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Show Summary
In this conversation, Matt Sapaula shares his journey from being a Marine to becoming a successful entrepreneur and insurance expert. He discusses the importance of financial literacy, the intersection of insurance and real estate, and how to build a strong team. Matt emphasizes the need for a vision and mission in business, the benefits of indexed universal life insurance, and the importance of protecting wealth through proper insurance coverage. He also highlights the lack of awareness in the insurance industry and the need for collaboration between real estate and insurance professionals.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Matt Sapaula (00:00)
Especially, the exciting part about that is if you use a Roth IRA, right, the Roth IRA component because a self directed IRA or self directed Roth IRA. So for example, if you leave a job and you and you put inside and you have to do a rollover 401k rollover into an IRA, you can convert that IRA into a Roth IRA. Now the downside to that is you got to pay the taxes this year. So you got to pay the income taxes and early withdrawal 10 % early withdrawal penalty if you’re under 59 and a half years old.The benefit is you suck it up once, you don’t have to deal with taxes again for the rest of your life.
Dylan Silver (02:12)
Hey, folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Matt Sapaula, is a marine vet turned entrepreneur and author who helps everyday homeowners and real estate investors stop leaving money trapped in their properties. He’s also the leader of an insurance team, the Money Smart movement with 5000 agents across the country. Matt, welcome to the show.Matt Sapaula (02:35)
Hey, great to be here. Nice to meet the connection.Dylan Silver (02:38)
It’s great to meet you. And I always like to start off at the top of the show, Matt, by asking guests how they got started in business. And you’re involved in so much. How did you get started in the insurance space?Matt Sapaula (02:51)
Yeah, it was completely by accident. I was coming up my second contract in the Marine Corps is my seventh year. I was about to complete eight. And the Marines basically said based on my financial situation and my family situation that I cannot be enlist. I just filed bankruptcy, chapter seven bankruptcy in 19 I was at 1997. And just went through a divorce. I’m a single father custody of my son. And so I was basically undeployable.And in the military, if you mess up your finances, that could that could write you up because now you’re affecting the morale of yourself and your ability to do your job. So they looked down upon me in terms of being a reenlistable United States Marine. So I had to find another option.
Dylan Silver (03:34)
At that point in time, what was the thought process like going through your head? Were you thinking, hey, I’m going to look for work? Or what was your mentality like? I’m sure it was not easy.Matt Sapaula (03:41)
Yeah.Yeah, I was gonna
be a cop, firefighter, a postal worker. got a job from LA, a job offer from the LAPD to be a cop in LA, because I was stationed in Southern California. I was thinking about getting my AMP license because I was an airframe mechanic. on the ground, I’m a mechanic, but in the air, I’m a door gunner. But at least I can use the mechanic side, you know, in regular civilian life. And so that was the process. I was thinking about just getting a regular job and never ever ever think about entrepreneurship.
Dylan Silver (04:13)
So I’m imagining coming out of that situation, you mentioned looking at, know, cop, firefighter, some of these other fields, first responder. How did insurance come into play?Matt Sapaula (04:23)
A retired master sergeant stumbled across me and said, Hey, so Paul, he like money. I said, Yep, you like a lot of money. I I said, Absolutely. He said, Well, you know the rules, right? Since you like a lot of money. I said, Yeah, I mean, the Marine Corps is no. How do you make money work for you? So he was checking me on my financial literacy and understand about money said I know I say top I got no I have no clue. I mean, how does money make money for me? I’m broke. I’m matter of fact, I think I got money working for everybody else with my credit card debt and all that stuff. Listen, let me show you the game. came by the house.across the kitchen table and as soon as he told me what he was doing with the insurance industry, I signed up. So I don’t know nothing about life insurance, but I trust you. And that conversation changed my life.
