Regulated or Free

...it does make a difference!

One of the least enjoyable parts of my life is traveling. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to be there I just don’t like the getting there part.

A good example of this was this past week. Having completed leg one of my journey and ending up with a canceled flight to my next destination and receiving no help from the airline in getting a new flight scheduled, I called home and my wife, Michele, contacted our travel agent who was traveling herself and just happened to be in a pocket of cell service. She pulled off the road and called and got me the flight I needed to get to within 100 miles of my evening destination. But before I left the airport that flight had been canceled too and I was placed on an entirely different flight to North Dakota.

Michele in the meantime was arranging lodging for me as I would now be getting in past midnight, due to the delays, and couldn’t stay in Bismarck where my hotel reservation was reserved for the evening. The hotel clerk was able to secure the last room available in the hotel, as pheasant season was just opening the next morning in North Dakota, and all the rooms were full. Then he offered to pick me up personally when my flight arrived as all other forms of transportation would be non-operational at that time of night.

Needing to be in Bismarck by 9:00am the next morning and without a rental car available, the young hotel clerk offered to drive me to Bismarck as well! What a God-send. I ended up arriving 30 minutes ahead of my 9:00am appointment time.

But it gets even better (or worse if you choose) because each one of us on this airline had to first be notified 45 minutes prior to boarding that boarding was going to take place according to our “CLASS.” And if that doesn’t sound racist enough we were then literally screamed at over the PA system because someone had the audacity to attempt to board using the “Red Carpet Lane.” Then we all had to board from the back of the plane forward which made some have to climb over others to get to their “assigned seats.” As I was by the window I had to crawl over a mother, her infant, and her toddler to get to my assigned seat. Then I was told to move and had to work my way forward, against oncoming traffic, to aisle seat 21 D. After we were air borne and we’d all listened to the inflight video of the CEO telling us what a great choice we’d made by flying on one of his aircraft, I was told that I couldn’t sit in aisle seat 21 D because it was an exit row and nobody can reassign exist seats...FAA regulations. Long story short I sat in exist seat 21 D all the way...so much for FAA regulations I guess?!

Now compare this to my flight home last week from Florida where I didn’t have to be told over and over again that I wasn’t; an Elite, a Premier, Gold or even a First Class person, prior to boarding my flight. I also, along with all the other passengers, got to select my own seat (even by the exit if I wanted too) and within 20 minutes of the first boarding call we were off the ground and on the way...no name calling, no belittling, no crawling over folks to my seat, no fuss over the seat I chose myself to sit in, no CEO power video to tell us all we’d made the right choice. Just a smooth flow and efficiency which stupefies most all other airlines who because they continue to delegate and dictate the simple things in life which we can all perform better if left up to our self and our own free will.

But that’s just like the financial world isn’t it? You can become an elite member or have a gold checking account but who is really controlling your money and making all the profits? Not you that’s for sure.

Today a financial planner stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from an elderly couple who had decided to “Become their Own Banker” when he told them that the policy which I had designed for them was not worth the money they would pay for it.

What a lie. That’s just like that CEO video that I had to listen to on the plane yesterday. It didn’t change my mind about who I wanted to fly with. But I wonder how many other people did feel pride in choosing the “right airline” regardless the fact that their service was terrible.

This financial fellow may have a lot of financial knowledge and many letters after his name, but he has no understanding about how participating whole life insurance works as a financial tool for the policy owner, if indeed he even believes the advice he just sold this couple. And of course that is reason why other airlines can’t figure out why free choice of seating works better than pre-assigned seating by “CLASS.” They just don’t have the understanding...they trust too much in their computerized loading sequence models instead of believing that the average citizens can seat themselves faster and better.

Of course this elderly couple feels they’re bad now because this financial planner told them what a bad decision they’d made. How much is that like being told you can’t use the “Red Carpet Lane”…you’re in the wrong “CLASS” of passengers?

Again what a lie!

This financial fellow has no idea how the free market works if he truly believes what he’s selling this couple. A typical participating whole life insurance policy will out-perform the average market in liquid cash availability and have in addition to that, the legacy which you can leave behind to anybody you choose just based on the contractual guarantees in the policy contract alone. And then adding the use of the policy’s cash values for a privatized banking system blows the typical financial planning methods completely out of the water. But most folks who make a fee off telling others to invest their money elsewhere earn huge management fees even at times when their client loses money. So what do they care? This is so much like being told to sit in one seat by one airline host and being told by another I couldn’t sit there, I just had to laugh (as did many others on the plane that saw what was happening.)

But I see this happening daily in the financial world. And it’s worse in the financial world than just having your flight cancelled because often times you don’t have the time to make up the difference like I did on my canceled flight last week.
In case you didn’t notice I’m a little bit distraught today. I hate it when people are made to feel second rate just so somebody else can take advantage of them. But that is what befalls all of us if we don’t take responsibility of ourselves. And that is what the free market is all about...freedom. It is what one airline has accomplished in the same set of regulations, even in spite of those regulations, which all other airlines operate under, giving you a choice! It works and not just in the airplane world.

During this trip I delivered policies to families who will be able to recover over $90,380 during the next 24 months simply because they told their financial planners to get lost. They decided that they were going to manage their own money themselves from now on. That means that they are going to be $90,380 wealthier in two years than they are today. Plus they will have millions of dollars to leave to their loved ones sometime in the future. And they will have new swimming pools, new decks, new additions on their homes, vacations and dreams fulfilled because they full realize that knowledge isn’t everything, it takes understanding to become wealthy...understanding of how money really works and not just knowledge about how to run and operate a financial planning calculator.

Best of all things to you and yours until next week...and by the way, if you travel you might consider flying with a carrier that lets you choose your seat. It makes life a lot less complicated. And that’s the way it should be, especially with your money.

Blessings.

Tom McFie

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