
Can you explain the difference when rather than just taking your million dollar policy and getting your own cash because you overpaid for it rather than this process?
Ben (28:27)
Yeah.
Sure. So let's break it down very simply. When you look at, I know I'm being very generic. If there's insurance people out there, this is not how this works. Well, for the people at home, please bear with me. This is just basics. There's essentially three subsets of insurance you can get. There's term, right? Which is, I equate this again to real estate. So if you understand that's like renting insurance, right? So you're going to have a term 10, 20, 30 years. And then after that time,
You're not going to have the insurance anymore because that's super cheap in cost. I'll give you an example. I'm 52 years old. I bought a policy probably when I was 35, I bought term and I think I pay literally $600 a year for $1.5 million in coverage. Now I'm hoping I lived the 20 years. And what does that mean? It means after 20 years, I paid $12,000 to an insurance carrier and I lost on the money, but Hey, I'm still alive. So happy to pay it. Right. But that ensured that while my kids were small and
and all that, that if I did get killed unexpectedly somehow, it would be protection, which is what people should buy insurance for. The other vast other side, Wayne, that you were talking about is whole life where you are what's called overfunding a policy, right? So what happens is there's what's called COI, cost of insurance. They're going to take out the money where you're paying for the insurance, but now you're going to have a lot of money left over. In whole life, they're giving you a guaranteed interest rate on that money.
right, is what you're talking about. So now all this surplus money has been put into a cash accumulation count, right, and that money is making the interest. In theory, what happens, as you'd said, is after 20, 30 years, you're going to have so much money built in there that you no longer have to pay the premium, the cost, because the interest generated on that money pays for the insurance policy. What I would equate that to
is like being on a 15 year mortgage, right? You're accelerating the mortgage, paying off the cost. And now you can sit there if you bought a policy when you were 30 at 50 years old, you're not paying for it anymore. And there's also cash value that you could borrow from as people know. And if you borrow from a life insurance policy, it is tax free, right? That is the idea. So that is that way. In the middle is what's known as universal life insurance, okay?
And universal life insurance, normally the way the old school, there's a lot of new bells and whistles, IULs, blah, blah, blah, and I'm not gonna get into that. But the old way of universal life was it's kind of like having a 30 year mortgage interest only. What I mean by is you're just paying for the cost of insurance. The cost of insurance is much higher than on term because you're gonna have a permanent policy. So they know you wanna have it.
So you're gonna pay more every single year to keep this thing going, though you never put money in, you're not overfunding and you never put money in that bank that accrues much interest. You just wanna know that you have your rate locked in when you're 30. Yes, it escalates over time, but you know, it won't escalate for about 30 years and you're gonna keep this thing until you die, okay? So now that I've explained those three different angles, we only work in the universal life sector.
Right? Because number one, we're not going to buy term policies because that doesn't make any sense. Wayne, I come to you and go, Hey, I got an 84 year old guy, I mentioned, but it's a 30 year term and we're in year 28. You're like, well, what happened? You know, no, no, that's, that's bad. The other thing is that guy would never sell his whole life policy ever because he doesn't have the expense. doesn't cost him anything to keep it. Right. What we're doing with universal life people who bought a policy.
years ago and now they're waking up and going, yeah, I bought it for permanent, but now I'm in a position in life where I don't, I realize I don't have the, I don't need the coverage anymore. Kids are older. They're in there established. They've got their families and their houses and blah, blah, blah. Everyone's covered why I bought this thing where I thought I needed the coverage. That coverage doesn't really exist anymore. And now I'm paying money into this thing every year.
and I don't really see the need for it anymore. I don't really want it. Yeah, I could give my kids a million dollars and great, but they're all doing well. That's just kind of cherry on top stuff. What I'd rather do is get my money now and pay for my end of life care. So the way we explain to people is ⁓ whole life is about this. It's what you're looking for is max accumulation in a policy. You're trying to put as much money into policy to accumulate, to make money so you don't have to pay premiums.
and there will be money you could use. And it's very expensive. What we're about is these people bought universal life, because they're looking for the minimum amount they have to pay every single year for maximum death benefit. Okay. And now they're in a position in life where they don't, know, tax laws have changed in America or the last 20 years about what's called the estate death tax. If people aren't familiar, there used to be, it still exists, but.
If you died and you had a certain amount of net worth, you not only had paid taxes and income, but you also got taxed on death. And people think it's a double taxation and it is. Well, they changed all of that probably 20 years ago to where the people who get nailed by that, it's such a small segment. I think now it's over 20 million. When I got in this industry, it was like two, $3 million.
