DON'T RETIRE BROKE: The Retirement Strategy Your Financial Advisor Never Told You About

By Lyndon G. Britt II

This book provides details that financial brokerages may be familiar with but usually aren't disclosed with their clients. The information when discovered to be accurate could be a game changer for individuals as they prepare for their financial future. Advisors are not going to like that their clients have discovered safer retirement solutions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798990737020

Lyndon G. Britt II

Lyndon Britt II is a devoted husband, a former athlete and coach, and dedicated financial service professional who grew up in the city of Dallas, Texas. He has always been involved serving in community and church activities, competitive swimming and even pursued a professional baseball career. He is an active member of the Alpha Mu Omega graduate chapter of the prestigious Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Incorporated within the NPHC. Prior to entering the financial service profession, Lyndon worked in a hospital where he witnessed several people suffer from illnesses and death. This further stemmed a passion to serve families. He worked for the United States Postal Service as a mail carrier, but after years of service decided this was not a career he wanted to continue, due to being overworked and underpaid. This is where he realized firsthand how government retirement plans were not sufficient. Then after becoming an independent insurance adjuster, he decided he wanted to assist families in a more proactive way before disaster struck. For Lyndon, this began as a way to earn some additional income. Pursuing it only as such led to not much success. Lyndon began noticing a lack of financial literacy in the communities he was a member of and wanted to better educate and give back. This transformed his mindset from just selling a product to actually learning and educating clients and his local communities of how the products could help them, which is the first step of having a chance to assist. Because of his quest to empower others regarding finance, Lyndon believes in the importance of not only educating adults, but also youth. For years people have chosen comfort now over comfort later. As author of "Do the Hard Things First," Scott Allan wrote, "There is a heavy price to pay for living this way, and the bill is heading your way." This catapulted Lyndon's decision to assist individuals, families, and business owners with implementing financial strategies to reach their goals. Lyndon's mission is to help as many families as he and his organization possibly can to reach their financial goals and leave a legacy for centuries to come.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Thank you for taking the time to purchase and read this book. I have spent the last few years of my life delving headfirst into financial literacy and how insurance relates to it. During this time, I have come across several opinions which I have taken the time to personally research to verify the validity. It was not too surprising that many of these opinions were hearsay, while others were incomplete. Meaning, they just didn’t have all the facts. Within this book, I will provide you with information that may not be familiar territory. The goal is to provide information to make you more optimistic about your financial future. I understand that optimism is often viewed as salesy. You won’t find that in this book though. Many have heard of the tool this book is about, even other financial professionals, and believed they understood how it works, but after many conversations, I have come to learn that there is a huge gap in the education of this tool. I like the way Morgan Housel phrased it in his book, The Psychology of Money. He said,

Most people, when confronted with something they don’t understand, do not realize they don’t understand it because they’re able to come up with an explanation that makes sense based on their own unique perspective and experiences in the world, however limited those experiences are. What these stories do to us financially can be both fascinating and terrifying.

This book will share the information to provide you with a more in-depth explanation of how a specific insurance tool has the potential to protect and change your financial future. This tool is called the IUL, which means Index Universal Life, not to be mistaken for Universal Life (UL), Variable Universal Life (VUL), or whole life. There have been many different names for this tool. Names like the million-dollar baby plan, the family bank, or even infinite banking concept. They are all nicknames for the IUL.

By the time you finish reading this book, you will have a better understanding of the IUL through visuals such as graphics, charts, mock illustrations, and even short story examples. At the end of this book, you will be able to answer questions like, how does this fit into my future retirement? How can this help me pass on a legacy to my family in the future, or how can I get one? So, lock in, grab your highlighter and pen and pad for notes. This isn’t being written to be a book of war and peace (pinpointing the thickness), so some chapters will be super short. Most people don’t have the attention span to complete a 600-page book. In fact, the topic of insurance doesn’t even require it. Writing that much would only confuse you more. This book is meant to be to the point, easily breaking down the pros, cons, and benefits of this tool in the simplest way while providing you visuals for easy understanding. So, I’m going to cover some points and keep it short for ya. I’m going to be completely honest and transparent and express a personal opinion here. You may never hear this again from a financial professional, but given the financial evaluation and position of some, I don’t believe the IUL is for everyone. However, situations can change which would make this tool beneficial at a later stage in life.

