Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Real Wealth Real Health, the show that empowers you with insight, information and inspiration to achieve your version of financial wellness. Learn how to balance living a full life today with planning for the future.
Speaker 1:
This podcast is brought to you by Alpha Investing, a real estate centric private capital network that provides exclusive investment opportunities to its members.
Speaker 1:
And now here are your hosts, AdaPia d’Errico and Daniel Cocca.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Hello, everyone, this is another episode of Real Wealth Real Health. Today, we’re speaking with Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Jennifer is the cofounder and president of Quantum Insurance Services, an award-winning boutique insurance brokerage firm. Jennifer is a classic entrepreneur who entered an industry, saw opportunities for improvements and after proving out her case by tripling her boss’ book of business in three years decided to found her own insurance brokerage that’s focused on value and doing what’s right for the client.
AdaPia d’Errico:
We get into her story and really dive into this values piece. Why is it so important to do right by the client? And why hasn’t this been or why isn’t this the prevailing philosophy? These are important factors that help to determine if you’re working with the right partner, be it insurance or investing. Are your values aligned?
AdaPia d’Errico:
We also tap Jennifer’s expertise to find out how insurance is a pillar in building a healthy financial foundation, how to think about using life insurance, and even the nuances of long-term care insurance and why it matters so much as the boomer population ages?
AdaPia d’Errico:
This episode will enlighten you about insurance, the industry, commissions and how to work insurance into your own financial plan. If like me, you’ve been confused, sold the wrong policy or just given up on insurance, this episode will surely clarify a lot.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
It’s such a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Of course, of course. We have so much in common with the way that we approach our businesses. We have these similar values and also our approach to our clients and our partners.
AdaPia d’Errico:
You’re an entrepreneur, as are we and you specifically saw an opportunity to make these quantifiable improvements to an industry that says it’s in service to the client, but doesn’t always walk that talk. So, would love to get started with telling us how you got started in the insurance business and founded your own company?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for calling out the elephant in the room. I think that life insurance and insurance in general is one of those things where people do tend to kind of grown and just go, for a number of reasons, A, it seems like a very accountingy, left brain kind of thing to be having to deal with. But then also there are bad actors. And so, the stereotype of like a terrible insurance agent and those are myriad. So, the grow that emanates, I think is, unfortunately all too familiar for a lot of people.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And how I ended up insurance, we kind of joked, like, very few people aim to get into insurance per se. And if they do, you’re almost like, oh, really? Okay. For me, I had always loved math. I was like, really good at math, but I also really loved people. And at Princeton, I was like, okay, maybe I should be a math major, but then I figured the only thing I could end up doing would be a math teacher, which seemed a little at the time, it seemed like a boring thing. Now, I think education is actually one of the most exciting things anybody could do. But I was like 21 so at the time, I was like, no, that’s not going to be good.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, I tried anthropology and loved that because it was sort of social anthropology. And I graduated and then I was like, okay, I’m going to move to the west coast because I grew up on the east coast and I started with a job, Beverly Hills just like a summer stint, that was actually the cousin of a friend of mine, a good friend of mine from college.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I was working at this Beverly Hills boutique that was an insurance agency and everybody there had been doing it for like 30 years. And they were all different kinds of people. There was like the guy that would just go … He’d go up and down Beverly Drive and try to talk somebody into a big sale and then at that point, he would eat for a year and then it would be time to go again and find another victim so to speak. And then there was like, the old timer alcoholic and his assistant and they’d been doing it forever. And they were just sort of slow and steady. But it’s kind of a whole sad situation. And then there were few others.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And then there was my particular boss, who was the nicest of the bunch, I will say. He was really very sweet. And I started out just as an assistant. I was like, okay, I’m just going to kind of like do this gig and get oriented in L.A.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I was always one of those people who would learn quickly. And I would ask a lot of questions. So, as I was assisting him, I would just find something out or see how things connect. And little by little, I started to notice something that I found to be really disturbing, which was that even the nicest among the bunch was constantly talking people into something that was kind of more expensive than they might need or discouraging them from downgrading coverage, for example, even though that might have allowed them to save money and get a better value.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And literally, honestly, I was so thick at first, I couldn’t figure out why. And I started becoming more and more proactive in my job and I would just be like, “Hey, Martin, don’t worry, I handle this renewal for you. And I found out that we could downgrade from that platinum plan down to the gold, it would still cover all their doctors and it saved them $2,000 a year, they were really, really happy.”
