Jason Mandel 5:54
I think the word greed might not be the best word. I think market efficiency is good is truth. And I named my book Trump Demand Transparency, because that’s really my core belief. And I think that is what is necessary on Wall Street. That is what is necessary to save our country. That is what’s necessary to bolster employees morale, to get people to put in discretionary work effort to help lead businesses to the highest levels. I think in concept, what he’s talking about, is being able to be efficient, being able to work hard to maximize profits. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I do believe that you do need to treat your employees with sensitivity, I do think you need to help them achieve their maximum potential output. And that’s what a lot of the work that I’ve done over the past 30 years has done. We want to maximize every dollar for shareholders. That’s what Wall Street’s mantra is. That makes sense. When you see that movie, I’ve met people like that they’re in the trenches, they’re fighting every day, maximize profits. But I think the most successful people that I’ve had the pleasure of helping and working with are people that balance that with a respect for their employees with a respect for honesty, transparency, and I think you can do both. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I think those personalities like Gordon Gekko is obviously fictional. But I’ve met some of the real life courtroom geckos I’ve worked for them. I know what these people are all about. And here’s the sad reality. Almost all of them are miserable. They’re both lateral and dealing with them. Right. But they’re also miserable themselves.
Rolando Rosas 7:31
Is it something that is it is it personally that so if you were to, to move to separate the, the Wall Street aspect of it, and you sat down with them and had a cup of coffee, you would still say, these are miserable people to have coffee
Jason Mandel 7:47
with? These are people that have prioritize money over all other things, right? they’ve sacrificed their relationships with their spouse, with their children, with their parents, with their friends, everything is about money. Because when you will achieve that extraordinary level of success, like the fictional character there, you’re going to do things that other people are unwilling to do. Right? So for me, if you look at what happened to me on Wall Street, and I’m, I’m a good person to think about, I let my when I met my wife, I was 148 pounds. I’m only five, six, short guy. I was 148. But as of two years ago, I was 225 pounds. Oh my God, it was I was massive.
Rolando Rosas 8:28
You were bulking up. You weren’t, you weren’t big.
Jason Mandel 8:30
I was a big boy. And, uh, you know what, you know, it was my drug I never drank a lot of people on Wall Street are alcoholics. I never did drugs, tons of guys do drugs at
Rolando Rosas 8:41
the dirty secret on Wall Street. You know, we think of like, you know, very well put together, folks. I mean, that’s, that’s the thing, you know, but when you watch the movies and the TV series, you got it all well put together, buttoned up, you know it, but there’s more
Jason Mandel 8:55
ties on Wall Street. And now what you’re going to find is people have vices in like anywhere in the world. But when you’re in a career where literally you’re sitting at your desk, and trading millions of shares of stock, any one minute, you could lose your job, obviously, there’s a high level of stress. And when you have that level of stress, people are going to do things to relieve that stress. So unfortunately, where I worked different firms, I knew people with drug addictions, sexual addictions, people, a lot of alcoholics. A lot of people had an addiction to work. People don’t really think about that. And that’s really where I became addicted to my work, where I was working 18 Sometimes 20 hours a day. And of course, sitting at my desk, all those hours, I was eating whatever I wanted, or because I didn’t care. I thought I was immune from anything. And that’s why I gained weight developed terrible type two diabetes, and I almost died. I had diabetic ketoacidosis or I live that Wall Street life. You know, I wasn’t running around, you know, with prostitutes the way you’d see I wasn’t running around, you know, doing drugs, my drug of choice. Weiss was a big steak every night, if I had a bad day I had a steak. If I had a good day, I had a steak, right? It didn’t matter. But I was eating all the sides, everything you can imagine, and eventually caught up with me, I became very ill. And I made a decision to change my life, I couldn’t quite figure out how to get out of that diabetic train that I call myself but I was on, I had to get, I had to get off that train. And I did a gastric bypass procedure, I actually lost 90 plus pounds. When I got rid of my diabetes, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it naturally, I needed the help of a surgical procedure. But I’m so glad I did it. Because now I can tell you, I feel good, I’ve got my energy, I’m down to 128 pounds, I’m less than what I used to be. Now I want to bulk up a little bit, start
Rolando Rosas 10:42
out and get back, get some great gyms not far from where you’re at. So Lully now
Jason Mandel 10:47
that’s the next step of my iteration. I just turned 50 years old last Wednesday. So for me, though, this is a new beginning, I wasn’t even able to publish my ideas over my career, because I worked for very wealthy people that wouldn’t allow me to publish, they wanted my strategies just to themselves, which is I got to the nature of Wall Street. But I didn’t want to do that anymore. I reached a certain level of success, where I’m a little bit more flexible in assignments that I take on. And I love helping people. So I ended up publishing the book, I no longer have those kind of relationships where I’m not allowed to publish. I’ve written actually two more books that will come out over this year next year. And I want to share these ideas because I really believe you know, Ro Dave, I think people are being badly advised. I think Wall Street is corrupt. I think Wall Street is doing what it needs to do to hold on to your money. They’re gonna do the bare minimums, they could charge you 1% every year. And they’re showing you strategies that are inferior to strategies that are out there. And is
that because is that because that’s the default, the way we’ve always done business? And that’s kind of the way we do things still today, or is that under threat with new technology, AI and a new way of working? Or where do you see that playing? How do you see that playing out? Yeah,
I mean, Wall Street’s constantly under change. I remember when I started 1995, the stock, the pricing of stocks was done in eighth’s, and then all of a sudden went to decimalisation. So there was a smaller spread. And that changed to make things more efficient. Right now you have aI it’s making things more efficient. What I’m finding is it’s making dumb people sound smart. Right? Because all they do is type in something. The chat GBT and then they start to regurgitate it to their clients, they may not even understand what they’re talking about. I was amazed when clients would people would come to me and say, Well, my broker told me that what I need to do is balance between stocks and bonds. And you know, I’ll always make money because when stocks go down, bonds go up. Well, that didn’t happen two years ago, right, interest rates went up, bonds went down, stock market got weak, it went down. So that that’s a flawed concept. And most of the Wall Street investment banks, that is that are those are the only tools they have to help you manage your wealth is stocks or bonds. Now we have a very minute allocation to stocks and bonds, we actually look at other strategies that do not correlate to the stock or bond market, they offer what’s called orthogonal return streams, they don’t have anything to do with each other. If we have a strategy that does, if you take it to its simplest, and you think about a bank, a bank lends money normally for mortgages, they ask you to put down 20 or 30% cash, and then they’ll lend you money to buy a house. The collateral is the house, if you don’t pay your mortgage, they take the house from you. And hopefully, right, their risk is when they sell it, they get back their money, they have a 20% or 30% cushion. Plus they have the historic reality that sometimes real estate goes up, it’s gone up dramatically over the past 20 plus years. So they have that going for them and hopefully they make money. We as investors look at strategies that kind of mimic what a bank does, but allows an individual to do similar type lending, suddenly, like we call it asset backed lending, if someone has an asset, you can lend something against it at a discount to its present value. Or
Rolando Rosas 14:12
let’s slow down let’s slow down for a moment.