Dylan Silver (05:47)
Now, when we talk about people who are making career transitions, whether it’s military or whether it’s from being a teacher or being a police officer into something totally else differently, there can sometimes be some growing pains. Was it any of that for you or was it natural from the beginning for you?Matt Sapaula (06:03)
Oh, no, absolutely growing pains from the beginning because I was not used to thinking about, know, think about my future by myself unless a career plan was telling what to do because in the military, you can be pretty much institutionalized. I mean, you’re told what to do, where to eat, where to show up, how you get paid, you know, you never think about, you know, career plans or bigger picture. Of course, leadership is, know, got to lead your team got to do your job. In terms of career, the bigger vision about what you’re supposed to be that was a zero zero non entity non conversation.But it wasn’t until I started having different dialogue with people that were living a life that I wanted. Every time we flew a helicopter across Southern California, everybody had a pool, everybody had gated community, everybody was like, we’re flying over wealth, but I’m not getting anything for me. So how do I get that if we’re flying over where we’re a part of it? I don’t get some of that my way. until I started asking better quality questions of myself, that’s when my life started to change.
Dylan Silver (06:56)
want to ask you, pivoting a bid here, a granular question about building such a large team. So 5000 agents is a huge number. Now, when people talk about building teams, insurance, real estate, you know, whether they’re loan officers, right, and they have a team underneath them. Ultimately, people decide where they want to work in these spaces, there’s nothing holding someone to a team. It’s not like you’re under contract and you can’t leave. What is yourguidance and advice to folks who are building teams on how not to just retain their top talent, but also how to attract folks who may be coming from other teams where they’re feeling like either less than valued or where they don’t have the opportunity.
Matt Sapaula (07:39)
I think a lot of people that are self-employed, would say just for example, for people in the life insurance industry and financial services, they talk a lot about their product. They talk a lot about annuity. They talk about life insurance. They talk a lot about philosophy. They talk a lot about strategy, but they don’t talk about vision. They don’t talk about mission. They don’t talk about the higher aspects of what their business stands for. And I had to learn that. The first conversation I had in terms of recruiting my first sales team was the granular stuff. Here’s how to make 50,000 a year. Here’s how you make 100,000 a year. And once I got them to do that,then it was also hoping that there’s time for me with a long term, because you know, there’s 100 % commission job, you know, 1099 independent contractor. But when I started talking about vision, about what we stand for, about faith, about finance, men being, for example, today we have a lack of men taking decisive decisions, standing for the faith, standing for the family, and society is paying for it. And so we need to find a vision and a mission for who we are, what we stand for, and then what we do, that’s the easy part. Selling insurance, that’s the easy part.
Dylan Silver (08:15)
Right.Matt Sapaula (08:38)
That’s what we do, but it’s not who we stand for. And for example, we just launched our new word for next year, which is called command after Joshua one nine have I not commanded the note to be to be courageous and be strong to go out into the world and do his do his work. Obviously, I’m paraphrasing. But that’s what we stand for. And in the process, we attract people that are attracted to that message. And the byproduct is we sell a lot of insurance.Dylan Silver (08:53)
Amen.You know, I think what I hear from in that message is it’s not just about, you know, the tangibles. You know, what’s your split? If you’re a realtor looking at, I’m trying a new brokerage or a new team, what’s my split? In many cases, and I think almost always this gets overlooked, especially as a realtor, and I’m a baby realtor. I’ve been a realtor for less than a year, but people talk about moving to a new team because of their split. But I’m almost, I’m…
Matt Sapaula (09:27)
Yeah.Dylan Silver (09:28)
I’m willing to bet that a lot of realtors are moving because of lack of purpose, because that team that they’re on isn’t giving them that community aspect, which gets overlooked so much. think, unfortunately, for maybe not bad intent, but just there’s not enough focus on it. People don’t talk about cultivating community for their teams. I’m not even referring strictly to job community. I’m saying,How is this person holistically? How is their well-being? And
most of the time, I think in the United States at least, people tend to separate that and don’t even think about the general welfare of their people.
