053: “It's better to deal with this now than later.” Reviewing the Survivor Benefit Plan with Scott & Jen

Jen Amos 0:00

Welcome to holding down the fort, a podcast show dedicated to curating knowledge, resources and relevant stories for today's military spouses so they can continue to make confident and informed decisions for themselves and their families. Because let's face it, we know who's really holding down the fort. I'm Jen a Moe's a gold star, daughter, veteran spouse, and your host for holding down the fort by us that wealth. Let's get started.

Hey, everyone, John Amos here, your host for holding down the fort podcast today is finance Friday. Actually, this is a pre recording, my husband and I are actually testing this out. But this particular episode will be available this Friday. And if I can just kind of do the math real quick, just give me one second. This episode will be available on October 30 on Friday via podcast, but we are now trying to do more live stream. And so if you follow our social media, particularly our Facebook page, then you will be able to get a sneak peek into these episodes before they get published on our podcast show. So I'm really excited for this particular episode. Because once again, I have the fortune of bringing my husband on Scott R. Tucker, who is an Army vet and West Point grad and founder CEO of us vet wealth and as I mentioned my husband and on Fridays sort of my co host for holding down the fort. So Oh, honey, welcome back to the show.

Unknown Speaker 1:37

Well, thank you so much for having me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:41

Yeah, we were just sort of he was just critiquing me on his show to not call him honey on his show. Because I think for whatever reason, that's okay, I respect that. But on my show, people will know you as my husband, aka, honey.

Unknown Speaker 1:54

I understand. No, that's fine.

Jen Amos 1:57

Yeah, so we have sort of an agenda. But I thought I would open up and just talk about at the time of this recording what we did today. So we actually had the opportunity to do mail in ballots. But we have decided to actually go in person and vote in person. And it was a quite an interesting experience. We did have our dog with us. So Scott wanted to vote later as as I went in, but Scott, I just wanted to get your initial thoughts on what that experience felt like for you to vote in person.

Speaker 2 2:28

I mean, well, again, I actually didn't I gotta go back tomorrow. But I mean, it's nice to see I mean, given you know, how ridiculous all these, you know, rules that they've put on us now that I feel they are with such minimal evidence, and everybody just kind of go in just Alright, let's just do what they make us do it. So it's ironic to see, like, now we're in this voting process yet, where we get we get to control the government? Like that's the whole point, right? It's a representative government, we don't have to technically answer to them, they need to answer to us yet everybody's standing, you know, in their spot on the little circle that they stenciled into the ground. And, you know, it's like, alright, we're nine months into this, you know, and, and so this is what it is. I mean, everybody accepted it pretty quickly. And I think that's kind of says a lot about what we're trying to do is to create the autonomy for ourselves, for other people in our community. So that one day, you know, maybe we can have more influence over some of this ridiculousness. But at the same time, it's great to see a lot of people out like, hey, we had to follow the rules, too. I mean, I wasn't, I wasn't just going in there. And being that guy, everybody, I'm gonna come shake everybody's hand and give somebody a hug, like, No, I realized, that's just, that's just not in the cards anymore, because everybody else will freak out. So that's very, very sad. For me, a very Liberty minded person who believes that you need to take full or self responsibility. That's one way to truly live through or your lives. And so we'll see, you know what the results are, at this point. I'm not even sure what I expect to happen. But it was nice to see that so many people on a Monday over a week before the election, I mean, we had to wait like an hour and a half. Right. So

Speaker 1 4:09

yeah, I mean, thank you. You know, it's interesting, because I think in the past years, it made sense to me to do mail in ballots, because it was just convenient. But there's something about this year that feels extremely special, that we felt a sense of responsibility to vote in person. And it was to me it was sort of shocking, you know, to come out there and see what the process was, like, you know, to see that people were lined up outside at least six feet apart with masks on, you know, if people were disabled or unable to, you know, walk themselves into the ballot room, they were able to drive in and vote that way. Overall, to me, it was actually very inspiring to see that despite or maybe because of everything is going on, people feel so compelled to, like you said showing up on a Monday morning. To vote to vote in person. And so it gives me hope for our nation to say the least that people are showing up in that capacity.