If you had more than two, $3 million, you were going to get hit with the state death tax. So people bought these insurance policies to pay the state death tax. Okay. Now you wake up today and I think it's over $20 million. So the subset of people where that affects them is really, really small. So a lot of these people, Wayne, as you're talking about 20 years ago, there was a large group of people who needed to pay that tax. Now that doesn't exist. Well, they bought these policies 20 years ago. Now they're waking up and going, why am I paying on this thing? I don't.
I'm not gonna have that tax problem, right? That's where we're seeing a lot of this.
Bernie (34:15)
So if someone comes along, they're the investor and they want to buy. Do they just roll up and come up to the office and go, Ben, Ben, my man, talk to me. Or is it, it, you need a lawyer and accountant kind of in tow? Like what, cause it's like if you're investing in real estate, right? There's a whole bunch of entities that'll be around you to give you expertise from different angles, right?
Ben (34:18)
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. So our angle here is we make it real simple because unlike real estate, most people are already familiar in real estate of that. You're probably going to have a realtor and then there's going to be an escrow company and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you're already kind of familiar with what that is. You're all one stop shop. We handle all of that for you. So whether you're using retirement money or you're just using straight cash, we do all of that. So what's involved? Well, number one is
Ben (34:53)
We we're
Ben (35:03)
We're going to place the money for you. We're going to put it in the system. If let's say, if you had an IRA, we're going to open up what's known as self-directed IRA because you can't use your Schwab account or any of that, because those, those companies fidelity, they're only market-based, right? So for instance, as somebody, I'm doing one deal right now where if they want to take $50,000 of their money that was in a Schwab account or a Vanguard account, we open up a self-directed IRA, which is these are companies that are allow you to invest in alternatives. So that gets set up. Money's placed there.
We do all of that work. You just docu-sign, right? Because it's confusing. We set it all up. We do all of that. Okay. So that's how that works. The second angle is if you dig cash, we're going to help you walk you through the process. And then after you invest, is what's left? Just what we call servicing. And we have a servicing company that we've hired that has extensive background in this business. And what is servicing? We'll think about it while the person is alive. There really is only two things that are going to happen. Number one is
premiums need to be paid. And depending on how you buy this, we might've already had premiums set up for you for a period of time, right? For somebody's life expectancy, so to speak, you may not have any premiums. That depends on which policy you wanna buy and how. So we have a servicing company that makes sure they make the premium payments for you every single month, so the policy doesn't lapse, okay? And then number two, they're doing health tracking on these people to see when they pass away, right?
Once they pass away, they go get the death certificate. They deal with the insurance carrier, get the money, and then they distribute the payment to you. So all of that, if you were in some other business or by the way, a different company than mine, you might have to go get different entities to do this. And you don't even know what to ask. We've made it very simple when we started our business a long time ago, because we saw how that was. We have it all. I quarterback it all for you. You don't have to worry. You know, when it comes even to
Ben (36:48)
⁓
Ben (36:52)
how your taxes are done, any of that, we handle all of that. So yes, they can literally roll up or if they go to us, once you come to me, we handle all of it A to Z, there's nothing they have to do, right? We handle all of it.
Bernie (37:08)
Have you ever had something go quirky though? Like, you know, someone buys the policy, you know, et cetera. person goes missing. You don't have a body. Kind of a worst case scenario. Have you ever had a magic moment going, that's the unicorn going in the wrong way?
Ben (37:24)
The the
Ben (37:24)
We've never, mean, obviously you sit down and you can, you can dissect it and go, here's how things can go wrong. Is that a possibility? It's a possibility. I've, I've been in this business 20 years. I've never seen it happen. Number one, remember we're doing tracking on people quite often. Okay. And I can walk out how that happens. So them to go missing would be kind of odd. And I'll write that down.
Is it a possibility? Sure, it's a possibility. It's not a probability. I've never heard of that happening in the industry. It doesn't mean it probably hasn't happened somewhere, but I work with myself and people who've been in this industry a long time. I've never heard of that happening. ⁓ But I mean, is it a possibility? So now you gotta look at where this is. You're dealing with some 80 year old, probably fairly immobile, right? These aren't people that are going around and visiting, you know, ⁓
the jungles of the Amazon, you know, and then, you know, they're not going to, you know, some, you know, some remote area. But the issue is what we do is that we track them through themselves. There's calls that go in. And then we also, if we don't get in touch with them, we're able to get in touch with family members, things of that nature. So
It would be very weird. I'm not even familiar in a case that we have where we've ever called anybody and they've said, yeah, well, mom isn't around to answer this call because she's in Zim Zimbia or whatever on some Safari at 83 years old. Right. So obviously theoretically it's possible. And it's funny, Bernie, I get these questions. That's not even the craziest question. The craziest question I've ever had. This was hilarious. ⁓
Bernie (39:07)
in abduction?