Matt Sapaula (10:47)
Yeah, oftentimes they want to blame their broker, they want to blame the situation. You know, this person give me 5 % more commission, this person give me 10 % more commission, this person give me 100 % commission, I just have to pay a $595, $695 processing fee. Listen, all that stuff is low level stuff. If you’re really a winner, if you really take ownership about your situation, you stop complaining, stop blaming, you stop saying everybody’s a problem, but you’re not part of that issue, you’re not part of that formula that has to improve.You’ll always go bounce. You always bounce from relationship to really forget business for a second. You’ll bounce from a relationship to relationship, church to church, company to company, opportunity to opportunity, because you’re never the problem. Everybody else has to improve. But you know, we reverse that if you can improve and change the way you think things, it’s going to change the way you see things change. We see things is change the way you do things will change you do things gets the change and results that you want in your life. So therefore you can look back five years from now 10 years. I said, you know what?
I got something to show for instead of just a bunch of Facebook memories I don’t want to look at because I’ve been broker to broker, company to company, mentor to mentor and never have anything in my life to show for because I have everything to owe for.
Dylan Silver (11:54)
Yeah, no question. think we get focused on like the minutia when really that’s not what moves the needle. And in my opinion, I think you can agree with that. It’s it you know, you’re not going to build a snowball by talking about, you know, one or two percent commission differences. ⁓ The snowball is going to be built by doing deals and helping people and being of service, you know, not not worrying about, you know, splitting the hair over aMatt Sapaula (12:17)
Hello?Dylan Silver (12:23)
mission. I do want to ask you though about real estate because insurance and real estate go hand in hand, but also they’re separate businesses, right? And so 5,000 agents, Money Smart movement. When did real estate come into play for you personally? When did you start thinking about real estate investment?Matt Sapaula (12:40)
early 2000s when I was getting, when I was gonna start it. And this is when Washington Mutual was around, okay? You’re talking about early 2000 when Washington Mutual was a company offering an option arm loan. There’s four loans you can get and buy in real estate. You can get a 30 year mortgage you can pay every month. can either you can pay, in other words, every mortgage payment you had an option where to pay one of the four payments. One was a 30 year mortgage, the other one was a 15. The other one’s interest only, the other one’s negative amortization. The idea behind this, Dylan, is to invest the difference.So for example, if I’m paying $2,000 for a 15 year mortgage, but I opt to pay the 30 year option, which is a $1,500 option or a thousand dollar option, that difference in mortgage, instead of sending it to the mortgage company, you’re supposed to tuck that away and save and invest it. Well, we were doing that with a lot of our clients until 07, 08, 09, and then the Great Recession hits. And then all the clients who had all this equity built up inside the house saw their property values lose. 300,000 a house become.
$150,000 homes with a $200,000 mortgage on it. But the clients who put their equity either inside a Roth IRA or a liquid side account or index universal high policy had all their cash accessible to in other words, they had the equity instead of inside the property they had inside their side accounts that they controlled and further validated by an interview I do with Gina and Robin who’s a economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He said, listen, America is making the wrong choice. People think by accelerating paying off the house by sending more money to the bank.
more money to the insurance company. They think they’re getting safer. No, it’s the bank that’s getting safer. It’s a homeowner real estate investor that’s getting less safer net transaction. Because when push comes to shove, what would you rather have $50,000 equity or $50,000 cash? I think we know the answer that question.
Dylan Silver (14:24)
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great point. ⁓ It’s an interesting point, too, because it’s not something that necessarily real estate investors talk about often, but it does go hand in hand. I want to get a little bit granular and peel back the layer on something that you mentioned here. So walk me through where these policies and where these investing strategies⁓ people have maybe an alternative. If we can get a little bit granular and dive into what you said there about instead of paying down that mortgage, they can make these investments and have access to ⁓ cash in the form of that investment should they need it versus have their equity trapped in their home.
Matt Sapaula (15:47)
Yeah, I mean, there’s a few options, right? Number one is just a traditional savings account, high yield savings account that can put a bunch of cash in there. The difference you put inside this high yield saving account, you might get three or 4%, 5 % perhaps. But that way you have access to it. So therefore, when a deal comes, or the opportunity comes, you have cash accessible and available for it. Or an emergency comes, you have accessibility to it. Because the first thing I want to make sure, whatever side account I’m putting this cash into, unlike the property, it’s liquid and it’s safe.The second opportunity is maximum funding your Roth IRA. This year can put up to $7,000 into a Roth IRA. But the challenge with lot of real estate investors is because down the road they might want to put more money into a Roth IRA. They want to put some lump sum into a Roth IRA. And if you’re above a certain income level, you can’t put money inside a Roth IRA or you got to put it in there and later on down the road you got to do what they call a backdoor Roth IRA to make sure tax advance. But either way, that’s a great liquid side account you can put your money into.