Speaker 2 5:08

No, I agree. I mean, I'm glad that people are participating. They seem to be more than ever, but I'm not sure what to believe anymore. I mean, honestly, I had become a bit of someone who wasn't sure that voting was as important as it was made out to be. However, the amount of let's just say it's been, it's been an interesting year. And, you know, again, make your vote count type of a deal. I was like, Alright, I mean, let's participate. I can see some, now let's hope they count them all, and all that kind of stuff. Because it's got it's scary when you think about it, but no, I thought it was super important to vote in person versus doing the mail. And that seems a bit scary. But you know, at the end of the day, you know, everybody gets to make their own choice, I guess.

Jen Amos 5:54

Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for talking a little bit about current events with me, considering how we are now making this a weekly show a bonus episode, for holding down the fort podcast, I want to go ahead and shift gears and considering that today is what I consider finance Fridays, I'm still coming up with a name for it, I think it's either going to be finance Fridays, or financial freedom Fridays, either way, it's going to be about money. And, of course, it's great to bring on my husband, who is the founder and CEO of US Fed wealth, which you know, real briefly, Scott, if you just want to share with our listeners, what us that wealth is about, especially if they're hearing about our company, aka also our sponsor, for holding down the fort. Let us know what us that wealth is about

Speaker 2 6:36

this day and age in the year: 2020

Jen Amos: 13:30

Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that and talking very thoroughly about what us that wealth is about and where holding down the fort podcast was birthed from, we took those philosophies and applied it into holding down the fort. You know, really, this podcast show is dedicated to military spouses who want to be informed. They want to know their options. They want to know what is out there for them right now and who is for them right now. And so, you know, for us, we are bold enough to say, we're here for you, like we're here for you. And we're here for you in a way that most people don't expect, or most people are even unaware of. And this is a you know, doing some cross promo right now, we talked about this in your upcoming podcast show veterans secrets, about how most people will choose comfort over choice, because the comfortable path is familiar, it's popularized, it's standardized. It's just known, where you know, to make choices outside of that is considered risky, or people get skeptical about it, because there's not enough conversations that are normalized around that and hear at us but well, and even holding down the fort, we really push forward those real stories and those real issues that really matter to our community. And I think that there's no better way to do it than to have people in our community, talk to our community and help our community out. So with that said, as I transition again, I want to just say that the next thing we want to talk about is really an opportunity to You just be more educated on what your options are. And that's it. You know, that's really what we want to do here at US wealth and holding down the fort is just let you know what's available. So the thing we're going to talk about today doesn't get really thought about till the end of service until someone is about to transition out, it's not really considered top priority for most servicemembers and their families. But we're here to say that it's better to deal with this now than later. And with that said, we are specifically talking about the Survivor Benefit Plan. So Scott, if you can just briefly explain if maybe our listeners are hearing this for the first time, or they are aware of the SPP, but it's kind of like a, I'll think about it later. What do you want to say about that, and to our listeners,

: 15:51

really, this is such a, such an important subject for the military spouse, and it's It's so disappointing, how little knowledge is given around it. And then even when it does come up, you know, you especially in like Facebook groups, it's like my way or the highway, very opinionated. And nobody was thinking outside the box, nobody was realizing, no, there's the government option. And there's a standard financial industry option that, you know, everybody says, This is what you should do, which is basically is go buy cheap term insurance to replace it, or you get sold, like some have really expensive whole life insurance. And it's like everything we talk about, mean, one, why are we trusting the government to guarantee us this protection? Or to even have a good solution? Over the long term? When, how many times during your military career? Did they screw up your pay? Did they screw up your military orders? You know, did you have issues does everything delayed? It was just hard. It's like, so we're just gonna in mass 80% of military families ended up opted in. And that's usually because they haven't given them some selves time to actually think think about it, what the implications are, nor are they in a position, maybe health wise, or financially, to do anything about it. And therefore, they are stuck with the only option, which is the government option, because I tell you what the standard financial advice that's given on the private sector right now, does not solve the actual problem. And the problem here is, what happens if the service member of the veteran passes away, and the family was relying on that pension? And so the government doing everything to take care of everybody take care of their own financial decisions? I mean, it's your money, it's your thing. Why are we only relying on the government to solve the solution? Well, that's the first big problem. It's like, it's your asset, you served for 20 plus years to create a pension. If you're like an O five, doing 20, some years, or about 20 years of retirement, that pension is worth around $60,000 annually for the rest of your life. So what is it really worth 1.5 million, 2 million. I mean, there's different ways to value that. But it's really an asset needs to be looked at that way. If the servicemember, if the veteran did get hit by a bus on day one, that spouse is getting 55% of that paid monthly. And it doesn't even start payment until about 45 to 60 days after filing the paperwork. Right. So, you know, if they were getting 5000 a month from that pension, maybe another 1000 or two for VA disability that all of a sudden drops down to 2500. Yeah, because that monthly, and there's no other option of how you can receive the benefit. Is that a good solution? Really?

