[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Private Banking Strategies Podcast with Vance Lowe and Seth Hicks, your secret weapon to protect your assets and never have to start over financially again Vance and Seth help high net worth individuals, families, business owners, and investors structure an asset protected tax-free fortress for their families.
[00:00:21] Intro: Learn how to keep what you earn and use the velocity of money to create your own private banking system. Join us on this journey as we explore the secret strategies of the rich and political elite, and help you take total control of your financial security. Now, onto the show.
[00:00:38] Seth Hicks Esq.: Hello, and welcome to Private Banking Strategies with Vance Lowe and Seth Hicks.
[00:00:42] Seth Hicks Esq.: Vance, how are you today?
[00:00:44] Vance Lowe: I’m doing great. It’s a wonderful day out here today.
[00:00:47] Seth Hicks Esq.: Fantastic. We’re gonna jump right in. We’re gonna be talking today about protecting the family bank, structuring with risk management and asset protection, legal structure framework in mind. And we’ve talked about this [00:01:00] in so many different aspects, but we generally don’t talk from an asset protection standpoint, although it’s one of the primary pillars.
[00:01:07] Seth Hicks Esq.: And the law provides protections, or some states, a lack of protection, are governed by the state. But what we’re gonna dig into is more of how to shield properly and structure y- your wealth with inside your bank as you do transactions and as you employ the banking procedures. So wealth, I think, is not necessarily always lost primarily because of bad investments.
[00:01:34] Seth Hicks Esq.: It’s also lost through poor structure.
[00:01:36] Vance Lowe: As you were talking, something came into mind. I call it the 85%. We put 85% of the effort in most of the time, but we never finish. We don’t quite get to that 95, 98, to a total effort. And if I look at baseball players, the difference between the minor leagues and the major leagues is that amount of effort.
[00:01:58] Vance Lowe: They’re all good. A lot of them [00:02:00] can hit home runs, but it’s the consistent ones that make it to the top. And for us in everyday life, in banking, it doesn’t mean we have to be that, but we do have to put our structure together so that we know it, so that we’re proud of it. We know both sides in and out. We know what we’re doing.
[00:02:18] Vance Lowe: We know where we wanna go. And so today, this protecting side is vital. For those of the you who put the effort in to set up your own foundation, your own, by foundation, I mean your own structure financially, if we don’t take care of the risk factor here, it could end up, the wolf could get into the henhouse and just destroy everything all at one time.
[00:02:42] Seth Hicks Esq.: Many times you’ll see folks make a bad investment that was a loser. But many times you’ve got the ability to plan for taxes. One of the things you show folks is how to use your banking to actually meet tax liabilities, and how you’re actually got those and [00:03:00] you’re s- using the tax liabilities As a way to generate streams of income on your banking policies with that payment.
[00:03:08] Seth Hicks Esq.: That’s a way that we set up structure. Yeah. So that’s one of the type of ways that we’re talking about. In your business transactions, properly securing collateral and having collateralized transactions when you’re going to make loans to third parties or you have some type of cash flow coming, those are very important structures to implement to create safety.
[00:03:34] Vance Lowe: Absolutely. Protecting the principal, legal structure, all of that is all depending on our circumstance. The nice thing is this strategy adapts to any environment, any situation that an individual could be in, as if he’s a business owner, she’s a business owner, it’s a family s- affair, if it’s just an individual first starting out.
[00:03:58] Vance Lowe: The strategy will fit [00:04:00] and can be built accordingly. So I think maybe the first part, Seth, is assessing maybe risk, where r- risk could hit us. Sure. We’re talking about maybe families, where can they … Where does the risk come from?
[00:04:13] Seth Hicks Esq.: Yeah, the purpose of the protection and structure comes from risks that v- various places, creditor risk, lawsuit, business litigation, business disputes.
[00:04:26] Seth Hicks Esq.: Let’s say you buy a business and the seller represents and warrants that the business is in a certain financial health and that the employees will continue to perform and some things they may or may not be able to actually produce on. But if you’ve got the structure in your transaction and you’ve got your banking procedure set up and you’ve got the transaction buttoned up, I’d say in like a, from a 30,000-foot overview, you’ll mitigate those risk.