Jason Mandel 14:14
Well you know from New York a slowdown this is
Rolando Rosas 14:17
I’m gonna I’m gonna take your your gear and shift it down a little bit. So, so if you’ve got somebody that says, Yeah, I’ve got you say that house as an asset or other assets that you could use as collateral. How does that work? Right, you know, I’m looking around to diversify my portfolio a little bit. How do I actually do that? And how does it really work for the individual investor?
Jason Mandel 14:48
Well, I’ve always had some shocking opinions that most people disagree with, or most traditional advisors disagree with. So it does, it’s not going to surprise you to know I have a very different opinion when it comes to real estate. I have no problem that most People have a bulk of their net worth tied up in their real estate, if they were lucky enough to buy a house 1020 years ago, they’ve made a lot of money, I actually proposed to most people to consider getting a home equity line of credit. And the idea there is that based on today’s value of real estate, you might have doubled your money and your real estate, you’re feeling very rich. And I’m happy for those people that feel that way. But I have to remind them that real estate is cyclical, it doesn’t always go up. Sometimes it goes down. And if we enter a period where it goes down in value, that inflated perception of your net worth, and I hear it all the time from people aren’t good for retirement, I’m just going to sell my house. That’s great. But where do you want to retire if the real estate markets weak, and you’re not going to sell it for what you think you could sell it for? So one way of kind of taking advantage of this high market that we’re experiencing, the fact that the market has gone up so much, is for certain people that can have the self control, not to borrow the money out of their house and go to Vegas, and drop that money. Right? Right. And a lot of people when you give them the liquidity, one of the reasons we love the concept of owning real estate is it’s pretty illiquid, you buy it and then when you do eventually want to retire, you have something to sell. But I actually argue that if someone has self control, there are other strategies that they could consider by using money that they source, whether it’s from income, whether it’s from money that’s sitting in the bank, getting a very low low rate of return, or whether it’s somebody with home equity, that they go out and get a home equity line of credit, we believe that there are products that are principle protected, now Wall Street’s not going to tell you this guy’s Wall Street doesn’t want you to know about these products.
Rolando Rosas 16:38
So your initial investment, so principle protected is the concept that what you put in is being protected. Yeah,
Jason Mandel 16:44
it’s a financial institution that saying that if you give us money inside of one of our structures, we will say that you cannot lose value, that your money can only go up, it cannot go down. And these structures have various different iterations. The first one people might be familiar with is one that gives you a fixed coupon, it might be five or 6%. And it the benefit of these structures, or they allow you to grow tax free. So instead of having your money at a bank, and maybe you’re lucky enough to get a 5% CD for the next 12 months, instead of doing that, when you get your 5%, you’re going to pay taxes on it. And that’s going to eat up depending on where you live, you may give up to half of the money you make. In Texas, you live in New York or you live in California. And if you do that it’s not as exciting to make 5%, right? Because you ended up netting two and a half, right? So what we like is if you have a product that can give you that same 5%, but it can do it in a tax advantaged structure, it’s even better. For example, if you owned it, and you made 5%, and it grew tax free, that’s very compelling compared to making a CD and a bank where you owe taxes.
Rolando Rosas 17:52
So that’s cool. So why are more people taking advantage of this?
Jason Mandel 17:55
Because Wall Street can’t get paid on these products. That’s okay,
Rolando Rosas 17:59
it’s about money to borrow money, always is you
Jason Mandel 18:01
trace. Money always is about money. If you look at what Wall Street wants to do, they want to manage your money, they want to buy stocks and bonds, they want to buy a lot of stocks when you’re young, maybe less stocks when you’re older. And their argument is look, you wait out the draw downs, markets gonna go up markets gonna go down net net after 4050 years, you’ll make money and they’re not wrong. Historically, that’s been the case. My issue is the velocity of those returns. My issue is worrying about the cycles. So what if you’re retiring at age 65? And at age 64, the market loses 40% of its value or more? And he can people don’t think it can but he can it’s a market so what we argue is that when certain people turn on a mindset that they don’t want to lose any principle there are products out there these products don’t pay Wall Street very well. So Wall Street’s not going to tell you about it you’ve got these
Rolando Rosas 18:52
are lesser known products, are they any risk is like you know, back when you go further back, let’s go back a little bit let’s this dial it back to, you know, the, the the implosion around the the markets and Lehman and we all found out we had bad loans, put in a bunch of different places stuck with good loans. Is this money being aggregated, so that it’s stuck with other instruments that may not be as favorable? Yeah,
Jason Mandel 19:22
I thought when you said we’re going back I thought we’re going back to 87 the crash act 208. That’s fine. I remember at seven I remember the feeling. I remember sitting there and talking to my grandparents in particular is very vivid, and they were so depressed about the stock market crash. Because around that time, Mike White one grandfather who retired at 65 He lost a lot of his money in the stock market. His broker told him just wait it out. While he didn’t have a long retirement unfortunately lost him when he was 66 I am blessed to sad another grandfather around the same age is now 100 Almost one 101 still alive. And I think the secret is probably never retiring. My grandpa still works, that’s probably a secret. So I’m a big believer in that
Rolando Rosas 20:09
is what the people say, in the blue, the authors of Blue Zones and things like that is that, you know, they don’t really kind of, you know, sit in the in a vegetable and stayed and just watch TV. And you know, call it a call it a day after you’re done is just, you know, being involved in something and having community and all of the rest, that’s awesome money,
Jason Mandel 20:29
but you can work for somebody else contribute to others and help help people, for sure. But to answer your question, look, the reality is Wall Street’s trying to kind of herd your money into something that it could charge 1% a year to manage, that’s how they get a multiple on their businesses, they get a huge multiple, because they have these assets that are sticky. And people are told, just wait it out, market goes down, it’ll come back. And that’s not my philosophy, my philosophy is something called absolute returns, meaning that every year we should be producing a return a positive return for investors. So if you look at that 5% CD alternative, you can get that inside of something called Whole Life Insurance, where you could have a certain amount of money that is you can leave to your heirs, children, your spouse, charity, but while you’re alive, it can grow tax free, it’s protected from creditors, and you could borrow against it tax free, and you’re growing it so it’s going to compound faster. So that’s one strategy as an alternative to owning a CD or a savings account. As an alternative to being in the stock market. large financial institutions will give you the upside of the stock market with no downside participation. I’m gonna say that again, because people don’t believe me, there are products that you can have an uncapped upside of a market index, and no downside. market goes down. 80% How
Rolando Rosas 21:51
can that be? The break that down for me? Because that, yeah, you’re talking about something. So you’re going against the grain, you know, with what you’re saying? Because it’s not common knowledge? And how can that be that there is no downside? Because if I give you a 10,000 not let’s just say, as a person, I gave me $10,000. I’m hoping I get it back. Right. And sometimes I don’t get it back with interest. So how can it be that if if someone says, Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna do what you just said, I’m gonna put 1010 grand into what? How is it that there’s no downside.