Jen Amos: 18:46

And and more importantly, is that what the spouse deserves after the loss of the service member?

: 18:51

Right, right. And I've heard spouses say stuff like, well, I don't value my time as a military spouse to the sacrifices my husband, it's like, well, what are you crazy? No, of course not like no, that is your benefit, as well. And frankly, it's all about the spouse because the SPP decision must be made by the spouse, it's not about the service member. So let's be realistic with it. And so the common solution is, oh, just buy a big term policy, well, of 20 or 30 years, maybe get a million dollar term, or people actually never get enough. Usually they're getting, you know, 500,000 or something like that. It's like, that's not going to last very long. Yes, if he does get hit by a bus, great, it gets paid out in a lump sum, it's better that than, you know, 25 Would you rather have, you know, half a million dollars all paid at once or $2,500 Monthly, you know, so there's different options there. But unfortunately, I think we know even through your story, that you know, even getting those lump sums you while it seems like a lot of money really isn't that the real problem is this. Nobody ever talks about this. What happens if everybody's alive and kicking 30 years later, okay, which is the highly likely probability Assuming somebody is healthy enough to qualify for a private market solution on the free, you know, free market. All right, so we don't get hit by a bus. Everybody's alive and kicking 30 years from now, then what? Well, that same Lieutenant Colonel that oh five would have paid at least about $150,000 into this program basically paid to the government, which isn't going into a little pot with your name on it. It's just paying the current widows, which absolutely, they should be taken care of. But why is it going to come from today's veterans, nobody ever explains that considering the government could just print $5 trillion out of thin air to bail everybody out of you know, the flu, and yet we're taking money from veteran families today, post 911 veteran families to pay for it just doesn't seem fair, it doesn't seem that it's not efficient. And again, the current standard option of buying, you know, a term policy, none of it solves because two things happen. So either you get the government option, 30 years later, you've paid a lot of money into it. So that's opportunity cost. What if you could have done something else with that $150,000. Now the problem is, if you don't take the SPP, and you take the standard term option, now you're 30 years later, and it's like, Ah, I'm still alive now. Right. And so there's a lot of nuances and stuff you know about this. And they those aren't the only ones. But it's what we write about a lot in our book, that's now up on Amazon. It's called the modern guide to military and veteran life insurance solutions. And, you know, I don't necessarily like it's not like, I'm, like, all excited about being a life insurance guy. And I'm always saying you need to protect your family from them. So I'm talking about like, yeah, we're all gonna die one day. Yeah, surprise, like, why are we making it sound like, it's just Oh, my God, but something might happen. And therefore you should do all this, it's like, chances are something well, so let's do this smarter, yes, put some protection in place, just in case. But there's a much better, there's new technology, there's a much better full of strategy around how to do it, that really, the wealthier American people would have done, you know, a long time ago, because this gets into taxes and all that kind of stuff, too. You know about legacy transfer, there's so much more going on here. Because you know, if that asset, that pension is worth one and a half million dollars, don't you want to keep that pension asset, you just want it to go away, once the VA, if you want to pass that along, you can have the ability to do it. And with the government option, you can only do it to a spouse. So if the spouse predeceases, the veteran that just goes away, normally you don't get any money back, you don't get any benefit whatsoever for anybody else. So what we like to do is think about like, alright, this, instead of have an opportunity cost later on, let's reposition this exact same assets, maybe more, whatever that you would have paid into the Survivor Benefit Plan. And let's put you in a position where you can get something out of it without having to die. And you know, if you do die, or when you do die, yes, there's death benefits, and so on and so forth. But really, we look at that more like a bonus, you know, to celebrate that service, versus Oh, gotta pay for the house and pay for the college also. Now we're thinking about insurance completely wrong. It's pervasive in the industry. I don't know why other people aren't being more creative and thinking about it this way. But I just realized this standard solution is only meant to sell somebody something, it's not offering anything of real value. And that's what you know, we wanted to do differently, and why we've created so many