Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to wealth on Main street, where conversations about growing your wealth are fun and entertaining. Wealth isn't just about money. It's the skills and the knowledge that we develop to pass on to future generations.
Tune in each week to grow your mindset and your net worth at the same time.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Welcome back to wealth on Main Street. Now today, Rich and I, we're going to do something that we've never actually talked about on this show before. And Rich, how long have we had the podcast?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: That's a good question. By the time this airs, we're probably going to be crossing an anniversary date.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: And I think so.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: I would think that we're completing five years. I should double check that.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think we are. I think we're completing five years. And happy anniversary, Jay. Yeah, happy anniversary, Rich.
The reason this episode, I think is special is because I'm going to start a bit of a conversation about something that I've kept mostly behind the curtain for 32 years and that's been my own personal journey in building wealth through the most boring looking strategy that produces the most exciting results. And we're also going to have a conversation about the money paper, the story around that, which was a moment that kind of lit a fuse for everything that we're going to discuss today.
And I'll tell you that again, just my journey with the infinite banking concept, that dividend reinvesting has been the perfect partner for ibc. I refer to it as the ultimate, the ultimate tag team. And the cool part is, is that in 2026, I'm literally going to open that vault and you're going to get a chance to learn the exact method that I've used for decades in dividend reinvesting and how I've created this ultimate tag team of both of these methods together and how my family utilizes it. And we're going to teach this to families all across North America. And so whether you're listening from your vehicle or just trying to look productive at your office, get ready because we're going to have a good chat. And Rich, you and I, we can attest, right? Like you and I haven't had any degree of expanded conversation about this.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: No, not at all. It's timely because for a couple reasons. Number one, we've been, we're getting asked constantly, continuously from our clients, existing clients, and, and from new folks as well. But like, mostly from our existing clients, like, okay, I've got these policies, like, I'm, I'm ready to start doing some more things. I want to get some more growth. And they're always, they're often asking investment related questions. And you know, we're, we, we're of a mindset. Like, first of all, get stability, get yourself situated, get practice, get acclimatized to this process before you start taking all of your capitalization that in its access and liquidity and moving it into something less liquid or, or you know, you're, you're moving it and parking it someplace where you want growth. So like, you want to really be able to establish some proper foundational steps and then when the time is right, yeah, absolutely, do some of those things. We also encourage people to do a lot of their own research, their own investing. And that's really what this is going to be about. It's how do you be positioned in a strategy mindset with some education and like, so you could say, cool, yeah, I would like to do some of that. I want to dabble or I want to double down or I want to add that to my portfolio. And then you're having a concept of an idea, how Jason's doing it, how you can then implement it. And it's not like, oh, I'm going to go and sign on a dotted line that says, cool, the Ascendant Financial, or the podcast is going to go be my investment advisor. That's not what's happening here. This is about strategy and concept. And that's the whole idea. We don't want to be in the position where we're managing everyone's money. We want you to be in the position where you're managing your own money. Because the problem, my opinion, the problem is that the last 60 years of financial education that exists in North America has done everything in their possible power with newspaper ads and radio ads and TV ads and Internet ads and now YouTube ads and now Instagram ads and the TikTok ads, trying to figure out a way to get your money and separate you from it so they can go do something with it. We just want to completely reverse that and turn that flow back around 100.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: And I'll share kind of where this whole journey began for me and why.
So when I was just a young, really young child, I used to stay up late and watch television because my dad worked.
He just worked all the time. He was never home.
And I used to try and stay awake as long as I could to, you know, see him home.
And this, this infomercial came on and it was for this booklet that you could order, you could mail order, and the book was titled, the booklet was titled the Money Paper.
And it was basically a directory of every company that offered direct dividend reinvesting plans, which still exists today, meaning you don't have to go through a transfer agent, you don't have to go through a broker.
You could literally purchase the stock directly from the company and enroll in that company's dividend reinvesting program.
And all that that means, in simplicity, is that when you invest in a business and you become a shareholder and dividends get declared on a quarterly basis every 90 days, that dividend, you can elect to have that dividend automatically purchase either fractional shares if the dividend isn't sufficient enough to purchase one full share.