[00:04:57] Seth Hicks Esq.: You’ve got one of the biggest risk that [00:05:00] families face we talk about all the time is taxation, and how to plan for the taxation and how to get the private economy in a tax-free environment working for you.
[00:05:11] Vance Lowe: Yeah, absolutely I agree with that t- taxes are such a huge drain. I had real hopes in our economy with President Trump and the import taxes, only to come find out that our, when the Supreme Court struck it down.
[00:05:26] Vance Lowe: Now our government’s having to pay back tons of taxes that were owed. Could have been the solution for our individual taxation right there. Support your government, tell your government where you want, but you don’t wanna pay taxes, you wanna get it from someplace else. ‘Cause those taxes started our country.
[00:05:44] Vance Lowe: That’s where our country government had surpluses all the time. We never needed any other type of income tax. We still don’t if we can get those things right. Right. Yeah, that’s probably our big- biggest exposure, because they can change the law any time.
[00:05:58] Seth Hicks Esq.: Sure. We’ve got [00:06:00] four areas that I th- I wanna lay out for protection in the policy structure.
[00:06:05] Seth Hicks Esq.: We’ve got a free resource for folks that actually helps, uh, understand what a state, a particular state law is, and how it applies to life insurance contracts in that state. If you want a copy of that, folks, email us at info@privatebankingstrategies.com and we’ll send that resource. And just say re- free resource and in the subject line and we can send that to you.
[00:06:29] Seth Hicks Esq.: But one of the primary aspects of life insurance contracts being governed by the state is that they set protections i- in many states, especially southern states, that provide 100 per- protection from a, a creditor attack, lawsuits, business disputes, divorce, probate. All of those various risk are protected in states like Texas and Florida and many southern states.
[00:06:58] Seth Hicks Esq.: And so that is a [00:07:00] huge cornerstone in the structure, is when you have those states on your corner.
[00:07:06] Vance Lowe: Seth, let’s drill down on that. L- what does that really mean to the average individual? If they get one of these contracts, what does that mean to them and the protection that it affords them?
[00:07:16] Seth Hicks Esq.: You’ve got your money growing and compounding in a tax-free economy, and it is effectively untouchable by creditors after the fact or a tax after the fact.
[00:07:29] Seth Hicks Esq.: And I recognized this strategy with real estate development in Texas, for example. Saw developers using life insurance contracts as a storehouse for cash flow, and also a place where they stored wealth, and Texas allowed the protections of those contracts to be 100% protected. Now compare that with if you could keep your money in a traditional bank There are no protections from creditors or from– There’s no tax-free economy according to [00:08:00] the, the rules that the IRS has put in place.
[00:08:02] Seth Hicks Esq.: You’re not free from lawsuit attack, business disputes, probate, or any other type of exposure. So that’s a huge one.
[00:08:10] Vance Lowe: Yeah. L-literally, it’s almost like it’s public versus non-public. The, the– so many benefits of storing your money in a private money warehouse, and that’s what these contracts will allow you to do in these life insurance companies.
[00:08:25] Vance Lowe: You become a company owner, and the benefits are great, as well as staying pace or even outperforming long-term the stock market. So storing money is a great safe haven. Once we store money, once we have our basis, our foundation, then we can look To bring on additional risk with some of that money by leveraging it.
[00:08:49] Vance Lowe: But you’ve gotta have that foundation, you’ve gotta know the law and get it set up in such a way that I don’t have to worry about that. And that’s why I think this type of [00:09:00] law, th- we, we dwell into it just a little bit, there’s just so many freebies with it. There’s so many advantages versus not having it.
[00:09:08] Vance Lowe: It is astronomical, I think. So that’s one of the four that we’re really getting into. Let’s keep going, Seth, and see what, what else we’ve got there.
[00:09:17] Seth Hicks Esq.: Sure. I think the ownership of how contracts are held become really important with
[00:09:23] Seth Hicks Esq.: a, uh, family legacy plan in place, a 100-year family legacy plan. The ownership structure begins to be more critical so that committee governance of children and grand- grandchildren who come into authority can govern the bank and implement many of the procedures and policy, standard operating procedures that we’ve talked about and outlined so that it works smoothly.