Chances are if you’re under 59 and half years old, you have to wait until you’re 59 and a half years old to get some money access about unless of course you’re purchasing a property and other emergencies that the IRS allows you to take money out. One of my personal favorites is if you’re young enough and you’re healthy enough, if you maximum fund an index universal life insurance policy with the least amount of death benefit, but the most amount of cash accumulation inside the policy, it is a combination of two things. Number one.
Obviously the cash growth to it, which has the upside potential with S &P 500, upside potential up to a certain limit. But when the market crashes, when it does, our clients aren’t experiencing any downside risk because the minimum floor they have is 0%. But when the opportunities with homeowners we’ve seen is that these life insurance policies today have what they call living benefits. So if a homeowner or real estate investor ever has a heart attack, a stroke, cancer, and they survive.
They can get money from this life insurance policy to pay their expenses to get the rehab without having to touch the cash inside the policy or the equity inside the policy or put themselves in situation where they got to fire sell the property. Give them time, give them freedom, give them a little bit more peace of mind as the years go on.
Dylan Silver (17:55)
When you mentioned the indexed ⁓ universal life, a couple questions about this and forgive my ignorance here, butMatt Sapaula (18:02)
⁓ so we have the podcast for right.Dylan Silver (18:05)
Yeah, that’s people will be listening and they’ll probably be thinking some of the thoughts that I’m thinking right now. Let’s just say example scenario, you know, someone just purchased a home younger, you know, maybe have ⁓ a family, one or two kids, and they’re they’re putting a life policy on themselves. Should they be looking and I know it’s going to be dependent on the situation. Should they be looking at, know, maybe making a little bit more than their minimum payment towards the home and funding that universal life policy?as much as they can, or should they be looking at it from the perspective of, I’m just gonna make the minimum payments that I have and really max out this universal life policy as much as I can.
Matt Sapaula (18:45)
Yeah, you they got by the way, my sons want to come here. You want to go say hi? He’s coming to martial arts class right now. You say hi. This is my this is my this is my future real estate investor. Hi, Jordan. All right. I’ll see you later. I love you. Jordan. I’m working right now. I’ll see you at martial arts class. Focus your mind. Focus your body. Focus your ears. Focus your attention.Dylan Silver (18:54)
Hey, what’s going on,Matt Sapaula (19:06)
right. But yeah, they ought to consider redirecting something that might otherwise would have sent them more company to potentially pay down their mortgage.but redirect that money either in liquid side account, high yield savings account, Roth IRA or index universe life policy, because those have high cash accumulation opportunities for them. They have access to it based on liquidity, safety and potential rate of return. So therefore when push comes to shove, they don’t have to ask a bank for their own money. They got their money inside a liquid side account that within 24 hours, they can get it transferred EFT to their own bank account.
Dylan Silver (19:42)
And so in that universal life ⁓ policy, are able to add, is there a limit how much that they can add? Is it fully funded at a certain point in time?Matt Sapaula (19:53)
Yeah, the limitations, the difference between that in a Roth IRA index universal life or any universe like universal policy, for example, doesn’t have to limitate because the limitations are based on the death benefit associated with a policy. So later on down the road, you want to shove more cash or you have a capital pre or a capital capital event, where you sold a piece of real estate, and you don’t want to do a 1031 exchange, you just want to cash out you end up paying the capital gains tax, but put this cash insidesomewhere it’s more than 7,000 that was allowable then in a Roth IRA, sure, you can put 50 grand, 100 grand. Again, you just have to bump up the life insurance debt benefit of the policy, but also minimize it to the point where it’s in accordance with the tax laws. So therefore you buy the least amount of allowable life insurance in the policy to drive down the cost, fees and expenses of the life insurance policies to maximize the cash accumulation inside the policy. Therefore more of your money goes to cash accumulation than to fees, costs and expenses.