But when the, when this, when you do this dividend reinvesting quarter after quarter, year after year, decade after decade, like I have, the dividends grow to become enormous so that every 90 days you're literally adding an ever increasing quantity of shares which earn their own dividends, which add more shares which earn their own dividends. And I heard Warren Buffett describe how, and he was saying it in good humor, I'm sure, how he got paid to drink Coca Cola.
And so I'm thinking as a young kid, I'm like, this is super. This is awesome. You can get paid to drink Coca Cola.
This is fantastic. So I, I get this, this book and I, I was just fascinated with like, what, what is a business and how, like what is a dividend and how does this work? So, and it should be no surprise given my Colby fact finder, right? I've had it obviously since birth, and so I'm super excited. And then when I was 19, when I turned 19, I finally purchased my first share of stock.
And it was in a little known company named Intel.
And what's super funny is that before I did this, I sat down with a Clerica mutual fund representative and I'm in his office and he says to.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Me, it's interesting because that's right around the time, it's not probably long after that that Clerica would've been purchased out.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: That's very true.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: They got amalgamated and bought out maybe two, three years after that.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: That's. You're exactly right. And he says, can I ask you a question? I said, absolutely. He said, how young are you? And I said, well, I'm 19.
And he said, what are you doing in my office?
You should be out getting drunk with your college buddies. Like, what are you doing in here pepper spraying me with a bunch of questions about dividend reinvestment plans. And so I left the office Got my first share of stock and that's where the journey began for me. And if I take you to today Rich, you're going to love this story. For the last almost three years, if not maybe a little less than that, Maybe not quite three years, I had been trying to purchase the domain themoneypaper.com and whoever the owner of the domain was, I had a broker in touch with that owner and the broker came back and said, well, the owner wants.
Which was an exorbitant sum of money.
And I said to the broker, I said, can I tell you something? And he goes, yeah, sure. I said, I'm aggressively patient. So what I'd like you to do is reach back out to the domain owner once a quarter and ratchet the offer down.
So start at this amount and ratchet the offer down every single quarter. And I said, I promise you he's going to sell it.
And literally it had to have been probably a month, month and a half ago.
Finally got it. And so we're basically going to revive the money paper in the cloud. Right. Digitally, online and, and it's going to be freaking awesome. But 32 years, man, it's gone by like so fast, I can't even tell you. And people ask me like, how do you select stock?
Why do you invest in the businesses that you invest in? And it's like, you know what, I'm just going to teach it. I'm going to show you exactly what I do. I'm going to show you exactly how I select a business.
I'm going to tell you why I haven't sold a single share of stock in 32 years and the reasons why. And I'm going to tell you what happens down the road and how the portfolio stays in the family and continues growing and compounding. Isn't that good?
[00:10:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the last part I think is the key for a lot of our clients because it's one thing for the strategy and how you're doing it, why you're not selling it is I think it's pretty simple and easy and clear to understand. Although people will want to know the details of that.
There's nuances to why that is.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: But the, the impact of multi generational elements that ties to it from a little bit around like, you know, trust protection and things of that nature that go into how you're going to structure that and the mindset around it I think is that's like the real, that's where the real juice is, you know, the juice worth the squeeze. Well, that's where the real juice is at. Yeah. And because regardless of where you're at today, if you're watching us and you're your mid-60s, you're like, well, maybe I don't want to be buying dividends for 32 years. I'm like, okay, but what about the 32 years that are going to go by after you're gone? Right, right. Like, so what are you thinking about? Are you thinking about your thinking or are you thinking about bigger thinking? Are you thinking beyond your own lifespan like Nelson Nash taught us to do?