[00:09:53] Seth Hicks Esq.: That’s a g- big piece.
[00:09:54] Vance Lowe: And I’ve seen as, you know, the, the ownership, and maybe this’ll cross over a little bit more, [00:10:00] if set up wrong or if gaps are left out, let’s say you’ve got four kids, and they’ve got kids now, and if not set up so that the bank can prosper, one person can pull it down or at least delay it to a point that it’s not cohesive, productive for the rest of the family.
[00:10:22] Vance Lowe: So I think that ownership needs to be well thought out and the procedure of how that will remain and continue.
[00:10:30] Seth Hicks Esq.: And one of the primary ways that’s done is with the patriarch and matriarch founders of the banking system setting and implementing a roadmap in place, and it gives people that are coming behind them, their children and grandchildren, a governance structure.
[00:10:47] Seth Hicks Esq.: It explains how we make loans for what we don’t make loans for. We don’t make loans for consumptive and speculative purposes. We’re always going to get the money back. We’re not going to [00:11:00] steal the peas and go out the back door, and everyone has to play on that level playing field. And we’ve seen that implemented with in different families, and it’s a structure that each family has to work out for themselves based on their family dynamics.
[00:11:15] Seth Hicks Esq.: But that governance opens up access to use the family bank and access that money, and that benefits everyone in the family with every checkout at the front door with the groceries. It benefits the entire family.
[00:11:31] Midroll: Did that story feel like it was about you? Do you feel like you are generating a lot of revenue but are not moving forward as fast as you would like?
[00:11:41] Midroll: Do you feel you should be making more progress toward your financial goals? Do you feel stuck? Let us help you get unstuck. Are you ready to take action and get your own private bank? Please visit us at www.privatebankingstrategies.com.
[00:11:59] Vance Lowe: Was [00:12:00] I studied what is a nonprofit organization, especially in Fort Worth years ago.
[00:12:05] Vance Lowe: I studied those because we would use some of that to influence in some of the projects and works we did. But these were families who were absolutely wealthy, multimillionaires. In their backyard was their airplane landing strip. They would… They had their own planes. They would fly to New York for lunch or for a shopping spree and fly themselves back in their own private little jets.
[00:12:28] Vance Lowe: And the structures that they left behind for nonprofit was because they didn’t think their family was sophisticated enough to run it. “Hey, kids, you don’t get inheritance. We’re gonna do this structure here, and this is the way it’s gonna be.” So anywhere from full ownership from the patriarch group to more nonprofit organization where it’s a structure, it’s actually business, they actually make money.
[00:12:53] Vance Lowe: A lot of this that I was involved in before was for scholarships. They would provide certain groups [00:13:00] Of kids’ scholarships to go to college, and that’s what the whole foundation was about, and all the earnings and that grew into that results. So I think the structure needs to be there if you want to have it multi-generational.
[00:13:14] Seth Hicks Esq.: And the reason that the family you’re talking about didn’t have a legacy that really flowed for the benefit is because either those children weren’t taught or didn’t step up to learn. But if you implement those type of governing structures with your family and just say, “This is the way it works,” just like Nelson Nash did with his family, and said, “To have access to the family bank capital, you are gonna work within these set of rules and parameters.
[00:13:42] Seth Hicks Esq.: And if you don’t want to, then okay, then go make your way yourself.” But this is a good way to have more access to capital, to finance business, to finance life, to be able to basically start from a higher level than you would if you’ve gotta cut it all [00:14:00] out yourself.
[00:14:01] Vance Lowe: Yeah. I just wanted to mention that The Carter Foundation in Fort Worth started as a family-owned company business.
[00:14:10] Vance Lowe: They became very wealthy in oil, and that Carter Foundation’s still famous. It’s still now in the billions. It, it continues to grow and provide a huge structure. I never was able to get into the private sector section of it for the actual family, but it seemed like, “No, my family can’t do it. I’ve lived my lifetime.