Ben (39:07)
What? No, no, even crazier. No, no. And here's what happens when I do dinner seminars, there's always, call it, I consider it like doing a, I'm performing, right? And so I'm in front of 50 people and yes. And what they, what, what you have to do is you have to keep your common demeanor. And I'm not a guy who's like sales pitchy, right? I'm just there. Like I'm talking to you guys, just explaining, right? And I always know there's going to be one person. It's almost always a guy, right? And
What they want to do is they want to show everyone that you're BS, you're an idiot, and he's smarter than you, and he's gonna poke a hole. And I had a guy at a dinner one time say, well, I have a question. I said, yes, it's from 50 people. He goes, well, what happens if a person gets their head cryogenically frozen and then 100 years from now gets it put on a cyborg body? They could come back and then sue the insurance carrier saying they aren't actually technically dead. And then your...
you and your company and your investors are going to get screwed over. Now, well, yes, yes, that's, but what I realized is this guy's a schmuck, right? And I'm hoping that everyone else in the room realizes how ridiculous this question is, but rather than berating him, I realized there's 49 other people in this room and they want to see how I react to adversity. Am I going to get red faced? Am I going to get argumentative with just an asinine question?
Bernie (40:08)
Who's going to be around for that?
Ben (40:31)
Instead, I just kind of sat back and I said, well, sir, there you found it. You found you found our weak point here. We don't have any kind of ⁓ mitigation risk for cryogenically frozen heads on cyborg bodies 100 years from now. So I said, everyone in the room, if that's a concern, if you are seriously concerned about cyborg bodies with cryogenically frozen heads, enjoy your chicken dinner. Do not sign up and talk to me because I honestly don't have an answer for that. And everyone kind of chuckled, right. And I said to him,
Obviously sir, this isn't for you. Enjoy your dinner. Have a great evening. There's no reason to sign up. Don't even turn in your form because we're obviously not going to see eye to eye or crows or frozen head to frozen head. mean, whatever you want to call it.
Bernie (41:13)
Wow, that's very obtuse. The only reason I was asking the question is that if someone decides to go on a road trip off the face of the earth, you need the death certificate. you don't get the death certificate, you're
Ben (41:26)
Your
screws. Well, you know, in America, usually it's a, it's a certain timeline where I think the longest term would be if somebody has gone for five years, then they can be declared dead. My guess is if somebody was 82 years old and went missing, you know, we have good lawyers who probably could exceed that process. By the way, the family would probably help us as well, because there's a lot, think about this, not just us, right? It's their life insurance policies. It wasn't the only thing if they have a trust and they have like a house and all this stuff.
that family is gonna wanna get this thing going as well, right? So they would be in conjunction with us of like, they're not just going like, well, screw you guys. Do you have the life insurance policy? What do we care? They probably have a ton of assets. They wanna get all entangled as well. So we could join with the family and they're gonna rapidly try it. They're the ones who are gonna be able to figure out what the heck happened to grandma, right? So there's, you we have places in force for that. We have really good attorneys on that to help out. I mean,
We just had one right now. I don't want to be too morbid where we had a policy where the, person passed away. Like, I think it was supposed to be like an eight year policy. They died in three. So the APR for the clients was ridiculous. And so I was kind like, Cause usually guys, you can look at ones and go, this one probably is going to hit pretty quickly. Right. And this was one where it was off the grid. It was a woman. She was mid seventies. We weren't expecting her to die in like,
you know, several years and I get the call, she passed away and I'm like, what the hell happened? Well, guess what? She got hit in a target parking lot by a car, right? So what happens there is you think, okay, well now that we move on, well, she's passed away, it's clear how she died. Let's go get this. Well, it gummed up the works for a couple of months because of the fact of the way she died. While you and I just look at it and go car accident, but
the investigation went on, right? Because how do they know just because you got hit by a car doesn't mean it's an accident, right? Now it would pay out. Bernie, it's gonna pay out. Even if somebody intentionally ran her over, the problem is the investigators hadn't finished their report. So on the death certificate, it said like under review or something like that. And until that happens, the insurance carrier isn't, even if it was homicide, that's fine. They'll give it to us.
but on the death certificate has to say exact manner of death. that's, you know, those are the little wrinkles that you can have sometimes that you need an official cause, right? And so even though you go, well, she got hit by a car. Yeah, she did. But how do we know that that isn't hummus? How do we know she didn't jump out in front of the car? And yes, by the way, policies do pay off for suicide. That is something people always go, I've heard that. No. So what happens is there's a thing called two year contestability.