Jason Mandel 22:24
And a lot of the the guaranteed products are issued by insurance companies, there’s big ones that everybody knows about Prudential, John Hancock, MassMutual, New York Life, Northwestern Mutual, these are all gigantic financial institutions. National likes a good one that I like up in Vermont. These are companies that are offering a product, which is it depending on the product, but they offer products that are principle protected, that’s the value over giving your money to a big investment bank, that’s going to invest it in stocks and bonds, which could go down, these companies are going to issue you a contract, whether it’s a life insurance policy, or an annuity, in which they’re going to take control of those funds, they’re going to invest it the way they want to invest. It might be in real estate or venture capital. But what they’re really doing is they’re giving you exposure to an index, they tend to do that synthetically through an option. Or it’s a general account where they just say, Look, we’re gonna guarantee this from our investments. But the secret that no one realizes is why are these companies able to offer a guarantee? Why can they tell you because they are so profitable, based on a very sad reality, their profit comes from something called a lapse rate assumption pricing model.
Rolando Rosas 23:41
Alright, so now, so for those of you who have never heard that, let me take you down a little bit and explain it to us feeble minded layman so we can absorb it and understand and be educated about that. When
Jason Mandel 23:54
you go out to a restaurant, you buy the meal, you eat it, it’s over, you got value for it, when you buy insurance, you buy it, and you got to keep paying for it for a period of years. Sometimes it’s five years, 10 years, 20 years, sometimes it’s every year till you die. And guess what? People are not persistent. persistency lacks. Now what happens when you’re young, you just say, look, I bought this insurance and just had a kid, I want to protect my family. And then life gets in the way you don’t have enough money and you got to get rid of things. It’s one of the things that people tend to get rid of, is their cash value life insurance. They say, Oh, I’ll buy it again in the future. And that means their policy lapses. There, families are no longer as protected. And what I argue of course to people is make sure you at least have some term insurance, which is basic death benefit, in case something unexpected happens to the cash value insurance, which can grow tax free, where you get the alternative to a CD, a fixed rate of return, where you get an index, the way they’re able to give it to you is they’re giving it to you through a contract they offer and they make so much money because people don’t keep these contracts. I sometimes get a question because a lot of times my older clients don’t always get the bills. So I say, are they purposefully not sending bills to old people, so they lacked the policies. I don’t want to say anything bad about insurance companies. But I always wonder for the few carriers that I see that happening on a regular basis, that’s pretty nasty. So what I say is, I know the reality, people do not hold on to the insurance until their death. And that’s why insurance companies have these gigantic buildings in these big cities, right? Sure. They’re all these big towers, it’s because they make a ton of money. They make money on normally a term insurance because people buy the product and they outlive the term, they’ve done nothing wrong. They just got a very cheap product, and they were healthy, and no accidents occurred or no disease, and they lived and then the policy’s done, the insurance company owes nothing when they die. And all those years of premiums go to the bottom line of that company. So that’s why companies are so profitable. What I tell people is, you can take advantage of the fact that we are in a free market talking about Wall Street and competition. Well, how do insurance companies compete for your business, if they’re selling you a million dollars a death benefit, they compete on price, they want to lower the premium every year to get to the absolute lowest price that they win your business, and they still make money. So that’s what they do. The other thing they do is they pay your broker an ungodly amount of money in commissions lucrative businesses as being an insurance broker. I hate to say it’s got a lot of friends.
Rolando Rosas 26:23
Well, you’re talking to one right here on the screen above. All right. All right. I know he knows a little bit about that. He
Jason Mandel 26:28
knows it’s a lucrative business. Now, I know Dave, that you know that you are sensitive, the fact that sometimes people can’t afford to buy insurance. And one of the things that we probably I’m sure you agree with me, there are products out there that if somebody wants to finance the premiums, same way they finance a car loan, or a mortgage on a house, my belief is someone needs a certain amount of tax free income in retirement, if you need that certain amount, whether it’s 10 grand a month, 20 grand or 100 grand a month, we need to go backwards from that number. We’ve got to figure out how much you need and protection to build tax free over your life. So therefore, by the time you retire, you have that income coming in tax free, because I hate 401 K’s. I tell
Rolando Rosas 27:21
me tell me. So every every a lot of companies offer it. A lot of employees take it because that’s what’s offered through the company plans. Why wouldn’t? Why wouldn’t I use a 401 K? They’re matching me dollar for dollar up to 2000. Now,
Jason Mandel 27:35
let me let me change my statement. If someone’s going to hand your free money, take the match, no problem, you could take the match. All right, gotcha. That’s different. But when it comes to somebody saying, I have all my investments in my 401k, I put so much my every dollar I make I put it. I challenge that because 401 k’s are taxable when you take the money out in most cases. So what people end up having it as having is an uncertain retirement. And I want certitude. I want to know what I’m going to be able to take out and I want to know that it’s tax free, because I don’t know what tax rates will be. And that’s a core belief of mine. So one of the reasons that I think Dave and I can agree, insurance offers an ability to grow tax free, like a 401k. But it also allows us to borrow from a tax free if we structure it properly. And when we borrow from a tax free, you also benefit that this asset is protected from creditors as well, God forbid somebody gets divorced and you know, wants to do some planning, this is a very healthy way of planning without being a cheat. You could buy insurance, and you could protect your family, your children, even your ex spouse, but you can hold on to that during a division of assets, because insurance is normally protected from that. So these products offer a huge value. And I use them even to take it to a whole nother level. But my idea is to finance with a bank, the right amount of coverage, you can get 2030 Sometimes 40 times your salary in financed life insurance. And again, we’re doing so so
Rolando Rosas 29:06
let’s let’s, let’s take that take that step so that I also the slow minded people like myself, although I lived in New York, I am not in New York now. So the New York speed is slowed down a little bit in my brain. You said financing of those premiums. How does that happen? Have you just go to a bank and say, I need $100,000 So that I can do this? Or how does that happen?