So it's not just about what you're going to benefit from. It's about the con. Continuity of benefit that can be created from implementing a relatively simple strategy. Now, I'll be perfectly blunt to everybody. I don't have a 32 year track record of dividend reinvestment that Jason has. I. My dividend reinvestment isn't, isn't that my dividend? My dividends come from par. Whole life. Yeah. And they buy more paid up insurance. That's what I got going on. I've got a whole different track and I got a lot of, I got a lot of doozies of some great stories I could tell you. In fact, some of that's already public on my, you know, if anyone's seen one of my webinars where I talk about my two by four moments, the old Tommy boy getting smacked in the face with 2x4. I use that GIF image in some of my webinars.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Because, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've been smacked straight upside the face a number of times on some really big financial doozies that, you know, Richard thought he knew what I was doing and turned out I didn't do so well on that. That's just life. Hey, we roll with the punches and we keep going.
But I'm personally excited on learning more about the, the inner workings of the strategy as well, Jason, that you're doing. And I think it's going to be a lot of fun to be both involved, but also a participant in the same degree on it. And, and I'm really thinking now at a stage where you're going to be teaching this, I'm like, hey, cool. Like, my son is about to turn 10. You know, my daughter just turned 8. Like, how I'm going to be really looking at cool. How am I going to take the degree of simplicity on this and find ways to say, how do I can turn that and condense that to a 10 year old level, I can begin that process with them somehow so that there's, there's actually like a fun opportunity to create something together in doing it. Like, so that's what I'm thinking about as you're talking about, you know, really putting in some focused education on this in 2026.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate that. It's going to be a lot of fun and for parents who are watching or listening, so many parents that I speak to, they're not aware that you can set up a custodial investment brokerage account for your child that you administer.
And we started that process with my son.
So he began his dividend reinvestment journey at age 16. And so he got a three year head start on me and he happily rubs that in when we sit down to look at, you know, where, where his money goes because he invests $250 a month that he adds to the system and he's super excited about it and he's asking a lot of really good, thoughtful questions around dad, why did we choose to invest money in Enbridge? And I walk him through the reasons why and I'm coaching him along the way and he's really paying close attention to it. But his portfolio is going to be enormous when he's my age and he will need to be a good steward of the family trust and how that money is going to be utilized because a significant portion is going to be utilized to really bless other people's lives in a positive way and to do a lot of great things for people that we just want to sort of give a hand up and help. And so it's going to be great. And I'll share two things. So one, here's the reason why I begun to share why dividend reinvesting and the infinite banking concept, in my view, they're the ultimate tag team. And I, I explain it very, very simply. Like if you think of, if you think of dividend reinvesting as the engine, the infinite banking concept is the fuel tank that never runs dry. Like with ibc, you're building capital and with the dividend reinvesting method, you're compounding capital.
And when you put them both together, it's the ultimate tag team.
With the infinite banking concept, the tool that we use to implement it, dividend paying whole life insurance contracts, your capital never leaves your control and the access that you have to it is entirely within your control. And then with dividend reinvesting, presently, dividends never leave my portfolio, they just continue to grow it and to compound it and I want to share this story and I would encourage listeners and viewers to go out and learn about this man. His name was Ronald Reed. R E A D Ronald Reid.
And he passed away, I think it was November of 2014 in Vermont.
And there wasn't anything on his tombstone to suggest that the people who knew him would gasp in disbelief literally when the contents of his finances came to light.
He was 92 when he passed.
He spent his life working as a gas station attendant, a part time janitor at JCPenney, and to every neighbor and co worker he was the sort of guy who wouldn't draw any attention, right? He, he drove a modest car. He never bragged about anything.
No flashy business cards, no social media, no clue that behind his unassuming exterior was one of the greatest financial transformations built over decades. Patience.
He, by the time he drew his final breath, he amassed an $8 million dividend reinvestment program.
Eight million bucks.
And that process began for him.
I think if I can recall somewhere in the 1950s, long before, you know, commission free index funds or robo advisors or things like that, he was just buying shares in ordinary companies, well established dividend paying blue chip companies like Procter and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo. He didn't chase hype or tech stocks or quick flips or speculate. He held those stocks for, for decades, reinvesting the quarterly dividends like clockwork. Even when markets tumbled, which happened many times over his lifetime, he didn't feel any motivation to sell stock. No different than I have never felt the motivation because the share price is not the company and the company is not the share price.
It just isn't.