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And he’d be like, “Okay, all right.” And I see not happy with it, I don’t get it. And finally, I realized that the reason was is that in insurance, basically, there’s this kind of messed up thing where you’re paid based on the premium. So, most people are thinking of it in this really small way where the lower the premium, the less you’re making, and so they just want you to buy as much as they can talk you into, because they want their pocket to grow richer.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And the moment that really came home for me, and I realized that even the nicest of the people, I knew and I’d had a really good cross section into this industry, that they were all operating that way, and that these were all really avuncular figures. There were people that are kind of thinking we should trust. They’re distinguished or sort of distinguished, typically older gentlemen that we think are like can be like your dad and they’re going to have your best interests at heart so endowing them with this trust.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But in fact, their interests are not aligned with their clients’ interests, which I think any client is like, please make the most of my money, help me get rich, stay rich, become richer and use my money anywhere I want to put it. I don’t want to waste it. So, that to me was the objective.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And once I noticed that there was a difference between what most of the operators in this industry were doing and what I would do, my consultant brain came on and I was like, “This is crazy. This is not right.” And I’m a problem solver. So, I suddenly was just like, well, this has to be changed.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And so, for three years, I ended up working at that firm. And I tripled my boss’ business in three years. I remember the rep came in and was like, “Marty, what are you doing right. Your business is through the roof, what’s happening?” And it was me. I’ve been doing all this work for clients and I was taking time to tailor needs around the client and find where they could save more money and stretch their dollars further and they were really happy, and so, they’d rave about the result and share it with someone else.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And so, then the light bulb went off for me. I was like, “Wait, I can help people. I can use my brain. And I can even make money doing this. This is really, really cool. I actually like this,” because I was always very entrepreneurial. And then interestingly, right around then the Affordable Care Act started to kind of come and bubble up to the surface.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
It was early days because we as brokers knew more about it than the general public. But it was the sea change that was coming and almost all the brokers were like, “Oh, my god, this is awful.” Commissions were getting cut from 20%, down to like 1% on medical plans, and it was 20 times harder than it ever used to be, maybe like a degree to be able to even understand the ACA.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And then all of a sudden, I just thought, “Oh my gosh, I think this is why I ended up here because I have the capacity to understand all this. I’m not intimidated by it. And I can kind of fly through this storm and hopefully lead others through it.” And this is my one chance because as someone who is slightly younger, and frankly, female in this industry, it was like, I probably wasn’t going to get a lot of credit, even though like I went to Princeton and graduated summa cum laude, I wasn’t going to get credit per se against like some older 65-year-old established gentlemen, until I knew stuff that they didn’t know.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And so, I was like, okay, this is when we have to launch Quantum. And what we did was we found the Quantum as a commission’s agnostic insurance consulting firm, which means that when we solve the equation for how to save somebody money and get them the best coverage possible, our commissions are completely out of the equation. We know we’re going to work harder to make less and that’s great, because hardly anybody else does that. And that’s how our business can grow through referral and word of mouth and I had proof that that works. So, I wasn’t afraid to do it that way.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Very fortunately, we won a couple awards within the first couple years of launching because we had aligned with a lot of accountants and employment attorneys and other trusted advisors who needed help, especially with understanding the Affordable Care Act. And we were like, “Look, we’ll be your cheat sheet. We’ll tell you what you need to know, so that you can advise your clients correctly, because you don’t have time to learn all this stuff. It’s really complex.” And that got us our start.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Wow.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Long story.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Wow, there’s so much there. There’s so much there around this concept that you embody and bring through, which is providing value and ultimately, that is what allowed you to grow first your boss’ book of business, and then your own company. And that’s what you continue to do, which is really like, that’s like the unexpected sort of thing that somebody would expect if they have any expectations in insurance.