Jason Mandel 29:31
Normally, it starts with your insurance advisor. So you’d come to the advisor and say, Look, I want this amount of coverage. I want 20 grand a month tax free in retirement, and they build a plan for you. And a lot of times that plan requires a significant amount of life insurance and maybe even the overfunding of life insurance. Instead of paying it out over 40 years. You might pay it out over 10 years, compress the amount of years that you’re paying. And the purpose is we’re going to generate the upside of the stock market, potentially in a product that Have an uncapped upside, there are products called Indexed Universal Life, some have a cap, like a cap on the s&p 500, maybe it’s nine or 10%, maybe 11%. Some products have no cap on an index. So if the index goes up 20%, and you’re holding that index inside your life insurance, you would grow all of that value tax free, and you’d participate fully in the increase. So when I
Rolando Rosas 30:26
go get that money, I go get that money. I’m like, I hit 70. I’m like, I’m done working. I’m gonna slow down. You don’t have to wait to go. You can draw it. You can draw on that. Whenever you want
Jason Mandel 30:37
acts free, you’re allowed to borrow from a tax free whenever you’d like, whatever the cash in there, you could borrow tax free?
Rolando Rosas 30:44
Well, you know, that’s that, you know, you are lighting up my brain cells right now with what you’re saying, Jason, I’m you’re blowing my mind away. If we
haven’t even gotten to the good stuff. Well, that’s
where we’re getting there. But you know, all of us have had like an aha moment. I know, for me, I did with the work I was doing before. And you I love the passion that you have, it comes through with what you’re saying, within your voice, you have a lot of conviction. What your where’s your aha moment when you came into when you realize, you know, I don’t know if this is this Wall Street thing is working out. Right. You said you were in your health was deteriorating? Was it that a health event? When you realize, you know, I could use my skills for something else, other than making other people a bunch of money? What was your aha moment? No,
Jason Mandel 31:37
it really wasn’t my health. Unfortunately, you know, I like a lot of people on Wall Street, I have an addictive personality. My addiction was to work, I was working 1820 hours a day, it was really unsustainable. And one of the things that I let go was all kinds of exercise. So I never did drugs, and I didn’t drink and I didn’t a lot of people on Wall Street, unfortunately, do drugs and drink, never cheated on my wife. But what I did do is I ate too much. And I ate so much that eventually I developed type two diabetes. And it was killing me actually really was killing me. I actually had diabetic ketoacidosis. I was hospitalized. And it hit me and I said, Look, I’m not going to be alive very long. I have two beautiful children, and I wanted to be there for them. And I said I gotta make a change. And I really couldn’t figure out how to do it. I was taking so much insulin every day, which makes you voraciously hungry. So my aha moment was to say, look, my doctor is frankly telling me to just take medications and do the best I could. And I knew I couldn’t really do it on my own. So a good friend of mine gave me the advice. He said, Look, you’ve got one of these personalities, I think what you need to do is take an active step here. And they advised me to get gastric bypass surgery, I did it I lost 90 pounds, I went from 225 down to about 130 pounds. And and I am blessed because a lot of my health has been repaired, my numbers are good, thank God, I don’t need to take medication anymore. And I feel like that was really my aha moment. I also was working for some incredibly wealthy people doing a lot of these strategies for them and their employees. And what I recognize is not all those people were so nice matter of fact, one of them didn’t allow me to share my ideas with the public. And they passed away and I was able to work with their, their children, I decide not to, and and I was able to reclaim my ability to share these views. And that was my aha moment. Last week, I turned 50 years of age, I think it’s a milestone, I truly want to be in a position where where I can share this knowledge with others help others and hopefully allow them to have peace of mind, the peace of mind that I am lucky to enjoy the peace of mind that I’ve been able to give my clients and their employees. And it’s really helped my clients with their employees, because I really believe that you need to find creative ways to recruit top talent, to retain that talent and to reward that talent. And these are all the things that I do for my clients and their employees.
Rolando Rosas 33:58
And would you say that these strategies, you said you’ve working with books, I have quite a bit of money, these secret strategies that the rich and famous have been using for years. Unbeknownst to the everyday investor.