Now before we dive in, I must first tell you why the topic of financial literacy is so important to me. My father’s parents remarried after separation, so I had 2 grandfathers and grandmothers on that side of my family. My mother was adopted but still knew her biological mother. So, I had 2 grandmothers on her side of the family. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to meet or know her biological father, so I only had 1 grandfather on her side of the family. This totaled 4 grandmothers and 3 grandfathers. All 3 of my grandfathers, Carl Sandle, Gerald Britt Sr., and Paul Mayfield were the epitome of men to me alongside my father. I was close to all 3 and looked at them all equally as role models. Growing up, I didn’t even know what they did professionally, but I knew I wanted to be like them. When I became an adult, I was able to think back before they passed and there were 2 things I noticed about my grandfathers. One, all 3 of them worked to take care of their household. All 3 of them, however, passed away before each of my grandmothers. At the time of this writing, I still have one living grandmother. Statistics say, women outlive men by 5 to 7 years. Well, this has been proven in my family, so I believe it. If you truly love your family, this is important for the sake of having proper arrangements in order, so the spouse doesn’t suffer financially after you leave the earth. Secondly, after working all their adult lives I saw no kind of financial legacy left after they passed. At least not to the grandchildren. Now, did I know of all their financial business? Not at all. I knew absolutely nothing. These types of things weren’t discussed with children back in the day. (PLUG: The reason my wife and I launched our podcast: DON’T Keep It On The Hush, where we discuss neglected and hard conversations in the household and communities. Check it out on YouTube.) But to this day, I have not heard of any land, properties, businesses, or money’s to be passed on as a legacy for the family. Their legacies were their reputations, memories, and last names. That was all. This isn’t a bad thing. So please don’t take it as such. I’ve just decided I wanted my legacy to extend generations after my passing. I didn’t come from a wealthy family, but I certainly want a wealthy family legacy to begin and come from me.

The second reason I’m so passionate behind what I do is not only because of what I see within my family, but also my community. I had a conversation with an uncle of mine that retired from his job at the age of 68 only to literally return to work full time at the age of 72 because retirement income was depleted. This is happening to so many people around the U.S. because of lack of planning or loss of significant amount of retirement income from poor decisions of trusting someone else to manage their money. This could also be a result of the I’m good mentality believing financial arrangements are secure and in order when in reality, they’re risky. In the city of Dallas, Texas where I grew up, too often do I still see men and women working well into their mid to late 70’s… and not because they want too. And the majority of those who have been fortunate enough to retire seem to live on a fixed income which is only a bare minimum after inflation. Even those who qualify for programs like Section 8 are threatened that if they make too much money, assistance will be taken away, creating a mindset for most to remain in a low income just so they don’t lose what they are given, when they have the capability to do so much more. After finding out about this profession, I wanted to be one who acted with integrity and helped individuals and business owners understand financial options available to them, which didn’t require them to risk losing what they worked so many long and hard years for.

I’ve tried and tried to understand the thought process behind so many people following the same ways of planning for their financial future, which have led to common results as listed above in my own family. This is not the way I will be educating in this book. I came across what I believe to be the BEST explanation from the book, The Psychology of Money. Morgan Housel wrote,

Here’s the thing: People from different generations, raised by different parents who earn different incomes and held different values, in different parts of the world, born into different economies, experiencing different job markets with different incentives and different degrees of luck, learn very different lessons. The economists found that people’s lifetime investment decisions are heavily anchored to the experiences those investors had in their own generation—especially experiences in their adult life.

To me, this summed up why so many people are clueless to the power of this financial tool. No matter how much experience I have in the professions, the truth is, not everyone has been informed of this information, nor will everyone understand this concept. This is due to different upbringings. I look at it in comparison to my favorite body building competitor, Ronnie Coleman. One of his famous quotes was,

Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody wanna lift no heavy ass weight.

I view this topic the same. Everybody wanna retire, but don’t nobody wanna learn what it takes to do it. What I have come to observe throughout many conversations is that most people don’t focus on retirement planning until it’s close to time to retire, and by then unless you have the ability to save an insane amount of money in a short period of time, it’s too late to build the desired retirement. An investor named Michael Batnick once stated,

Some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood.

I hate the I told you so method, but for me personally, it is bothersome when I see people struggling because they do not take heed to sound advice or information.

I’m going to tell you a secret, then let’s get to the information. It is believed that the wealthy people that have financial advisors are the ones that possibly benefit the most. This has some truth in my opinion. This group are also the ones with the most risk. Let me briefly explain. In my perception the wealthy are the ones targeted. It may seem like they are the lucky ones, but think of this, when you make $30,000 to $50,000, or even $100,000 per year, you don’t hear from major financial brokerages to help you create a portfolio to manage and grow your money. You’re on your own. But when you show you have made upwards of $250,000 to $500,000 or more, then you potentially begin receiving invitations to become a client from the major financial brokerages. Why is this? Because if you make that kind of