People are still taking Tylenol shaving, eating cereal, toasting bread when the market tumbles and so those profits continue to be paid. But the reason I, I share that story and why it, it's why it's so persuasive is the contrast between his external life and his internal portfolio. Like to everyone, including his close family, he was just Ron the janitor.
No mansions, flashy cars or anything, right?
Unbelievable. The guy even clipped coupons for, for God's sake.
And he obviously didn't need to do that. But I call it the last time I shared this story earlier this morning, as a matter of fact, I said it's wealth in stealth mode.
That's the best way. That's the best way I could describe it. And, and the power of stealth, right, is that it doesn't draw attention.
And his final act of quiet generosity and A legacy is what he did. Like he left most of his fortune to charity to his stepchildren. It was sort of that final act I think that nobody saw coming. And it wasn't Wall street or a boiler room that created his fortune. It was quality dividend paying companies.
He was guided by a very simple decision. Spend less than you make, invest regularly in these high quality companies and never sell the stock. And so suddenly a pretty unremarkable janitor wasn't so unremarkable anymore. Anymore. Isn't that good?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. I brought up an article I was gonna paste it in for you that I found. It was like, I think it was on Yahoo Finance for that gentleman it was like a 2023 article.
So it's kind of cool that I could find it quickly. And then of course Google Chrome decided to crash on me so I wasn't able to actually save the link.
Richard's technology woes continue.
But I mean it's really interesting and you know there's, there was a book called the Millionaire Next Door. I mean there's a lot of common elements like that that we hear and you know, we often hear we meet amazing, we have clients, amazing people who are, you know, blue collar millionaires. They're folks that they run a plumbing or an electrical company or they have a small manufacturing business or a welding business and, and they've got a lot of their money, they're wealth tied up in their business but I mean they've got a lot there. And yeah, they're still working hard, they're still doing all the things but they've built something that's really profound and I think it's interesting because you know, T4W2 income people, they are, you know, they're, they're, they have money left over or they're incentivized on putting something into the group benefit plan that's created for them. So hey, the good news is group benefit plans are created. They're created because they're, they're, they're trying to incentivize you to save for something because the company's not going to look after you anymore.
If we were wound the tape and we went back 50 years, companies, 60 years, companies had a plan, a type of pension model that would have continued to look after you for your years of service.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Right?
[00:21:48] Speaker B: You put in years of service here, we'll take care of you when you're done. That was kind of the, that was the arrangement. And then they said it's getting really expensive to do that because people are living longer and we can't take care of them that long and inflation's eating away at the value, so we can't take care of them properly. So instead of us doing it, let's create some other thing and let them, and we'll, we'll try to incentivize them to put their money in there. They will have market participation. Hopefully it'll work out for them. We'll, we'll absolve ourselves the responsibility and we'll put the responsibility on the individual. The problem is the individual didn't really get the memo that they were truly responsible.
They get it now. I think most people understand that that's the case now. But there was a long period where people didn't really understand and they didn't have the educational prowess and they didn't have the time. They're working 8 hours, 10 hours, 9 hours, whatever, because they've got their job and then they've got to travel to and from the job. And in all that time, there used to not be podcasts. They would listen to the radio and the radio didn't have, you know, maybe some talk radio did, but you didn't have an hour long conversation to have a deep dive description on how to go about building this drip portfolio. Right. I mean, so if we take a look at where, you know, 50, 40 years ago, where people were trying to do their day to day and run their life and take the kids to soccer and they're wearing all the hats, they are now forced to wear the hat of being the investment manager of their life that they were never trained to do.
At least now today with the technology, the Internet, with YouTube, great podcast, there's an ability for you even in those periods to gobble up that knowledge base that you can, you can short shortchange maybe some of the, the knowledge base that's necessary to get the practice, you still got to do the practice, but to start to see that success. And so I'm, I'm excited about this program. I'm excited about people who have access to this type of opportunity today where through the combination of technology and the knowledge base that's out there, and with AI allowing you to search that knowledge base a little bit more effectively, you can actually start to put some, maybe speed and some momentum on your things.
But I don't mean speed in the, in the get rich quick model. I mean speed in moving through the information so that you can make an action decision quicker in your life.