Jason Mandel 34:16
I can share two of them that I think are compelling and are appropriate for anyone of almost any asset size. And I said and I focus a lot of my practice. I work with a lot of doctors and lawyers and tech executives. Those are those are more of my main day to day clients. I do have some incredibly ultra wealthy clients, and I help them with their employees. But the strategies that I like the most is the concept of wrapping your wealth into a vehicle which is not taxed. So imagine if you’re looking at tax return from last year and your accountant prepared it and you look at the section on capital gains taxes. Imagine if that Number went from whatever it is to zero, would it be compelling for you. And that’s what I do, I bring people’s capital gains tax down to zero. And here’s how I do it. It’s not rocket science, it’s actually pretty easy. Life insurance, as I told you is not taxed. If you buy an insurance contract, and you get the performance inside into the cache of a bond or a stock index, that you’re going to have that upside non tax, and when you want to access it, you could borrow against it tax free, it’s protected from creditors. Now another interesting aspect of having a life insurance policy is you can wrap that life insurance policy inside of another policy called private placement life insurance, P P. Li. What is that? It is the idea that you can take your portfolio of stocks, bonds, commodities, you could have exotic cars, you can have anything you can imagine venture investments, tech companies, private equity, you can have anything you want. But if it’s owned by an insurance policy, and not you personally or your LLC, which is taxed, or even a trust, which doesn’t get an estate tax put on it, but it does get a cap gains tax treatment every year, you have to pay taxes on the growth inside of a trust. If you transfer your assets inside of a P PLI policy, there is no taxation on the growth every year, zero. So now when you want to access your 10x, tech investment that you made, guess what, when you access, you access it instead of as a distribution, you access it as a loan, you borrows treat
Rolando Rosas 36:55
the value, you treat the loan differently than distributions, for sure. Yeah, and
Jason Mandel 37:01
you could take up to your basis out of life insurance as a formal distribution, but then you start tape paying taxes on any of you gains. So we always recommend people just borrow out of the policy, you’re basically paying yourself back, if you want to pay yourself or you never pay it back. And it gets adjusted at mortality. So if you have a $10 million death benefit, K or $10 million cash value, and you borrow out 5 million, your family is only going to get five Billy at mortality. So that’s okay. Because you’re entitled to live your life, you made the money. And I always say to people, insurance is one of the most attractive entities to use. And especially if you could figure out ways of avoiding these gigantic commissions, which you can there’s something called an enhanced cash value rider. And if your advisor is not offering that to you, I suggest you ask them about it. They might not like me very much after that, frankly, and I’m not exaggerating, I’ve had three death threats from church.
Rolando Rosas 37:57
But you know what, you bring up a good point, because, you know, people tend to work for what works for them, either with it’s a financial incentive or otherwise. And that’s since tends to be the motivation for my modus operandi, how I’m going to move forward with things where I’m going to put my energy because this is what butter is my bread. And before you answer that, I want to show you something here from a show, I’m sure you recognize, that leans into that. So already, go ahead and roll that next clip.
Guest Speaker 2 38:36
Wax never get tired of working for a living every damn day. But I’ve got a nasty addiction called money. So I do what I do. You never until today. You know they call us traders gamblers. The world economy is just one big casino fueled by a giant debt bubble and computer driven derivatives. There’s only one thing better than being a gambler in a casino that’s been in the house. That is right. There’s a systemized machine out there. Sucking capital from localities and injecting it into the global markets where it can be used to speculate and manipulate if something goes wrong or bail out some balance federal aid and easing where the government doesn’t hunt you down but instead gives you a nice soft net to land it that’s your answer to the fireside chat. You want to become a bank I want to become a bank in order to Robin in order to I don’t have to
Rolando Rosas 39:32
that’s a great clattered know if you watch you watch billions. I
Jason Mandel 39:36
watched a couple of episode is funny. Yeah, it obviously based on Steve Cohen’s point. 72. Not too far from where I lived in Westport, Connecticut for many, many years. So yeah, it’s a great show. I think there’s certain aspects of it that might be realistic to hedge funds and somewhat easy to
Rolando Rosas 39:52
think about what you just saw, which is, you know, an exchange there with Wags and Bobby Axelrod talking about how to get richer Right and big institutions, which is what his character represents, there’s a certain type of motivation. And what I want to ask you is, is that motivation real? And then? What’s the implication for people that work at organizations like this? You know, are we seeing fiction play the reality? Or is the reality leaving the fiction? What what’s, what do you say, since you’ve been part of that organ, you know, part of that world? Yeah,
Jason Mandel 40:30
absolutely not. In fact, the man that sat next to me at Cantor Fitzgerald, covered point seven things called SEC at the time, so I definitely had some exposure and knowledge there, I would say that it is part of the mentality, which is to find ways of generating returns without the same risk. And of course, banks do that, right, banks will take 20 30% of your money and then give you a mortgage, their risk is that the value of real estate goes down, if you don’t pay that mortgage payment to them, they’re in trouble, they seize the house, they sell it, and they could lose money, if they sell it at a loss. I’ve always been a proponent of saying to people be like a bank, because banks tend to make money. So a lot of the investment strategies that we pursue are being your own banker, in a way, as something called asset backed lending. Same way a bank would lend you money, if you said to me that that watch on my wrist is worth $10,000. And you would law and I needed $1,000 Real quickly for something, and I gave you collateral of a $10,000 watch, that’s not a bad loan to make if you’re holding on to the watch. So I don’t pay you back the 1000, you go out and you can either keep the watch, or you could sell it, you want to be nice, you give me the difference Wall Street’s not nice. Sometimes they just grab the collateral, and they make the money. So I’m a big believer, that is an investment strategy. And most of the people listening to this watching this have no exposure to asset backed lending as an asset class. And that’s because big investment banks and big asset managers don’t offer that to their clients. And I think that’s a shame. They really should give people exposure, private credit, to asset backed lending, these are strategies that are not correlated to the stock market going up and down. I’m sick and tired of watching 65 year olds lose their wealth, right before they want to retire, because the market crashed. And it’s not fair to them. So I believe that people need to ask questions, they need to demand transparency, the title white book, like your book, yeah, they’ve got to demand it from their advisor from their lawyer from their accountant, from their insurance broker and from their money manager, my business is a multifamily office, what we do is we sit there and we try to direct everybody down the road of what the client wants. If the clients looking for tax minimization, and looking to not lose principle, then we have to set the investor manager straight. And let them know that stocks are not the right investment for that client. If the CPA is unwilling to look at strategies that eliminate taxation, because they’re just not familiar with it, well, that’s a failure. And we need to either get that CPA back on track, or have them terminated and get them off the team. Because what I do is I act as a quarterback on the team or think of me as a maestro of an orchestra. And I lead everyone down the same path that the client wants. And for most of those clients, it’s tax efficiency. For most of those clients, it’s creating tax free income. And for most of those clients, it’s not losing money in their investments. And these are all things that could be accomplished. If they look and they start there. I, I tell you what, most of the time a client brings me in to talk to their lawyer or accountant, they say, oh, no, no, this is not right. What you’re talking about not right for my client. And I push and I say why? Don’t just say it’s not right. Give me a reason why you don’t believe it. Is it because you’re not familiar with it? Is it because no one ever taught you these strategies? It’s not your fault, Mr. CPA, you’ve been a record keeper. You’ve helped your client pay the taxes they owe. But if you want to be relevant, that’s my one of the words my daughter says this person is relevant could school or Well, you want to be relevant in this equation? You’ve got to add value. You’ve got to bring ideas to the table that eliminate taxation. You can legitimately do things in the tax code. We are not talking about tax shelters here, guys.