AdaPia d’Errico:
But aside from this idea of providing so much value to your clients, what are some of the other values that you’ve really infused into your company that you bring through and also with your partners and your employees?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Oh my gosh, a lot. We actually have a whole list of core values that we created. They definitely are like, be excellent at what you do. We actually try. I don’t say it like this to the team, but I think they understand it. And that’s the best way sometimes to get through to people is try to create joy in what you’re doing. I think no matter what you’re doing, if you approach it with joy, that’s kind of contagious. And there’s joy in being excellent at something. There’s joy in being of service to other people. There’s a real joy for me in making things better.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I love fixing things or making them better than they were before. I really thrive when I can do that. That’s just how I’m built. And I do try to kind of like infuse that in the company and they do know that. I mean, the expectation is to under promise and over deliver. Try to like just small detail for example, like when we work with people in life insurance, there are a lot of factors that go into how you get the very best rate for a customer.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And part of it is you have to know details about their health history so that you can then take them and anonymously prescreen them with all the different carriers and find out which carrier will have the most favorable decision towards a condition like for example, asthma or endometriosis, or, god-forbid cancer or whatever.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And back again, in my old firm, they never ever did that. They’d be like, “Well, you’ll probably get preferred,” because everyone thinks they’re healthy. And then they do the work. And then they’d be like, “Oh, sorry you should have told us you were a smoker, your standard. Now, your rates are double. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
They’re not bad because they just made double. The client is upset. But every time it kept happening, and I was like, “This is so dumb, because if we ask upfront, are you a smoker? Do you have conditions?” And then we did do the prescreening thing, which was how I would do it, we could save them so much money and get a better outcome.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, we do that. We’ll ask all these questions upfront and prescreen and then say, “Look, at worst, you’re probably going to get standard, but hopefully we can get you better than that.” And almost always, we do end up coming in at what we said a better, which I think is another example of how do you try to be of service to others, leveraging your expertise for their benefit, not yours and hope and trust that the rest follows.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah. I’m thinking about this because I know I’ve had policies here and there, I don’t have them anymore. I mean, there’s like all of these … We’ll get into that in a minute because I definitely want to get into the meat and potatoes of insurance.
AdaPia d’Errico:
But it seems like it’s a trust issue. You go to somebody and you’re really trusting that they’re going to do right by you and there has to be an alignment of interest. So, like you were saying, you’re a noncommissioned-based company. So, you’re aligning your business yourselves to the client. And you said you’ve won awards? I didn’t know there were awards in the insurance industry, but can you talk just a little bit about that? And just about how else you align to your clients and what kind of opportunities that has brought you in terms of growing your business?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Yes. And I do want clarify one thing, you said, we’re not commission based, but we are. I mean, our industry does still work in that, we get paid a commission by the carrier.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, you as a broker like us, nobody has to pay us a fee to use us. It’s like a car broker, if you’ve ever had a car broker. It’s the difference between an agent and a broker. Brokers work with all the different carriers and not just one carrier, which is why you’re able to leverage them against each other and get better deals for your clients.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
The client doesn’t pay us for their services. We still get paid when we have business or carrier. But the difference is consistently, we will go the extra mile to do the analysis to find how we save them money and reduce their overhead, which is why it’s so important. We’re commissions agnostic is what that means. In other words, we’re not factoring in like … Carriers will send you things all the time. “Oh, if you place X number of lives with us within the next quarter, we’ll give you a bonus or whatever.”