resources around it. It's like, if at all come on your podcasts all day long and talk about it. But we've created multiple blogs, written a book, webinars, video series, there's plenty of stuff out there to see if a more modern solution would be a good fit for you. But you don't know unless you get educated because that's the point. This is your benefit this pension that you serve for for 20 years. He I mean, that's what it's crazy. It I mean, like a colonels serve for like 30 years. And he's just never really contemplated his bench. And he's just like, just waiting for that day to happen. And now all of a sudden, he's you know, 50 years old, and like, oh, man, I need to learn what this is. And I didn't realize how valuable it was. And, you know, luckily, you know, they're still healthy enough to do something about it. But imagine they had taken care of it much earlier in their career, you know, position themselves a lot better. So those are the things we'd like to show people how to do. It's like, you know, we think about real estate, there's a difference between owning a home and living in it, and being a real estate investor. And that's the way we like to look at insurance solutions. You can do that. Instead of living in your home where you got to pay the mortgage and there's a little bit of tax benefit and in maybe you sell it one day for a profit and get some money back, but it's a whole lot of other thing. You got to pay property taxes, all the repairs and all that kind of stuff. And you know, maybe you can't be as flex Trouble with your mobility because you now own a home, maybe you don't want to, you know, rent it out, be a landlord or whatever. But if you're doing real estate investment, and not necessarily, I'm not a real estate investor, I don't like real estate, it's just too much of a pain for me. But for folks to do it, you know, think about the asset, that it can produce income, you get all sorts of different benefits out of it, you can flip it, you could rent it, you could do all sorts of different things with it. It's that flexibility and control of using real estate a different way. Well, you can do that with insurance, too, you know, people used to talk about, you know, he's heard about this permanent insurance called whole life. And it's like, yeah, if you were really rich, you could kind of do with that, unfortunately, it got sold to everybody, like as a wealth building tool, but it's like, now you got to put a lot of money into it, you actually got to use it the right way to get the wealth to build inside of it most don't they buy it, forget it and don't know what they're paying for, they're paying a lot more, and they're not being rewarded for health, you don't get good ratings. It's either tobacco or non tobacco, that's about it. And if you want to access your money, just like equity in a house, you have to go to the bank and pay the bank, oh, interest rate, to access your own money, that's the same thing you have to do with whole life. So that also isn't a solution, right. And so I just recognize that there is new technology in the insurance industry, because the insurance is actually software. And like any form of software, you actually have to know the code and how to design it. And I since I was studying this for gosh, 10 years or so now, I just realized that I figured out the code and how to position these things better. And like I said, other people could do this, they might not have access to the products, because there's only certain companies that do it, and you have to be independent, to get access to it. And so that's why we stay that way. Because I want to be able to be flexible. It's like if we find a better one, boom, we're moving, we want to always find the best stuff to solve this massive problem. Because right now with 80% of it, I think I did the number, I can't remember off the top my head, but it's like, you can go on the government website and get the annual reports of how much goes from taxpayer dollars to pay for pensions. And so it's it's in the billions. So if you do 6.5% Of that number, which is the cost of the SPP, and you get a rough estimate of how much of those money that should be in veterans hands, as their pension is getting redirected, backed up to the government, like that's efficient, like, this is crazy, this is ridiculous, there should be a better way to do it. Unfortunately, the government's not going to solve the problem, I plan to go in front of Congress and lobby. I mean, I've got a lobbying firm that said, hey, when when you want to get up and complain about this, I was like, Cool, I could go argue to the government and say, Hey, let's do this better. But that's gonna take years and stuff, people need to solve this problem now and today, and there's free market solutions to do it. So let's go make our point together, see people with amazing results, you know, spread the word a little bit. And then we'll go up there as a group and say, you know, our community deserves a if they're gonna give us these benefits, like this should be in our hands, or give us more flexibility and options to keep more of it.