Rolando Rosas 44:25
So it’s not parking my money in the Caymans that we’re talking about set up a trust in the Caymans. And, you know, that holds all my my wealth. And when I retire chi Ching, Uncle Sam can’t touch a penny of it.
Jason Mandel 44:37
Now you will be going to jail. My friend and I are too short. And I am not strong enough to defend myself in jail. So I’m not going
Rolando Rosas 44:47
you don’t want to be somebody’s boyfriend when you get there. Oh, I don’t.
Jason Mandel 44:51
My wife would not approve of that. She’s tough lawyer. So not not our thing. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to do everything in the tax code. I’m going to read the code Hold, like no one else has read it, I’m going to find strategies that are directly in the code. People always say, Well, my lawyer created a legal opinion on this, well, that means it’s a tax shield. That means that they’re interpreting tax law. And you might get away with it. I’m not saying it, you know, every tax shelter and you get penalized. But what I want to tell you is, you don’t need to do that. There are easy strategies that don’t cost you so much money to pay for some legal opinion. And for regular people like you and me, there are strategies that we can use, that can help us reduce volatility, not have big swings in our portfolio, grow our wealth, tax free, protected from creditors, and allow us to sleep at night and generate really strong returns, and eliminate taxation. These are all things we can do, we can even reduce your W two or 1099 taxes, I can bring those taxes down to zero. Well, let me through something called the DAF a donor advised fund, I’ve got some unique strategies. And I implore your listeners to get in touch. You know, one thing that’s funny about me is I have this book, I’m not making any money on the book, I put the book out at 99 cents, I don’t care, I’m actually donating any money, I make the charity, I could care less, what I want to do is share these ideas. If any of your viewers and listeners want to get a copy, it’s on Amazon, it’s called demand transparency, if they want to do
Rolando Rosas 46:23
you want to put it up, we got a shot of it. Or you’ve got to you’ve got the page on Amazon, he’ll put it up over time.
Jason Mandel 46:32
If somebody wants it, I would say to you, if you don’t like the book, send me a text, you send me a text, and I will refund it. I’ll Venmo you the money I’m literally gonna give out. I’m gonna give out my cell phone number I’ve had for 30 years. Okay, I believe that if you can’t keep us I know people change the cell phone every year. And it’s because they don’t want people call on them. So I don’t have that kind of situation. Well, here’s my cell phone number. There you go. And there’s a section there that says digital version somewhere there is a where is it? It’s not quite there, and it’s up there. Kindle 99 cents. So if you do that, you contact me. You tell me you didn’t like the book you didn’t find helpful. Okay, I will send you the money back. My cell phone is my New York number 917 Area code 917-603-2365. That was 917-603-2365. If you don’t like the book, let me know send me a text, you got your 99 cents back my There
Rolando Rosas 47:31
you go. We’re putting it on the screen as well. For those that are watching us on the video side of things, you can see the number and you know, you can give Jason a piece if you think it’s full of malarkey or not working, but I suspect how passionate you are about this and, and how under the radar and and the fact that the big firms aren’t pushing it because you said they’re not going to be making a lot of money on this kind of instrument. It’s it’s it would seem to me that it’s almost out of favor. And I think that a lot of no matter what industry you’re in, I think you’re gonna find the same thing where there are businesses that will just keep doing what they’ve been doing, because it’s kind of working. And this is what’s paying the bills. And this has the opportunity to really upset the applecart if if I stand to lose or lose some of those profits that were coming in, you’ve really opened my eyes to something that I’ve only heard a little bit about and know nothing about. And I think that’s a shame. Because it financial advisors should be offering value to their customers, because at the end of the day, it’s not just about collecting a paycheck, you want your clients to come out healthier than when they walked in the door. And I wanted to ask you about that given, you know, what happened during the pandemic, and stocks really tanked? And although temporarily, how did you clients come out? through that period of time when we saw stock prices, implode now to only rebound to new highs? What were your clients telling you at the moment, given what you’re saying that, you know, you’re not going to lose your money? If you’re investing in some of these principles that you’re talking about? It’s preserved? Based on what you’ve already said? What were they telling you when the market was crashing at that time?
Jason Mandel 49:18
Yeah, I mean, luckily, they were ecstatic because their exposures were principle protected to the market. They had the upside of the market, but no downside potential. And it was because of the studies that I’ve done in Japan and spent a lot of time in Japan in my career. And I’ve studied the market there. And the market for the past 30 years has actually been flat. You if you had put your retirement money in 30 years ago, you wouldn’t have made any money, no growth. It’s crazy. 30 years. Could you imagine that? So what would you what could you do to avoid that happening? And I actually think that’s going to happen here in the United States. We’re seeing much more choppiness in Japan the market wasn’t just flat, not moving every day. It was up a lot and then down a lot. It was choppy every day up, down, up, down. So what I believe is that some of these structures we talked about, if we can capture the upswing on an uncapped basis over every 12 month period, and when the market goes down during a 12 month period, we’re flat at zero, we don’t lose anything, we don’t make anything but we don’t lose anything, then we’re going to eliminate all that volatility. And our performance will be hundreds of percent better than someone that owns an index. And most of Wall Street says, either by mutual funds or by an index because they’re more efficient. But when they’re forgetting is, if you go, if you haven’t, if you’re an index, you lose money. And in order to come back, you have to wait out until the index comes back, I don’t want my clients to be in that position, I want them to always be making money. So I think there are products that exists out there that they can look at that will tamp that will really temporal that volatility and give them consistent returns. And Wall Street does not want to sell these products, because they can’t make money. Every year, if they manage your stocks and bonds, they can charge you every single year 1% Or three quarters of a percent, or some people pay one and a half percent, they charge you they get valued as a company based on the assets, they manage these products pay a one time fee or a very small fee to the advisor presented. So a lot of people don’t show it because their firms don’t allow them to if your money managers buying stocks and
Rolando Rosas 51:24
bonds. So what should people do? Let’s, let’s say they’re listening to me right now, if people are listening to this, and they say, you know, this sounds interesting, at sure, you know, but you make a very compelling argument for a second look, third, look, even on my, my investments, where I keep my money, and my retirement, you know, is Should people just have the first conversation where they park their money and say, hey, you know, I heard this guy talk about this and maybe be convinced out of it? Or should they just come straight all the way to you, so that they have the right information? That’s right for them? What should they do?