[00:14:30] Vance Lowe: I’ve tried, so what I’m gonna do is this.” So I don’t know if a lot of people out there have heard of The Carter Foundation, but if you can look it up, you’ll see a pretty good structure there
[00:14:40] Seth Hicks Esq.: You’re right. Th- that’s where when they’re properly, policies are properly structured and the ownership is set up, you avoid unnecessary probate, you avoid unnecessary claims and lawsuits or business liabilities or a ta- estate tax [00:15:00]
[00:15:00] Vance Lowe: issue Taxes are the biggest thing here.
[00:15:02] Vance Lowe: It was on the gains and the growth here, huge.
[00:15:05] Seth Hicks Esq.: That’s right. And I … Sometimes policies are owned in individual capacities, individual names. Sometimes they’re owned in trust or other entities. May- perhaps a company has employee policies, like we’ve talked about in many podcasts as our traditional banks are known for having life insurance policies on all employees and banking $20, $30 billion a year in annual premiums in life insurance on their employees.
[00:15:34] Seth Hicks Esq.: So maybe in an entity, a corporation, or an LLC, could be a trust, perhaps an ILIT in some circumstances it, when your wealth becomes great enough that you want to preserve the water f- cash without paying taxes on it. But a lot of folks, they don’t hit that threshold right now. If you’re a married couple, it’s 24 million is the threshold for federal estate taxes.
[00:15:58] Seth Hicks Esq.: So if you’re over that, then [00:16:00] the structure becomes even increasingly more important. But if under that threshold, you’re still, it’s a tax-free distribution.
[00:16:08] Vance Lowe: Agreed. Some states carry that a lot more meaningful. I heard that in California they were even going to tax on retirement plans the interest now.
[00:16:18] Seth Hicks Esq.: Yeah, I think one of the most aggressive states in the country, if not the most aggressive in taking people’s retirements and their benefits, and even when they move out of California, California apparently tries to take as much as they can from those people.
[00:16:33] Vance Lowe: Yeah.
[00:16:34] Seth Hicks Esq.: But the ownership structure with these policies are incredibly valuable.
[00:16:38] Seth Hicks Esq.: And so what we’re describing is forethought, planning ahead as you begin to implement this and create a long-term roadmap and plan. That’s where the design ensures that you’ve got continuity, tax efficiency, you’ve got internal control with governance, and effectively created a plan that is optimized [00:17:00] for your family.
[00:17:01] Vance Lowe: Yeah, that’s exactly what I think people wanna do. They want to be thorough and perfe- excuse me. Every once in a while I have a wild hair and I wanna do a little recording for sound bites or whatever, and this effort keeps coming back to me. The problems that I deal with clients is that we’re just, we’re 85% of the way.
[00:17:23] Vance Lowe: We need to get done what we’re supposed to do We need to do it efficiently. We need to do it at the right time instead of reacting or acting. That’s another way to, to put it. Most of us live our lives reacting to things that happen, but the top people, the successful people act. They don’t react. They set the to- pace, they set the tone.
[00:17:47] Vance Lowe: They decide on the ownership. This is the way we’re gonna go going forward. They complete it. So once the ownership’s set up and completed, no matter what w- and where we’re at, we can advise, but they… And they can get legal [00:18:00] advice or whatever else, but in the banking concept, it’s pretty simple. It’s not complicated at all.
[00:18:05] Vance Lowe: They set that up. They get that structure set up. What’s the next step?
[00:18:09] Seth Hicks Esq.: I think that having your beneficiaries outlined and understanding primary beneficiaries and how the flow moves in a multi-generational con- continuity is super important, and that is gonna come into a structure like with trusts and having the death benefits of a patriarch or matriarch be paid into a trust, which then is governed by a trusteeship or a co-trusteeship, a board perhaps, that implement the rules.
[00:18:41] Seth Hicks Esq.: And so th- that primary beneficiary for, on the founding policies is important that it goes to the right place and, and not the wrong parties.
[00:18:53] Vance Lowe: I’ve seen time and time a- again people who have thought things out well, who have built and [00:19:00] tried their very b- very best. I liken it like climbing a ladder. They just aborted or missed one or two of the details, and they climb this ladder of success.