Jen Amos: 28:10

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I appreciate you really talking about that. We've had clientele already go through this process with already getting educated on their options and kind of waking up to, you know, just the fact that they could have a better option that better technology. Can we talk a little bit about the clients we've worked with, and maybe that mind shift that they made of like, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad that I did this, or and to add to that may be the ones who decided to explore another option. However, they weren't qualified for it, because it was already too late.

: 28:45

Yeah, I mean, those are two great points. I mean, the main thing that we hear, and this is usually from the service member, because unfortunately, the spouse is not be informed about they're not at the briefs, you know, hearing about this problem at the retirement brief, is the wrong answer. Like by far, because all of a sudden, now a guy's got a checklist of 1000 things he's got to get through before he's retiring in the military. And this is just one of them. And it's like, oh, now I gotta do math, you know? And then you try to explain to the spouse and it's like, well, you know, it sounds like it's part of the program. You know, you get the pension, you know, everybody's expected to 20 years and get their pension, and they get the retirement brief. And they go, Yeah, but you got to pay six and a half percent for your spouse to maybe give advice. So it's like, Ah, okay, well, that's the program. And so they hear there's an option to decline it, but then you go to the spouse, and they're like, you a decline in that? Of course not. Right, right. And then it's, a lot of times it's not even brought up, it's like, or you could do a private market solution. No, I think it's government or only that's the real crime here. So that's the main thing. When people are coming to us that they maybe they've had that discussion or just individually, whatever it might be, but they say It just seems a little expensive. And you know, quite frankly, it's extremely expensive for what little benefit there actually is. I mean, the only way this works out in anybody's favor is if the veteran basically dies really early after he retires. And so that benefits this, like, I would hope I don't want him to die early, just to get a better financial benefit. Like, that's the scenarios. That's our options here. Right? Like, that sucks. And then, unfortunately, we've also had people that come to us with a couple months to go before they have to make that decision. And, you know, we do our best to get them qualified and stuff. But you know, getting access to medical records and stuff these days. And after people go through the VA disability, they got extra stuff in there, that makes it harder. And so while a lot of times, it's like, yes, I want to get the highest VA disability rating, you know, possible will now that's going to show up in your record. So if you want to pay for additional insurance, it's going to cost you. So what's the trade off? Right? I mean, usually, it still works out in a positive favor. It's like, if I, you know, maybe somebody you know, gets diagnosed with sleep apnea, well, that might increase their cost of insurance, but they're also getting more benefit. So maybe it's still worth it and stuff. But, you know, there might be other things in the records, if you're waiting till you leave in the military to solve this problem. Even replacing just fgli. You know, people think, Oh, I've got SGI, well, on service. It's like anybody who has insurance with their employer, it's like until you're not employed with them whatsoever. And how do we not realize or how are we not educated in our country, that, you know, when you're younger and healthier, you can lock things in easier and a lot cheaper and guarantee, whatever may come, I've heard him say, I'm not married, I don't need insurance yet. It's like yet, that's exactly the point. This was why you probably would, would want to set something up that when it's almost cost, nothing, and then you can have flexibility down the road, what you want to do with it, our goal is to lock in and guaranteed death benefit, how we fund it, what we're doing with it, it does not matter. But if veteran says I don't like the idea of my spouse only getting 55% on a monthly basis, I would prefer she get 100% of my pension, the value of that in a lump sum. So there's a lot more flexibility in stuff. So you know, that's all we want to do say, alright, let's calculate that number. So if we're talking about an O five, again, 1.5 million roughly, let's say we want to lock in the ability to get a $1.5 million death benefit as soon as possible when we know the individual's health and age, because the older you get, regardless of how healthy you are or not, cost of insurance always go up. That's just how it works. There's always it's based on the actuary tables. And so you know, to lock in that that amount, whatever amount you want it to be, and then to be able to make choices later on, on if you want to keep it or something like that. That's the most important thing people aren't realizing is best to do as soon as possible. Because you just never know, when you might get diagnosed with something, it's, again, we're not doing it because you might get hit by a bus tomorrow. It's about locking in the access to that amount of death benefit at a later date.

: 33:25

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the best part of applying is that one, it costs nothing to the person, you know, to the spouse or the service member to apply and just find out if they even qualify. Now for us, you know, our company here at us, but well, we don't want you to just apply to apply, you know, we want you to apply because you've become educated on this issue. And you really do want to make a difference. And you really want to, you know, go up and beyond what the current benefits you have, specifically with the SPP, and so that's something that is extremely important to us is that we want to further educate and guide our service members who really want to take this seriously.