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
We don’t even look at those. We just delete those. They’re not relevant to us, whether one carrier pays 5% commission and the other pays four and a half or six or whatever. I don’t know. Because I don’t look at that, and neither does anybody on my team. That’s not how we operate. We’re looking at price and value, and how that fits the client.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And so, it’s nice we don’t have to charge our clients for what we do because sometimes there’s fear like, that sounds good. I really want it. What extra do I have to pay you in order to benefit from this, which is what I want, and they don’t. They could literally go straight to the carrier or go through us and actually if they went straight to the carrier, they’d pay more because with us, they’re going to save money. They’re going to have a better design. The carrier is going to just throw something at the wall. They’re not going to have the benefit of the strategies and the techniques we use. But I did want to make sure I was clear about that.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And what your point was about awards. Yeah, I don’t think it’s too common that insurance agents per se would get awards, but because of the way we operate, we’re really trusted advisors. And so, like the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, we were nominated and then we won this incredible award for being a trusted advisor in our space.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And you get nominated by other trusted advisors, so they know that must be legit because I mean, we’re doing our thing and we’re grateful to have business and business preferred to us. But we don’t take or give referral fees. And so, when someone considers us part of the advisory team, that means a lot. That’s what we’re looking to be their consultants, not their salesperson.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I think you had another question. There was like a part two to it too like, how do you win an award in insurance and the other part where additional values that we try to pass on to our clients?
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, and how this infusion of the values and being a consultant and an advisor, how that’s lent itself to growing your business where I started incorrectly thinking that you were not receiving commissions, but it still kind of fits into this idea that even though you’re not taking commissions from your client, you’re taking them from the providers, but you’re giving so much value to your client.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And an old school way of thinking about that would be well, I’m not going to get anything. I’m only giving, I’m giving, giving, giving, I’m not going to get anything bad, but instead, you’re actually getting a lot. I mean, the fact that you win awards and have grown so quickly as a company speaks to the fact that you’re doing something that even though it doesn’t give you a commission from the client, it’s giving you a lot in other ways.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Oh, yeah. I think you need to. Okay, this is where there’s a difference between how consultants think and help people with very small perspectives think. If you’re like an animal, like a dog with a bone and you’re like, “I want the money, give it to me.” And all you see is if I sell this one huge policy to this one high net worth client this year, I’ll make whatever, $80,000 and that’s enough to practically live for a year, almost, right? And that’s what you’re thinking and that’s your whole focus. That’s a very taking kind of idea. You’re like I need.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
What we do is we focus on doing what I see is like the math. What is the math of this giant equation where it’s that person’s need, and then their profile, and what they can afford, and all the factors that go into this really well calculated equation. And then they shrink down or up depending on their needs. We have celebrity clients who are A-list actresses or major athletes. And there are a few more zeros on the scale of what they need in terms of planning or benefits, et cetera.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But that same math equation is scalable down to my neighbor who might need a $200,000 policy, meaning a $200,000 death benefit, which might cost them like 40, 50 bucks for a year. And that’s fine because we don’t care. We don’t care how many zeros there are. We just care about doing that math really well for them, tailoring it to their needs.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And that’s because I believe when we create well for clients in that way, by helping with as little as they have, or as much as they have helping them maximize the value in all of that, we create that little bit of abundance for them. And they can take from that a foothold, and use it for future generations. Or if they’re extremely wealthy, it’s like, hey, you just didn’t waste $200,000 on commission to a crummy broker? How about we give some of that to the charity of the choice if you’d like, do whatever you want with it, but here’s an idea. There’s more value suddenly in the equation.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And so, that concept of scarcity that I think so many people operate out of we kind of try to stop that concept of scarcity. So, we create kind of like this sense of abundance, like oh my gosh, it was actually easier to get protection than I expected. Oh, I can cover my employees. And the budget for the firm will stand. We won’t go under. I know they need health insurance. I want to provide it. Here’s how I can do it. And then there’s these win-wins that start to happen. And I think that’s how we try to make a change for that trickle effect I think you were talking about.
Daniel Cocca:
Yeah, what you’re saying Jennifer really resonates with me, particularly in the context of the real estate investing world. And the challenge that we see a lot is a lot of real estate groups, they care about raising capital for a deal bringing you into this project today, because that’s how they make their money. And they forget about the medium and long term, and real estate deals, they’re based on forward looking projections.
Daniel Cocca:
And so, it’s very easy for me as a real estate sponsor to promise you that you’re going to get this great return today, when, no, I’m a guy who’s manufacturing the numbers behind the scene and I know I can get you on the hook today.