Meaning from the time that an insured bought the policy, when, John Smith bought the policy, when he was 50, if he kills himself in the first two years, it will not pay out after that. All bets are off. We're buying policies from people who are 75, 80 years old. They've had these policies for 15, 20 years. So yes, if John Smith at 80 decided life was no worth living anymore and goes and takes a bunch of pills and decides to end his life, it will pay off because he didn't buy the policy intentionally.
profit off his death in the first two years, right? This is 25 years later. So those policies do pay.
Bernie (44:46)
that ⁓ specific, did the woman not realize she was a target? ⁓
Ben (44:55)
She
was a target at Target. Is that what you're saying, Wayne? Hopefully it wasn't in front of the bullseye. That would be really, uh, right. I love, I love the humor and I'm sure some people at home are kind of going, you guys are a little sick. The issue is, yes and no. Um, you gotta have some humor with this because some people are just like, I'm just a hilarious one here. And it's, I kind of point out is the big one I always have is like, oh, I just, I don't, I think, I don't think I could buy this because it just, oh my God, just it's,
seems weird to profit off somebody's death. And I, it's by way, that is always, and I just, I said, it's always a man who gives me a hard time at the dinners. It's always a wife that has that like mercy me, right? The husband just wants to know returns by the way. Right. He's not asking. He's, he's good with it. Right. And it's hilarious because I have the same conversation. say, ma'am, so you don't want to
Bernie (45:38)
He is.
Ben (45:47)
profit off of a policy that somebody doesn't want anymore. You're giving them money for end of life care, which is a nice thing. It's a win-win. They don't want it. You don't know them. You don't care about this person. They are going to die just like the rest of us. But here's what I say. go, do you have life insurance on your husband? And she's like, of course I go. So I'm not understanding. You have absolutely no problem on getting a paycheck on the man that you've been with for 40 years and the love of your life and the father of your children. You're just like,
You can't wait to submit that death claim, but on somebody you don't even know, you have a problem. don't either you're against life insurance or you're for it. I don't get the deal. Right. And that's my argument there. It's kind of like, you know, these people, by the way, if you don't buy the policies, their other angle there, and you understand this because Wayne, you brought it up is they're going to have to surrender the policy to, the insurance carrier. And there was a Wharton school of business study that found when people go on the open market and deal with us or people like us.
they're gonna get four times the amount that they would get from the insurance carrier, right? Why wouldn't you do that, right?
Bernie (46:51)
So, if you had a, the light bulb came on and you said, you know what, I'm maybe a little over invested in the stock market and the house is paid for and I'm bored. How would we get a hold of you? How would we start a process?
Ben (47:06)
Right, so I think in your guys notes there, there's this, the people can reach me easily at, you know, it's Life Advisor Solution, all, no plural, lifeadvisorsolution.com. And I can be reached at ben at lifeadvisorsolution.com. I'm very easy to get a hold of there. There's you know, calendar links. There's a, what we call like a link tree, if you will, has all my information.
⁓ If they wanna see the actual process, what it is, is that we have a website that has actual policies on it. I'll give you this one. then that's called Life Policy Market.com. Is if you can just, there's like six policies on there. They can pick and choose. They can put their information in there. But the easiest way that I would like to do is to start with people like to come and have a conversation with me.
So I can understand, you know, it's not a long conversation, just what they're looking for. Um, if they go on there, they're going to have plenty of information. Um, Equal Life LLC is another one. That's the California company, but we have nationwide as well. But Equal Life is E Q U I L I F E LLC.com. There's like eBooks, uh, videos, just tons of stuff. You know, I have a, uh, I'm, I have a YouTube channel. It's called truly diversified with Ben Mohr.
you're gonna find, you know, a hundred videos on there on different subjects, whether it's like, hey, how do you invest with an IRA? How is this taxed? How do you guys do life expectancy reports? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And lots of ⁓ interviews with investors and interviews with CPAs who work with us and just various people in the industry that, you know, do that. So there's a plethora of information, but.
Ben at LifeAdvisorSolution.com is the easiest email. And then you've got the website and ⁓ definitely can reach me there.
Bernie (49:04)
Ben Mohr, want to say thank you so much for being a guest today and talking to us about something that most of us don't know about that's an option, ⁓ including the frozen head option. ⁓ To my co-host, Wayne Pratt, thank you. And you the Knack 4 Business listeners. So, know, this whole thing, if you're looking for how to invest and ⁓ doing something in a, it's an alternative means of parking your money and developing more funds,
Reach out to Ben and it doesn't matter where you are. The policy's gotta be in the US and if you're in the US, there you go. It should be a no brainer. ⁓ bad pun again, I apologize. With that said, to my Knack 4 Business guests and listeners, thank you so much for joining us today.
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