Dylan Silver (20:49)
This opens up a whole door, Matt, of what I call like alternative investing. I’ve heard of things like people using a real estate IRA to invest in real estate. I’m imagining this is in parallel or in tandem with some of these strategies. you heard of people using these types of like real estate IRAs and are these strategies, will they work hand in hand with what you’re talking about here?Matt Sapaula (21:11)
All day.They do absolutely,
the exciting part about that is if you use a Roth IRA, right, the Roth IRA component because a self directed IRA or self directed Roth IRA. So for example, if you leave a job and you and you put inside and you have to do a rollover 401k rollover into an IRA, you can convert that IRA into a Roth IRA. Now the downside to that is you got to pay the taxes this year. So you got to pay the income taxes and early withdrawal 10 % early withdrawal penalty if you’re under 59 and a half years old.
The benefit is you suck it up once, you don’t have to deal with taxes again for the rest of your life.
And if you can use that property, ⁓ if you can use that cash to put as a down payment to property, and this property is owned by the self-directed IRA, absolutely, this property grows and accumulates 10, 15, whatever. And you sell that property, all the cash goes into the Roth IRA, and guess what? No tax, no tax inside that Roth IRA, and you withdraw the money.
without paying a dime in tax for the rest of your life until you spend down whatever cash is in there. Of course, after you cash out, you got to invest that money into something because before is invested into real estate. That’s where a lot of people put that money then into annuities, which is offered by the life insurance industry to guarantee income for the rest of your life. So there’s a conversion from a Roth IRA into IRA into a Roth IRA, and then real estate funding that IRA and what you’re done with that piece of real estate now that IRA has to invest in something.
outside of just it being cash, so therefore can earn a rate of return to keep that lifestyle for that person who invested that for the rest of their
Dylan Silver (22:48)
There’s so many different financial vehicles and options for people to explore, which is why it’s critical to have someone like yourself for folks to be able to reach out to in their community ⁓ that they can rub shoulders with rather than someone that they may not know. I think even though there may be, let’s say, more agents than people feel like, well, they’ve got so many options, I still feel like, andIt’s crazy to say this, but I still feel like there’s not enough people who are helping people with this type of guidance. Cause when you think, okay, well I had someone pass away or I’m looking for, you know, I would like to, to, make sure that I’m covered. The first place that so many people go to is Facebook, right? So then they’re reaching out to their warm network. Where it’s really, I think in many cases there’s probably someone, you know, in someone’s circle somewhere who didn’t necessarily mind their
their sphere well enough to where everybody knows what it is that they do. And they’re the person that that handles, you know, real estate, life insurance, you know, investments, so on.
Matt Sapaula (23:57)
Yeah, the for example, I’m a national tour right now. I’ve been in 1415 different cities with my new book keep the keys. So to any viewers out there listeners out there, if you want to get my book, keep the keys, I have free tools on my website, keep the keys book.com. There’s some two there’s two free tools on there is called the clarity worksheet. Anybody ever tells you put your money somewhere put it to the clarity filter. So therefore you’re not emotional about where to put your money. And number two, if your homeowner property, property owner, fill out the the the scorecard to see if there’s any leaks that you might have thatexpands a lot more of what you need to ask about down the road as it deals to reviewing your property real estate holdings. For example, I was in Sacramento, and a guy that has been investing in real estate for 2526 years, he tells you, Matt, I collect $120,000 in mortgages a month, I pay $120,000 in mortgages and cost fees and expenses every month, I’m about $50,000, $60,000 in net cash flow, I feel trapped. And I realized, I don’t have any life insurance.
So something happened to him, his wife’s like, okay, what are we doing with this property? I don’t know these relationships. don’t know how to fix toilets and fix roofs and all that type of stuff. the downside for lot of real estate investors is to your point, real estate and financial services is like peanut butter and jelly. They ought to be working together. Lots of times people think they’re conflicting industry. No, it’s complementary industries. if you buy a car, you gotta buy car insurance before you drive off the dealership, right?