Daniel Cocca:
But what so many groups forget and it’s always so surprising to me because this idea that you just don’t think about the medium and long term and even if you are truly a selfish actor, meaning all you care about is your own self-interest or the economic return that you make, I would think more people would realize that having an investor invest 25% of what they were going to, but then be a part of your network for the next 30 years is much more valuable than burning someone on the first transaction. And it seems like there’s a lot of parallels to your world, particularly in the context of this conversation we’re having right now.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I couldn’t agree more. I’m so thankful you said that because I think there is this thing where most people do tend to act out of self-interest, and that’s okay, that’s very normal.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
There’s a really interesting book actually, that I absolutely love. And it’s called Give and Take. And it says that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are givers, which they call the genius makers, by the way, and then there are matchers, which is like most people and then they takers and takers tend to act like givers so they can secretly take from you. Like, the guy from Enron, he had all these charities that he was a big part of. It’s like how they mask some of their true intentions.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And it’s actually kind of easy to once you get kind of savvy, you can kind of start to identify the interests of a person that you’re dealing with. Like, when someone’s really a giver, they’re willing to provide it and set it free and walk away. They’re kind of like, “Okay, here’s my offering, if you want it wonderful. If not, your loss, but okay.” And a matcher is kind of like more the normal kind of average person because most people are thinking like, “I do need things, and I want things back.”
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But in general, if you’re trying to only work out of altruism, you’re not going to get everybody. I like to often make it clear to people by example, that in my industry, for example, you can win doing it like this. You can win. You don’t have to go take it in that other approach and you’ll win better, you’ll feel better, you’ll have a longstanding career.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
There was a guy in the office where I worked back in Beverly Hills. He made over a million dollars of commission in one year, doing viatical settlements, that he lost his license two years later, and now he like owns restaurants. And even then, at the restaurants, he claims it’s organic, and it’s really not, like it’s just BS. Like, of course, because that’s his MO. But that seems to be so much harder than just doing something passionately, doing something joyfully, doing it consistently.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I don’t think that almost anything can match consistent effort over time with high quality. Very few things can match that and we have examples over and over through life of that.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
In your industry. I think you have some of the same challenges that can happen in the insurance industry is that it can be very flashy, it can be very fast paced, it can be bad actors, there can be room for a lot of manipulation and impulse purchases or funny numbers and things like that. When I heard more about how you guys do what you do, I did feel really joyful because I’m a big believer in real estate as one of the buckets where people should be putting their wealth.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, one of the things we talk about a lot with our clientele is you don’t only use life insurance. It’s a tool. It’s one tool. But this is not the only part of your financial picture. You really ought to be in the stock market and also in real estate, at some point somehow as soon as you can possibly get there.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Because, for example, there are a lot of investment advisors that will tell you put everything in my 401(k) because that way, I get the fees off of your 401(k) and the market will always correct and just give it time. And as soon as the markets down they’re like, “Write it out, write it out.” And there’s a lot of conventional wisdom or trust that that’s an okay or right place to be putting your money.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But just as we try not to put all our eggs in one basket anywhere, it’s also very dangerous to only be in the stock market, even if you’re kind of doing what they call allocating risk proportionately and hedging it with like stocks. All that stuff is still not enough to really not be all in one bucket.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And be vulnerable. Like we saw. People in my generation saw devastating things happen to people with the Enron scandal, for example, and again, even more recently, where if your timing is poor and when you’re retiring, and that nest egg is down 30% in the stock market, that’s not good for you and you have no backup plan. That’s not great.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, we try to really encourage our clients to not think of it in these like either/or ways and not work with people who are either/or. They’re like these are stock market, part of your money. Also, make sure you’re using life insurance the way it can be used for your benefit and for your protection, and also participate in real estate because it’s amazing.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
My grandmother was a single mom and had three kids. And even when she passed away, she was able to leave a small amount to each child even after being out on long-term care for 15 years. And that really resonated for me because what she had done was very shrewdly, whenever she could scrap together money as a school teacher, buy a little teeny property. And then her thing was always rent to families, because they’ll treat this with stability, like it was their own. And little by little she could like, buy a little better of a place. And so, that illustrated from you the power of that, little margin when it comes to finding your little foothold. How do you get it?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And if you’re not tremendously wealthy, those margins are the most important part. It can be hard enough for some people to enter any of these wealth pockets. And so, the margins are critical. That’s why what you guys are doing, the quality that you’re delivering and the pretty low barrier to entry I think for getting into commercial real estate is truly wonderful because then even with whatever they’re able to scrape together to participate, they’re going to get a return and there’s no risk of it being a flash in the pan strategy where they lose everything that they can’t afford to lose.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, well thanks for outlining it that way because it’s nice to hear that from another professional that sees the holistic picture. And like I said in the beginning, we have these similar values where we’re really trying to help people further diversify and I would actually love to hear a little bit more specifically about insurance.