[00:19:09] Vance Lowe: They get right almost to the top to a point where they’re having a lifestyle change. People, a lot of people call it retirement. They are up there on this wall, and they look, and they discover they’re on the wrong wall. And folks, do you understand what I’m saying here? If you find yourself that you set it up wrong, in order to get to the right wall, you have to descend and climb another ladder.
[00:19:31] Vance Lowe: So that depends on how old we are, whether we wanna do that or not. But structure everything because that gives us the longevity. It gives us the outline. It gives us the power, I think, in that ownership to be able to make that happen.
[00:19:46] Seth Hicks Esq.: That’s right. And once you’ve got those things defined in the beginning, it’s very easy just to have everyone flow with the roadmap and the plan.
[00:19:55] Seth Hicks Esq.: And that’s not to say that it’s not flexible enough to make changes. There’s [00:20:00] obviously, we can make changes and, in governance and operation, but that’s incredibly important so that everybody is playing on the same level application. They’re playing by the same rules. Those governance expectations between children and grandchildren, it, they, if they don’t have to make those decisions in real time, they’ve already been set, they just follow the roadmap.
[00:20:23] Vance Lowe: Yeah So following that, that’s, I guess that kind of goes into governance, right? The way it’s … I think if there’s a structure problem or if they have to address something comes into that third category of governing, of making sure things are set right, that if there are changes n- that need to be made, they’re made correctly, legally and-
[00:20:46] Seth Hicks Esq.: Yeah, and that’s another thing, folks, is we’ve got outlines and summary guidelines that help people decide how they’re going to govern their banks and ideas of h- of various [00:21:00] aspects.
[00:21:00] Seth Hicks Esq.: And so we’ve got many clients that begin to take those outlines and modify them to fit their family, modify them to fit their planning, and that’s the intent. If you want a resource like that, folks, w- hit us up at info@privatebankingstrategies.com and just put free resource in the title and we can help provide some of those resources for you, free resources.
[00:21:25] Seth Hicks Esq.: But that’s where you’re gonna find just a wealth of information is on our website, folks, privatebankingstrategies.com, bankingstrategies.com. And there you’ll have the opportunity to get a book that Vance and I authored, Secrets the Banks Don’t Want You to Know. Put your name and email in. That’ll be made available for you in PDF and audio immediately.
[00:21:46] Seth Hicks Esq.: And then if these things resonate with you, if this content resonates with you, if you like that book, then schedule an exploratory call with Vance, and you’re gonna have access to his calendar through emails that you get, [00:22:00] and that’s the only way you’ll have access to his calendar. Would strongly encourage you to schedule an exploratory call and see how it might work for you.
[00:22:09] Seth Hicks Esq.: Vance, what happens in the exploratory call with folks?
[00:22:12] Vance Lowe: We set up a test drive. We actually put your numbers in, we look at your structure the way it is now, and we project that out month by month over the next eight years so that you can see by pulling in these strategies, which are totally different than the way you’ve been taught in the past.
[00:22:32] Vance Lowe: You learn about money. We put the money to work. We wake accounts up that you thought were working that are really asleep. We show you how doubling happens. We show you how to set up economies, your private economy, how that’s not taxed anymore. So these are all structures that we think we know something about money, but if we set it up the correct way, the way banks are doing it- It opens up a world [00:23:00] to us of growth that is unbelievable.
[00:23:02] Vance Lowe: So we discover that in the first, that, that first meeting. Actually, that’s the first presentation. The exploratory call we do is just to answer questions, ask where things are, see if you’re actually ready and can, can do and handle a strategy like this.
[00:23:21] Seth Hicks Esq.: Folks, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you sharing some time with us.
[00:23:25] Seth Hicks Esq.: Hope to see you on the next podcast, and let us know if you’d like some resources. info@privatebankingstrategies.com.
[00:23:33] Vance Lowe: Thank you very much, and we look forward to having you back on future podcasts with us.
[00:23:38] Seth Hicks Esq.: Bye for now.
[00:23:39] Outro: Did that story feel like it was about you? Do you feel you should be making more progress toward your financial goals?
[00:23:47] Outro: Do you feel stuck? Let us help you get unstuck. Are you ready to take action and get your own private bank? Please visit us at [00:24:00] www.privatebankingstrategies.com.
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