Dylan Silver (25:00)
Yeah.Yeah.
You have to.
Matt Sapaula (25:23)
If you get a piece of real estate, you have to show proof of insurance, homeowners insurance, property insurance before you close. But what happens if you have a family? Whatever you have a kid, you have a wife, you need to show proof of car seat before you leave the hospital with your baby, but not insurance. So that’s the crazy part of the lack of financial literacy and how we’re set up in our economy, in our country, to be exposed financially, because the people that benefit the most are the banks and the government in terms of collecting taxes and putting you through probate.Dylan Silver (25:29)
Get the mortgage. Yep.I want to actually pivot back to, as we’re talking about this, the indexed universal life policy. ⁓ And I don’t know if you’ll have these numbers, but how often are folks who are looking at life insurance being presented that option? ⁓ And I feel like that’s an amazing thing, especially for folks who want to take advantage of the market and who may be investors themselves. Are most people who are looking at life insurance aware that that’s an option for them?
Matt Sapaula (26:22)
Sadly, to answer your question, it’s not a lot. Because a lot of people get exposed to life insurance because they have an all state policy, a state farm, Liberty Mutual, American Fam, etc. And they’re very good with car insurance, they’re very good with property insurance, but they’re not very good with life insurance. And for example, we just had a client, they bought some real estate and three months after buying real estate, they came down with cancer.because they bought a life insurance policy like this, like this, can be term insurance or you can be index universal life or any type of permanent insurance or any type of term insurance with living benefits. And if somebody suffers a heart attack, stroke or cancer, and they survive, they’re going to get money from the life insurance policies that benefit now, while they’re alive surviving that health care issue, without having to top into cash value of that policy, so they can march on and deal with property and keep everything intact.
So therefore there’s no financial disruption or any penalties or figure of taxes in that scenario if they were presented these options. And that’s why our firm is growing rapidly and growing. And because our energy, sadly, any real estate investor out there, you ought to get an insurance license too as well because our industry is severely undermanned. 100 million people don’t have proper coverage and there’s 100,000 less life insurance agents in our field today. And AI is not going to replace it because conversations like this doesn’t get done on AI because this requires EI, which is emotional intelligence.
not artificial intelligence.
Dylan Silver (27:52)
You know, there’s so much to unpack there. And I want to highlight what you said about, you can leave the hospital without being able to protect your family. can’t leave the dealership without insurance. You can’t, you know, buy the home without the insurance, but you can have you can start a family and be completely unprotected and something could happen to you. And just like that, you know, people have to fend for themselves. And that’s just the sad reality. And then, you know, that’s when, frankly,as someone who’s worked in the distressed real estate space, me working with, you know, divorce, death, probate issues. We see these cases. We see when someone has passed away, the home becomes in disrepair. Now they can’t afford the mortgage on the home, you know, or it gets passed down to somebody and now there’s like a division within the family how this is gonna get separated and divided, whereas if someone was taken care of, I think really there would be a ton less distress in the real estate space.
Matt Sapaula (28:26)
Yeah.Dylan Silver (28:51)
because they would not be having to face foreclosure or short sale an asset.Matt Sapaula (28:57)
For example, we had another client, $50 million of real estate, and we found out that, hey, you’re 72 years old now, 20 years went by of you owning real estate, 20 years went by, you’re now 72, and he realizes that I have an estate tax problem, to your point in probate. So in other words, if he dies today with $50 million of real estate, practically all paid out properties, his fam is gonna have to fire sale at least $20 million of real estate to pay that tax six to nine months after his death becauseA lot of people don’t know this because they don’t fill it out themselves, their family does. But when you die, you have to fill out, or your family fills out a last tax form, which is called a 706 form, which basically puts down all your assets, puts all your liabilities, and it’s right now, currently this year, if you have anything above $14 million, that now is exposed to estate tax starting at 45%. So this guy would pass on his real estate with a $20 million tax bill. So we repositioned.