AdaPia d’Errico:
So, people who have been listening to us for a while and know us, I’d say probably are more familiar with real estate. I have a little bit of experience with life insurance but after speaking with you before I came away from that realizing like, I don’t know anything about how to properly use insurance. And because everyone, especially people in our network and our listeners are trying to build this financial foundation, how does insurance fit into that? And specifically, how you make that fit for a client?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Sure, great question. And I’m glad you asked. And it’s so funny, you’re like, I’d love to hear because that’s where we want people to get is a place of excitement and growth and education, about how to use these things for their benefit.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Insurance is actually a wonderful thing when properly used, and that’s the key. So, there are lots of instances where people need insurance protection. And I’m going to focus mostly on the life side for now, because there’s such a large number of topics and when we could talk about disability protection, we could talk about long-term care which we might mention briefly tangentially. But I’ll just talk about life insurance so people can start to kind of get a sense for it.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
If you have a family, that’s pretty much one of the first times that you need life insurance. If you have student debt that you don’t want to saddle somebody with, and it’s really significant, but no family, then maybe you have a small life insurance policy that you could use just to make sure you don’t leave your debt to somebody else to be saddled with.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Or if you’re young and really have your act together, your young professional, you can use a kind of life insurance that I really like called Indexed Universal Life, and start building it as a little part of your nest egg. It’ll have a death benefit.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And what’s nice with life insurance is it’s really pennies on the dollar if somebody does pass away. You’re putting in a million-dollar life insurance policy to protect your family. And if you’re young and healthy, it can be costing like 300 or $400 a year. That’s very little depending on how young you are. And that’s where you getting good education and not putting your head in the sand about things and just looking at your risks and vulnerabilities serves you because the younger you are, the cheaper your coverage, the younger and healthier you are.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But as we get older, it costs more and more and more because mortality rates increase, and then the costs for entering into this vehicle can become even more expensive. And then there can be this cycle.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, early planning is really good. But basically, once you have anything that depends on you, life insurance is really important, just even basic term life insurance, which is the cheapest kind you can get. Some people never even discuss term because again, it’s too cheap. They feel like it’s not worth their while, but we use term insurance all the time, especially is one of the first building blocks of protection.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
If you have a family of two, of parents, working parents and two children, for example, and you’re living in this city, you need a couple million dollars of life insurance just to make sure that if god-forbid something happened to one parent or both, these kids are going to have enough money to make it through to college, and/or have someone pay a nanny 50 grand a year to replace a parent. And if they’re working parents, to replace their income. That’s just an example of one of the most basic entry points into needing life insurance.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Then there are permanent life insurance strategies. We send an entire bucket. We have a thing on our website called Insurance 101 because the problem when people go online and they try to educate themselves is they’re getting kind of the flood of all the opinions and spin out there. And it can really be difficult to decipher, like what is good information and what is not. That’s really difficult.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But basically, permanent coverage is usually three to five times more expensive than term coverage. And there are certain kinds of permanent coverage I would never recommend because there’s just like, there for shysters in my opinion. There’s something called variable life insurance, which it’s starting to get another resurgence again as the markets doing kind of weird things.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I just want to right now caution people away from anyone who’s going to come to them and talk about variable life insurance, I think I would say there are better permanent life insurance products out there today that are far more safe and secure and deliver so much more.