The quicker you can make those action decisions if you're thinking about a stealth wealth model, you pick a strategy that's a long term strategy, but you're not wasting four years figuring out what your strategy is. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're getting the ability to start moving forward quickly and I think that there's a lot of potential for people today.
It's an exciting time. 2026 is an exciting time to be alive.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. And as these companies, you know, that, that I've personally been invested in for these number of decades as AI is integrated more into these, you know, mammoth scaled businesses, it's only going to make them more profitable, which means there'll be bigger dividends, which means there'll be more shares, which means there'll be bigger dividends. It's a compounding factor and gets enormous. And so before we wrap up, because we intentionally, we wanted this particular episode to be a little shorter than what we're accustomed to because we want to start to really build, build some excitement around this because 2026 is going to be awesome. I just want to leave you with something that's kind of been sitting with me and something that I believe now more than ever. I mean, when you stop seeing money as like this stressful, chaotic kind of game of chance and, and you start seeing it for what it really truly is, a tool.
And it's a tool that anybody can learn how to use.
And the dividend reinvesting method is something that anybody can build and anybody can own. Like when I first started my journey at age 19, I didn't know if it was going to work. I just didn't, I didn't know where it would take me.
But I can tell you, 32 years later, it has changed everything. And that's why I wanted to share Ronald Reed's story today as well. Because his life proves that a truth that most people will never believe until they see it for themselves. That ordinary people doing ordinary things with extraordinary consistency create extraordinary results. And this has nothing to do with picking the perfect stock. It has nothing to do with timing the market. It has nothing to do with doing something stupid, which is speculating in stocks.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: You mean there's not the best stock tip that's going to be in the program?
That's not what it's about.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: It's not. And it, it's not about your salary, your background or your starting point at all. It's about a process that you commit to and whether you stay committed when nobody's watching and nobody's cheering you on. Who I can tell you, dividend reinvesting. Just speaking from firsthand experience, it is one of the greatest wealth building methods ever created. And the infinite banking concept, in my humble view. Rich and I have been doing this for years. It's one of the greatest control mechanisms ever created. So separately, they're super powerful, but when you put them together, they're just unstoppable. And so if something is lighting you up in this episode, you're feeling a bit of a spark of possibility, don't ignore that. Because in 2026, I'm going to open the doors. I'm going to show you exactly how I've done this for three plus decades so that you can build a system that pays you, protects you and powers your family for generations. And so it's all about freedom, confidence, and really knowing that your money is working harder than you are. It has nothing to do with the numbers and speculating.
I can tell you that my Hope is in 2026, when I'm teaching this, Rich, that people are going to, they're going to say things like, hey, this is, I see it. I see the ultimate tag team.
I see why this is going to be the perfect combination for me, for the future, and especially for the kids too. I'm going to show you exactly how I set it up for my son, exactly how I'm setting it up for all my children when they turn age 16.
Thank you for listening and Rich, thank you for agreeing to let us use this time for this particular topic.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Leave everybody with the picture of Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage at the ropes. They slap hands and the tag team is on. You know, that's the vision I have, I think of the, the ultimate tag team and I think that'll make for great marketing on the money paper when we put it that way together.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Well, here's another image to leave people with if you're watching on, on the, the YouTubes that look at those pictures.
So that's.
So one of them is me at age 17 and the other one is me at age 24.
But I wanted you to see, I ordered a copy of my share certificate. I was about five years into my dividend reinvesting journey and I ordered a copy of my share certificate and that's the one that's intel. And so my client, Linda Hogue, who's amazing, she frames all my stuff. She's so amazing. I gave her the, the certificate and the pictures and this is what she came back with. Isn't that cool?
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great.
[00:29:39] Speaker A: And so it's something just to remind me of my apprentice, my apprenticeship on this journey. So super excited for 2026. So just remember themoney paper.com because it's coming.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: Judy Cool. Awesome. Thanks everybody. Join the conversation with us on YouTube. We have so much amazing content there. We have some exclusive clips and and frequently asked question videos available. Go to wealthonmainstreet.com YouTube. That's wealthonmainstreet.com YouTube. Subscribe now.
