David Duchene, CLU®, ChFC®, MBA | Eagle Strategies LLC
Picture this:
A young man contacts you who is an engineer in his late 30s making around $110k a year. He is about to get married to a teacher, also in her late 30s making around $50k a year.
They want to start a family.
They would like to travel.
They don’t want to have to worry about money.
They want to understand not only what they should be doing financially but “why”.
Have you ever come across this type of a prospect?
He heard you look at things differently from most in your industry and would like to meet to see what that means so you schedule a time to chat. He has spoken to many financial people over the years and none of the things they say make any sense to him.
– Any time he throws a potential life situation at their plan, they merely say “It will work out”.
– Since he is an engineer, he is interested in things working, not how they could work.
Have any of you heard this before?
During the conversation, tools and rates of return aren’t even mentioned. He has never heard anyone talk about making sure they get the things they want in life, no matter what life throws at them.
This makes sense to him.
You ask many questions regarding what they actually want in life - you find out they want a lot.
He likes the idea of making sure it will work in all cases, then asks, “How much will it cost?”
You state that if he does it right, he can have this security AND the wealth he is currently striving for.
He asks “How can you do that?” You say…
By having each dollar doing multiple things at once.
By having each tool in the system backing up every other tool.
By having THE SYSTEM be more powerful than ANY ONE TOOL…
For the next 17 years, they follow the steps you lay out.
They get the house they want
They have a son
They get to do all the fun things they hoped for: Camping, sports, vacations, Boy Scouts
They are on track to have a great retirement
Life couldn’t be better.
Then, one day, your administrator says the client is on the phone and wants to talk to you right away. You’re about to go into a meeting but agree - this client never calls and asks to speak right away.
You find out he is at the doctor’s office and just got diagnosed with cancer and only has 1-3 years to live…
The first thing he asks you is if his wife and son will be OK? Will they still be able to keep the house and do the same things they have always planned on?
Without a pause, you say yes because the life insurance will replace all his coming years’ income till full retirement age.
He then asks if we can squeeze him in over the next few days. His company benefit elections are coming up and he wants to review if his diagnosis changes what he selects.
You say, “Do you really want to keep working? How about we look at all the things you wanted to do as a family and see how many you can get done in the time you have.”
They start creating family memories as long as he can.
Fast forward 5 years. Waiver of premium on his whole life and his disability policies have kicked in.
In the time he had left, they use up a lot of assets in creating numerous memories and checking off the bucket list.
Traveling to vacation spots and things they wanted to see and do.
Taking time to help coach their son’s sports teams and attend competitions.
Taking time to be very active in Boy Scout trips, advancements and activities.
Teaching his wife how to handle all the things he does managing the household.
Making sure his wife understands their financial situation with the help of someone she trusts (You).
Finally, they lose him.
The grief sets in. His wife asks for validation that she and her son will be ok.
You tell her that she can even stop working if she wants even though she is only 56.
She is concerned about complexity in closing his estate.
You explain that it will move easily (due to the work we did in P7 and P8) with an attorney you recommended.
She takes time off from teaching to:
Help deal with getting through the grief.
Finish up her husband’s affairs.
Help her son finish his Eagle Scout project and pass Eagle Board of Review.
Together they go on some trips to help deal with losing him.
In the last years he had, the cost of creating all the memories as they went through their bucket list has now been replaced via his death benefit.
She teaches at their son’s high school and chooses to keep teaching for the 3 years until he graduates and goes off to college.
Not long after he was diagnosed, we placed another $3M of convertible term life insurance on her.
She converts her $3M of term to whole life which gets her to a one-to-one ratio of assets to permanent death benefit again. It will also allow her to:
Rebuild her cash value as a place to back up her safe liquid money for the 5 purposes of cash
Be fully person B in retirement
We implement a system to supply her with his lost earnings each year while she is still teaching.
We position her model to:
Maximize wealth and income
Seek to lower or keep the same level of risk
Maximize protection against the factors that can erode wealth and the things she wants in life – Problems with their home – Liability issues – Disability – Medical costs – Long Term Care – Personal legal issues – Death – Job loss – Recessions – Inflation and its ugly brothers and sisters – Stock market ups and downs – Real estate ups and downs – Interest rate ups and downs – Changes to tax rates – Changes to tax laws – Pandemics – Etc.
She now has her financial situation in motion with very little hands-on requirements by following the Leap Model Rulebook.
We had this last meeting with her 2 weeks ago.
Will this be the story for all your clients, or would their story have a different ending?