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, just using my forums to help people as I can without variable. But there is something called Indexed Universal Life Insurance, that’s really great. Because what that does is it takes some of the costs of insurance and it starts to credit interest into this bucket, and the money grows and they’re tax free. And then you can add on top of that, what’s called a long-term care rider.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, instead of having to go get a whole separate long-term care policy for when you’re old, and you have to go into a home and it costs $10,000 a month and either going to use up everything you’ve ever built, or hope that your family ponies up, which they won’t, you have something to do that. And you can just kind of build it all into one really well-designed permanent life insurance policy that’s designed to be part of your retirement plan.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
It’s got advantages. It can double up as a form of college savings. It’s got guarantees. It’s got all kinds of stability in it, which we see it as a way to kind of offset the risks in the stock market, which are they have no guarantees, they have no floor protection. If the markets down 30% it’s going to be down on index products in the life insurance sector, the floor is zero, so they’ll only ever have positive interest credits.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And it’s getting kind of technical, but what we ended up doing is for a lot of professionals who were making good money and are coming in and saying like, “Okay, what do I need to do and what should I do? ” We’ll say, “Okay, well, are you in stock market? Great. Do you have real estate? Great.” And if the answer says also yes to those things, it’s like, “Okay, then let’s look at what life insurance you need. Do you have people you need to protect? Then we’re going to put in term insurance most likely for that.” Or if you don’t, but you have more money and you want to use it as a way to kind of create an as a bucket for wealth, let’s do something that’s going to protect you in older age with long-term care and plan some retirement income.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
A lot of the business managers that we work with, they like that life insurance becomes a bill, that the talent will pay. If it’s a basketball star, making a lot of money right now, it’s very tempting for them to spend it all. But because they do understand mortality, they can get a permanent life insurance policy that’s going to have a death benefit to protect their heirs and everything, yes, but also potentially be part of their retirement plan, which are after is the same thing. When there’s not as much stability in their income, it’s nice sometimes to take small amounts and put them into a well-designed policy so that those can continue to play out for them over time.
AdaPia d’Errico:
There’s so much there. First of all, thank you for getting technical because I think that’s really-
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I was like, “Oh, no.”
AdaPia d’Errico:
No, I was fascinated. I was fascinated. I think it’s really important because those are the things and also thank you for being courageous enough to say, watch out if somebody is trying to sell you variable right now, because people need to be told that.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Sometimes we hold back from maybe saying something that might upset another person and like, I don’t know what’s going on over there. But we actually need to be standing up for what’s right more. So, thank you for saying that.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And also, for getting so technical. I kept thinking about the ways that I might often feel, I get worried easily about the future and my husband’s student loans and all these different things, and there’s so much uncertainty right now and I never take my life for granted. I never take anything for granted, which the flipside is I worry a lot.
AdaPia d’Errico:
But I thought, I should have life insurance, so maybe I’ll stop worrying so much. Because there’s things that it legitimately as you were speaking, I thought, that’s going to make me feel better. And that frees up energy, it frees up the joy, it frees up a whole lot of other things. And it costs a little bit of money. But that’s the purpose of it. It’s having that available so that you can plan for the future.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And it’s also interesting, you talked about long-term care, because one of the asset classes that we invest in a lot is senior living.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Oh, right.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Right? All the senior living memory care. And I was having conversation yesterday with somebody and they were saying, “I’m not really sure. I don’t know anything about that asset class and what its potential is for the future.” And I said, “It’s got a 10-year, minimum 10 year run in terms of the strength of it because of demographics.”
AdaPia d’Errico:
And although some people want to age in place, that is just not possible. And even if they want to age in place, someone’s got to take care of them, whether it’s in their house or whether they have to go to if they get like dementia, they have to go to memory care.