: 34:06

Yeah, again, we got so many resources, I teach exactly how we do the design and the process of of doing the analysis on whether or not it's it would make sense to try something different, versus taking the government option. And again, you don't really know anything until we see if the person does actually qualify. But if you're not going to actually want to take control on how you manage your own pension, and we're simply relying on a monthly pay. I know that's how everybody goes into the retirement. They're just kind of thinking my military pay is going to turn in retirement pay. And that's that I'll see it monthly. And it's like you don't work for the government anymore. This is a nice benefit. But now you can actually manage this thing. If that's what you want. Then you should look into it a little deeper, and see if it makes sense and see if you want to have a design ain't working for you. Because now all of a sudden, we're talking about current assets, current income completely differently. You know, if you want to actually solve the problems, it does require a bit of a mindset shift. But you know, again, that's I say, don't take my word for it. And I've created a lot of education around it. So you can look into it a little further, if you want. But that's what I spent years and years doing, I could go out and use whatever solution is available out there, I found the one that works the best. And so I'm pretty straightforward and honest with how we do it. And so if people you know, want to implement it, though, we'd like to help we want to be like I said, we want to be that conduit to give people access to this stuff, not necessarily just be, you know, your comprehensive financial adviser who's just going to help you save for retirement, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, our goals are bigger than that for you.

Jen Amos: 35:51

For sure. Well, let's go ahead and talk about the resources for our guests are listeners that are interested in in educating themselves and learning more. So we actually have two websites. And so the websites will be provided in the show notes of this episode. But the first link we have is survivor Liberty plan.com. And then the second one is military survivor. benefits.com. So Scott, let's talk a little briefly on what our listeners will expect when they visit survivor Liberty plan.com.

: 36:22

Yeah, so I brought up this book right here, but basically, and this is available on Amazon, put it 99 cents, just put it there, you know, because people stumbled into it, but you can get it for free, you know, but somebody wanted it on their Kindle as well. So I was like, alright, the lowest price I'm allowed to go is 99 cents. But we also have available on our website for free via PDF. And when you go to Stryver, Liberty plan.com, it's gonna send you to the webinar. And when you go to watch the webinar, it will also email you this book. So you can get kind of a more of a guide to read into it, but really have about an hour long webinar where we kind of dive a little bit deeper into the problem show some examples, some case studies, and or how we're solving the problem with our solution, which we call the survivor Liberty plan, because, again, we want, you know, Survivor Benefit Plan is I got a government's just given it to me if the worst thing happens, is like ours is, let me think about this, if the veteran does survive, like, don't you want to access to those resources that you would have paid otherwise into the Survivor Benefit Plan. So the goal here is to give everybody the liberty to use it, however you see fit. And more more you learn about this. This is what the other feedback we get, the more people dig into it, learn about it, the more shocked they are, of course, a little upset, but also excited, because they're like, holy cow, I just had no idea because I mean, this is no joke, the opportunity cost here is not just $150,000 for an O five, let's say roughly half that for enlisted, just depending on the rank and time of service, you guys will know what that we do we actually show you know how to do that calculations. But the opportunity cost is what if we had done something with that asset with those dollars during those 30 years that otherwise would have been cost the SPP, you know, a very modest rate of return of maybe 6%, over 30 years, annualized, that can, you know, triple that money or more. So it's significant cost difference, if 30 years from now, you would have been negative 150. And instead, we could be positive 300,000. I mean, what's not to like about that kind of approach? And there's nothing else out there that does it the way we do, but we talked about it on on that page and those resources on why you might want to take a look at it.

Jen Amos: 38:43

Very cool. And yeah, just as a recap, survivor Liberty plan.com Is your way to get more educated on the Survivor Benefit Plan alternative that we want you to be more aware of. And for military survivor benefits.com. This is more about putting it into practice. And so can we talk a little briefly about what they'll expect to see on military survivor benefits.com.

: 39:07

So on that page, we're not necessarily going in. I mean, it's assumed if you're going there, you've already understood the problem understand you want to solve the problem. It's so now we got a series of five videos there, where we talk about how we do our analysis and design before we do any sort of application or qualification process. So in the first video, it's a series of five videos, we've got our first video, we look at how to value the pension properly. The second video, we look at the cost and opportunity costs of the Survivor Benefit Plan should you've paid for it. And then in the third video, we talk more about the offensive versus defensive approach. You know, most insurance is all about playing defense. What if What if something happens? And with new technology that that's kind of stupid, because again, And chances are, if we qualify for insurance, that means you're not going to die. Insurance companies don't sell life insurance to people who are going to die soon. Right? That's kind of the point of the application with the qualification process. So rather than having all the sunken costs, we want to go on offense now that we can now that it's much more efficient to do that. And in the other video, we talk about how to apply but really, it's about the bonus video, where we actually get into the details of what the solution is, what the benefits of the strategy are, how you can access the resource, you know, how it works with you being how the taxes work on it, how much that saves you over the long run. So some pretty cool, and kind of mind blowing stuff in there. And then really, what we like to show is alright, if you do to our strategy, you know, one, yeah, maybe we could do that kind of avoid the opportunity cost of that example I gave earlier. But what if you want to do something a little more advanced that what if you want to double your pension in 10 years, okay, there's ways to design it takes more commitment and stuff up front, or maybe some more asset repositioning, you know, but you're actually being strategic with your military benefits. Nobody does that. Until now. Nobody has been able to until now.