Jason Mandel 52:06
Well, because greed is good. I’d say come right to me, Gordon, if your advisor hasn’t brought these ideas to you, it’s because they really, in my opinion, aren’t taking care of your problems. So my recommendation is to is to look at other be may not be me, but talk to other people. Ask about non correlated investment streams, ask about absolute return investment streams, ask about uncapped indexes where you can capture the upside of the downside. If you’re not getting the right answers, we’ll study yourself, the reality is, you can find out a lot about these products. There’s information. I mean, I have clients, I have a real estate developer, he does different projects, but he owns his biggest wealth inside of one of these structures, he gets the upside. And when he wants to do a deal in real estate, he pulls the money out as a loan, he does his real estate deal. And then he puts it back in because he’s getting money growing tax free. I have some very unique approaches to three year plans, where someone doesn’t need to commit a whole life of premiums, it’s too scary. They don’t want to do a bank loan to fund it. So what we say is how much can you put in for three years to create a retirement income stream. And we’ve got some very creative ways of doing that there are some of these companies, these financial institutions, which allow you to borrow from your policy cash value after about three or four years. And then when you borrow it, you put it back into the contract as new premium. So even though you’ve loaned money out of the contract, you haven’t put in your pocket, the money you borrowed out, you put back into the contract, some companies don’t allow it, I have about 45 different insurance companies I work with. And I have companies that are comfortable with that they know clients are borrowing from the cash value inside of their structures. And they’re reinvesting it as new premium. So that’s a very creative way I call it self financing, or self leverage. And is this to add a lot
Rolando Rosas 54:01
of discipline from what you’re saying? Because to take to take money out, like you said, not cash it out, and woohoo, go to Vegas with it. But does that take discipline? Do you know to be like, I’m gonna loan myself this money, and I’m gonna use it in this way. And knowing that I’ve got to pay it back, or is this right for everybody? That’s what I should ask you. Is this right for everybody? Because there’s a certain amount of like you said, you know, not blow it in Vegas. Use it wisely. What say you about that?
Jason Mandel 54:31
I really believe people can do this stuff on their own. But frankly, people don’t. It’s the same argument. People use a trainer. They say look, I know what exercise I need to do, but I’m not getting up in the morning and going to the gym. Unless I know I’m paying somebody and I don’t want to disappoint them. I don’t want to waste the money. So it’s the same idea sometimes with a financial adviser. If you feel like you’re gonna be unable to you know, take that loan and put it back in as new premium and instead you’re gonna go to Vegas. Well, yes, you should have an advisor that you can call and say I’m I’m We’re about to drop this money in game gambling, your you shouldn’t be doing that, yes, you need somebody. But if you have self control, if you’re somebody that can be coached, then I think there’s an opportunity to do a lot of this on your own. Some of these products you can’t buy direct from an insurance company they sell through a distribution challenge, you may need to use an advisor. But again, you want to ask questions like, Are you aware of this enhanced cash value rider option, which would mitigate the need for me to post collateral or a lot of collateral if I was to finance the premiums, these are good questions people don’t know to ask. And those are the that’s some of the value that my firm brings to the table is we help people get the right amount of tax free income. If someone says, look with my expenses, I need 30 grand a month, and I don’t know how to do it. We know how to help them, structure it and get it done efficiently. With as little money out of pocket as possible, use the bank as your partner. And while you know become the old become the bank,
Rolando Rosas 55:55
you can become the bank. Exactly. All right, so you become the bank. Now we
Jason Mandel 56:00
could borrow for college funding, we could borrow for retirement income, we could borrow to buy that new home or new car. These are all reasons that you can end up financing instead of paying someone else the interest, you’re in effect paying yourself because you own the financial contract that you’re using to finance I have with people that every month when they get a paycheck, first thing they do is they put it inside of their tax free income plan, then they borrow it right out of the plan. And the reason they do that is they first want to start to grow that wealth tax free. The money gets invested, if the market goes up 20%. And you’re in an uncapped index, and then you borrow it out at 4% interest, you captured a 16% spread on your money. That’s how you build wealth and retirement. So I’m happy people should go on my LinkedIn, I post a lot of videos there explaining everything. We talked about a great granularity so
Rolando Rosas 56:49
people can can get informed educated on this. Because I think when you present this kind of information, they’re going to be some people are gonna be like, I’m on it now. And some people that it takes some action, and then some others that, you know, might need a little bit more dribs and drabs, let me, let me get a little bit more for let my slow brain, you know, absorb this to see how I can when I can take some action on average, because not everybody is a New Yorker from Long Island and you know, running 100 miles an hour. Jason some people do a little slower like me, and they need a little more time and they need a little bit more to be fed that information that then bam, I make a decision afterwards.
Jason Mandel 57:31
That’s my beautiful family are looking they’re celebrating my 50th birthday. I’m so blessed about three brothers, two great kids. And I was just spotlighted in Boca Raton magazine for our unique business model, being a multifamily office focusing on the legal structure, the accounting, the insurances, and the investments, all of that holistically, trying to figure out how to help others. So I’m really excited to share this stuff and hopefully really add a lot of value for people. And if they call me I’m not a an aggressive salesperson by any means I really like to help people. So I’m happy if they want to text me and get set up a time I’ve got a calendar relay function. And we’re happy to chat and just kind of share knowledge. And I think over time, I really believe that knowledge wins out. And if your advisor is not providing you all of these interesting concepts, there’s a reason why they’re doing it, probably their boss is telling them what to do. And I’m an independent firm, I answer to nobody. And that’s really my pleasure. And I’ve been lucky enough to do that since 1999. You know, we talked about it earlier, I love what I don’t view my work, I might do 1012 hours a day easily of work. And it’s a pleasure to me, I’m just sharing knowledge and helping others. And I believe that’s the most important thing you can do. My greatest pride has been the work that I’ve done to help people become more charitable, when they’ve saved money on taxes, they’ve been able to give more of their money away. And that’s allowed me tremendous flexibility and confidence in being able to share these ideas. And I really believe we all are here for a reason. It’s not necessarily to make money. It’s not to live in a fancy house and drive fancy cars. It’s to help others and I’m blessed to be able to do that every single day in my life. And I really appreciate you guys listening and really so nice of you to invite me on I really enjoyed myself and really Pleasure to meet you.