Dylan Silver (29:50)
Whoa.Matt Sapaula (29:55)
$2 million that he had a liquid cash inside his money market accounts at a brokerage account. We just reposition from one pocket, pocket A brokerage agency to the insurance pocket, pocket B and instantly Dylan instantly that policy because he was healthy. The insulated policy became a $23 million asset, which you put inside an irrevocable life insurance trust. So it’s outside of his estate. So when he does pass, yes, he still has to pay that estate tax, but his family doesn’t have to fire sale the properties because his ILO trust now comes into play. So hey,IRS, here’s your $20 million or estate tax. Get out of our face. We’re going to maintain this wealth that our father ⁓ built his entire life. And now we’re going to deal with this. Go away with your estate taxes. We’re going to continue marching on with our family.
Dylan Silver (30:37)
That’s incredible. And, I think to your earlier point, I think we probably should see some more collaboration between folks like yourself, folks like myself and, you know, real estate investors and people in the insurance space. And frankly, honestly, people who are in the retail space as well, because as a realtor, there does, and I was mentioning this on an earlier podcast, there does seem to be some level of rift between realtors who work with retail buyers andMatt Sapaula (30:48)
Yeah.Dylan Silver (31:06)
realtors who work with investors. And because of the, you know, cost of homes throughout the country, I do think that more and more people are having to think like an investor to even buy a home. So if you’re already having to think like an investor, I think there’s more opportunity for collaboration in so much of this.Matt Sapaula (31:25)
I agree, most people come to their real estate professional to buy property in the best financial picture of their life. Great credit score, I finally got the down payment saved, I got verifiable assets and income, and I have a low debt to income ratio. Perfect. Now I go buy real estate, go do your thing. Now people come to us in the worst financial picture. Death, divorce, bankruptcy, financial reversal, business partner passed away.Dylan Silver (31:49)
Yeah.Matt Sapaula (31:54)
somebody responsible passed away, I don’t know how to do it, and then we’re gonna unwind this real estate. You come to me now, not only me offering you prayers and condolences, but guys like me, seeing the worst financial picture, offer you not only prayers and condolences, but income tax free check under section code 101A, which means that any money from a life insurance policy is zero income tax to the IRS.Dylan Silver (32:17)
Yeah, it’s heavy, but it’s needed, you know, and it’s better to do it now than to do it at the end, right? And I was, again, having a conversation like this with someone who does ⁓ tax preparation and bookkeeping, a separate space for realtors. And I know a lot of realtors who try to do it themselves, who might go to one of the big name, ⁓ you know, main street type businesses. But I know, I know that if you go to someone who’s a specialist in tax strategy,Matt Sapaula (32:23)
It’s real.Dylan Silver (32:47)
and they have more time, they’re gonna go and save you, even if it may be a higher ticket item, they’re gonna go save you more money in the long term, even in the short term, than some of these other opportunities and businesses will. So it’s a matter of, know, hey, I’m going to address this now rather than kick the ball down the curve and address it when it’s maybe too late or at the 11th hour. But we are coming up on time here, Matt. ⁓Where can folks go if they’re interested in reaching out to you or your team or learning more about the book? can folks get in contact?
Matt Sapaula (33:19)
Real easy, you can find me on Instagram, website, it’s all moneysmartguy.com. moneysmartguy.com, moneysmartguy on Twitter, moneysmartguy on threads, moneysmartguy on Facebook, Instagram, moneysmartguy there. ⁓ come to my website, there’s a link on my website as well as social media profiles, you can get some free tools, you don’t even have to buy the book. Come to my website, we’ll give you some free tools to help you think about real estate differently from a different perspective of risk management protection first, because once you play, what’s the saying Dylan?defense wins championships, right? But the offense, which is real estate investing, offense, right, fills the tickets, fills the seats, fills the stands, fills your bank account, but you want to make sure also in addition, you’re playing offense, you got to make sure you play wise defense. And that’s what having a life insurance strategy does.
Dylan Silver (34:06)
Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today.Matt Sapaula (34:09)
It’s been an honor to meet you. I look forward to connecting with you soon.