Jen Amos: 41:14

Awesome. Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up our conversation today. Scott, I want to thank you so much for joining, and really being thorough about this. Again, this is a problem that a lot of people don't know about or think like, they think they could just like, push it off. Because you know, death is so far away. And, you know, transitioning is so far away. And so we hope that, you know, in our conversation today, and in the resources we provided, again, the websites are survivor, Liberty plan.com, or military survivor benefits.com. And I stayed in that particular order, because we recommend that you visit the websites in that order. But hopefully, this will encourage you to continue to educate yourself and know what your options are. And of course, we are here for you when you're ready to have that conversation. And just kind of what we sort of joked about but not joked about it was more serious than anything. Just like the last episode we had about the veteran Well, secrets, we encourage you to reach out to us. Well, after you've been educated with our resources and know full well that you want to make a decision, you want to do something you even want to apply, you know, to see if you qualify. Scott, before we go, any closing thoughts?

: 42:26

No, I just love where you've gone with the show, I really appreciate all the listeners, and we're excited, you know, at vet wealth to be I think one of the first. I mean, there's always all sorts of resources out there for veterans. And I know, that's super important. But I just recognize that there wasn't any sort of communication on these topics, you know, other than Facebook groups, which you know, get strangely, a lot of bad information and a lot of anger. And so I unfortunately, I would love to go in there and, you know, add my two cents, but it's like, that's not a safe space, to communicate, you know, these types of issues, and especially the way we're thinking about it, where, again, those those groups are great for, let's just say the average, you know, military family that just needs to follow orders there, maybe they're not doing so hot financially. And so, you know, there aren't many options, they're in a position where kind of getting a good job is, is about all we're going to be but before we're able to do more for thinking slightly entrepreneurs will not but doesn't have to be the whole family could be one spouse and be so many military spouses or, you know, finding other ways to produce income. So it's like, well, why aren't we talking about how their money and benefits aligned to those opportunities. And that was just completely missing in the conversation, and especially coming from the financial professional professionals, for our industry, but you know, are basically salesmen of financial salesmen world, the whole industry is this. And, you know, very few are talking to the spouse. I think there's probably unfortunate reasons behind that. Because the assumption is that a male spouse is in charge of the finances. Like that's not true at all. So no, I mean, it's like we came up with the name holding down the fort, because the day to day budget are normally managed by the spouse. And, you know, if we're not just saving for retirement, or if that's just not our only goal as a family, then there needed to be some outlet of communication for that. And so that was our goal with this show. And I think it's been a wild success. I think there's so much more now that we're kind of, you know, really putting this stuff out there. I know, we wanted to, you know, first spend some time kind of learning the community and see what people wanted to talk about the more and more we hear, they want to be more involved and impactful in this. They want to be more educated and take more control over their opportunities for themselves and their family. Because at one point, military life is going to come to an end. And so if we're just waiting to the end and seeing what falls in our lap, you know, I don't Like people listening to our show, or that community, they're the ones saying, Alright, where's the info? I don't know where to go? Well, I think we can be a spot to whether it's finances or some of the other things we talked about. You know, that's a big passion of mine. I know it is yours as well. So we're just really excited to get this get this really going.

Jen Amos: 45:19

Yeah, awesome. Well, with that said, Honey, thank you so much for joining me as always, it's always great to have a choice. It's always great to drag you into this.

: 45:30

And to our listeners, we want to thank you all so much for listening to us today. If you watch the live show. Wow. Thank you for following our Facebook page and watching us live. It's we really appreciate it. This will come out this Friday through our podcasts on Friday, October 30 2020. With that said, we hope that this conversation gave you one more piece of knowledge, resource or relevant story so that you can continue to make confident and informed decisions for you and your family. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll chat with you in the next episode. Tune in next time.