Rolando Rosas 59:15
Well, I we have but we’re not done yet. I’ll
Jason Mandel 59:20
just let you know that I love. There’s
Rolando Rosas 59:21
more. There’s more. We’d like to wrap up with a segment we call rapid fire. It’s whatever hits your brain, whatever hits your brain is the right answer. Okay, so you ready to play along rapid fire? I am ready. All right. All right, hit us with the rapid fire segment. Yay. So Dave and I are going to give you a phrase and then just tell us what comes to your brain. I’m going to kick it off. Walmart versus Amazon.
Jason Mandel 59:54
Walmart’s a genius they have 300,000 policies on their on their employees every year. Well, you should think about buying insurance on your employees is of benefit to them. And if they ever leave, and they don’t get their insurance, the employer owns it. So I think Walmart is smarter than Amazon. I know that they Wow, they reward their, their employees. They create discretionary work effort. They give them something, and I think it’s powerful. And that’s why I happen to think Walmart. Better company, but
Rolando Rosas 1:00:22
okay, that’s the first that is the first one. That one. All right. All right. favorite
Dave Kelly 1:00:28
social media platform.
Jason Mandel 1:00:30
I love LinkedIn. I think the quality of the people there are incredible. I’ve met so many lawyers, accountant, financial advisors, and they’re honest, they come to me, they say, Look, no one’s ever talked about these ideas to me. Why? And how do you explain it to me and I find these people, they watch my videos, we put out a lot of content. And I love LinkedIn for the professionalism of the people that are on there. It’s incredible. I’ve got tons more people on Instagram, they follow me, but rarely, the questions that come out of LinkedIn are so incredible relative to Instagram, but I love Instagram too. I’m not saying anything bad about my program. I have 20 something 1000 followers. Well,
Rolando Rosas 1:01:04
you you you’re the perfect guy for an Instagram, you know, keep people awake and your your, your infectious enthusiasm. I could see it playing extremely well on histogram. So let me ask you the follow up here. Favorite piece of tech. Oh,
Jason Mandel 1:01:20
my God, my iPhone. I mean, I live on that thing I’m in. I’m nonstop on it. I am so addicted to it. It’s great. I could be anywhere you have five minutes, you could respond to your LinkedIn, you can respond to everybody. Stay in touch with people with a quick text. Without my iPhone. I’d be nothing. I live I live on nothing. It’s
Dave Kelly 1:01:39
just next. This next one coming in. I think I already know the answer. Yeah. First thing you reach for in the morning. I
Jason Mandel 1:01:46
thought for sure. Actually, my wife first got this Valentine’s Day shout out to my wife Dana was put up with me for 20 plus years.
Rolando Rosas 1:01:57
Nice. Nice. There you go. This is where this these next two. This is where we’d like to learn even more. Where maybe we have some blinders on. What is your favorite piece? I’m sorry. Favorite podcast.
Jason Mandel 1:02:12
Oh, that’s a good one. Well, I love my good friend of mine. Actually. My college roommate is Guy Raz. He has incredible. He’s got like, I think the five or six top podcasts just Google his name. Guy. Guy Raz Arese. He’s a he’s a superstar. He’s always coming out with a new podcast. And he’s just so insightful. I just recommend him. He’s not only was he a great roommate, but he’s a great person. really intelligent. You’ll always listen, I always see is his last name.
Dave Kelly 1:02:40
Cool. Other than your book, what is a game changing book that you’ve read?
Jason Mandel 1:02:48
I like the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s very compelling buckets. I love history. I studied politics as an undergrad. And the book really does share with you historical references of concepts of how to be a leader and how to be powerful. And a lot of it is very insightful. I think. Robert Greene’s an excellent author.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:09
Okay, there it is. Terrific. And I think we’ve got that. Thank you already for pulling that up the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s available on Kindle as well. So if you’d like your electronic 99
Jason Mandel 1:03:22
cents, though my No, it’s 1699.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:24
I don’t
Jason Mandel 1:03:26
think I already I already. I
Rolando Rosas 1:03:30
don’t think he’s guaranteeing the satisfaction guarantee like you’re providing on your cell phone. Your version. I
Jason Mandel 1:03:38
don’t see his cell phone out there.
Rolando Rosas 1:03:43
Oh, man. So we’ve been talking to Jason Mandel. Is there anything you want to leave us with? Before we go? I
Jason Mandel 1:03:50
would just say to people, they want to look at look up some good stuff. I have a website. It’s theMandelfamilyoffice.com, themandelfamilyoffice.com. I think you’ll get some good insight on that site. I have a YouTube channel, I’ve got a bunch of stuff on Instagram, wherever you want to look me up. I hope that the information is helpful to people don’t hesitate and getting in touch. I love helping people. And if I could share knowledge that I think that’s the reason I’m here on this earth. Frankly, I want to help others. I want people to avoid some of the disasters. And I do think we’re in for a rough couple of years ahead, frankly, and I am scared for people and I want I think we got to take action right now. I don’t believe it’s prudent, unless you really have so much money. It doesn’t matter if you lose a lot in the market. But if you’re looking to retire and you’ve got money in the stock market, we could see some volatility, why not own your equities we have no downside. You can still get the upside of the stock market without the downside. And I didn’t want to explore that. Love
Rolando Rosas 1:04:49
Love it you You’ve opened my eyes to something that I knew very little of and I think that our audience is going to feel the same way like to some It’s gonna be like, let me look at it in some way, like, what? What, but nevertheless, the information is out there for each person to decide what to do with it, you know, should you store it away and do something with it or just dismiss it. But I love the fact that you’ve exposed me to something new today, challenge conventional thinking. And I think we need a little bit more of that. And I think everybody can do a little bit of their own homework to see if it’s going to benefit them in a positive way. So, Jason, I really appreciate you coming on today. And if you want to nerd out on what it means to be a leader in this new environment of remote work, and why all the action is in the suburbs, you want to check out that episode that we did with Amina Moreau of Radius. You know, Dave, we found out that a lot of stuff is going on in the suburb. So if you could, if you want to do an air b&b, but for business teams, and so forth, you want to hear why, again, the action is in the suburbs. So go check out that episode that we did with Amina Moreau. So, thank you, Jason, for joining us today, and we will see you next time. Thanks,
Jason Mandel 1:06:12
Ro. Thanks, Dave. Bye bye
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