AdaPia d’Errico:
So, anyway, just a really longwinded way of saying it was interesting you brought in the long-term care because we know how much it costs for a resident to go into a facility. And I think it’s not to be taken lightly because it’s not cheap.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Oh my gosh, it’s so interesting you say that because we have a lot of information about long-term care. The average long-term care claim in 30 years is estimated to be $1.7 million per person. The average person lives at least two and a half years in long-term care once they go out on claim, and women live much longer than then on long-term claim. Actually, a lot of women can be outliers and live five, seven or even like way longer than that.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And there are different sections people live, like some percentage lives two and a half and then another percentage lives at least five and the longer you live, the more expensive it is because again, today an average LTC facility is like 10K for a nice place if you live in a nice city, 5K for it’s kind of sad.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And people have this fallacy that Medicare offers long-term care, but they do not, just be advised. They do not. There is no national bucket that’s going to protect you. It’s a major storm. And with the boomer generation, it’s a big issue.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, we’re also very palpably aware of the legs of that particular sector. If anything is going in, it’s very bullish, and probably not just for 10 years. But yeah, so one of the things I am really passionate about is trying to show people some of the coolest ways to use insurance to really protect against that worst case scenario is risk management.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
It’s not speculative, really, although there are a lot of great advantages in how you can accumulate and grow wealth through life insurance products, if they’re used correctly, and certainly passing on generational wealth. That’s really important and being able to pass on legacies of accumulated wealth rather than depleting them, which is another way, you make it better. You give people more of a head start, et cetera, as long as they still have good core values, because that’s another thing. You can’t just have money and no values. You need to have good value so you can generate and spread good from the wealth.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But anyway, there’s this concept of what I love is like the Zig Ziglar quote, which is like, prepare for the worst, hope for the best and capitalize on whatever comes.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I think if you are only pie in the sky, like that’s where you kind of can tend to get bitten or find yourself like age 65 off the creek because you didn’t do any planning and that’s not a way I hope to end up. And I think with a little bit of foresight, and people who don’t just run away from it, but they’d run towards the problem and then calmly and cogently create some contingency plans, then they are always way better off.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And what we try to do with insurance just going back to what you were talking about being technical, we really try to build designs where one way or another, they’re going to get their money back basically, from what they had to spend. The only kind of insurance products that we have that’s like “down the drain” is the term insurance because if you outlive your 30-year term, that’s good news. You’re still alive, you didn’t die.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But luckily that cost so little, the way we do things that it was worth having your seatbelt on. I liken it to driving around with your seatbelt on. You wouldn’t drive around without it. And hopefully, if you didn’t have an accident, your auto insurance was also a waste of money for all those years, but you can’t guarantee.
Daniel Cocca:
I have a big picture question, Jennifer, that I feel like you’re particularly well positioned to answer. So, insurance companies, obviously they are for-profit entities. And as I understand it, again, is kind of selling that’s not too familiar with this space, they are relatively very profitable entities.
Daniel Cocca:
And so, I wonder from a structuring perspective as someone who kind of likes to figure out better ways to do things. Do you think the insurance industry eventually moves into a different model? Or do you think that there is a better model than what we’re using now just be interested to hear your kind of high-level commentary?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Interesting. See, where I see in efficiencies among the brokers. I think insurance companies are profitable and I think they do a pretty good job delivering a pretty fair return.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I think of the brokers who are typically this army of people that are incentivized to go and spread word about the value of insurance. They are the people who are really the bad actors. The products themselves are really quite sound.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
The actuaries in life insurance are very good at what they do. Their job is to assess risk and take on a fair gamble. That’s why they want to know, do you smoke? What’s your lifestyle? Do you have any DUIs? They want to decide how much they need to charge so that hopefully, somewhere along the way, they come out ahead by aggregating your risk and all the hundreds of thousands of other risks that they’re choosing to take on. And they’re trying to be as generous as possible because they still need to make this something that’s worth the consumers while as well.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, I feel like the life insurance carriers, of course, this is not every carrier out there. We only work with carriers that have an A rating, or better. I think that goes without saying, but there are so many of those. And so, among those I don’t really have a lot of beef with them. I have more beef with the brokers because a lot of them enter this is just like in sales, I just want to sell, I just want to get commission. They are not consulting.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
If you’re a part of a financial team like you guys, I expect you to do the work. I’m delegating to you the work of knowing all your stuff about real estate. I don’t want to have to bone up on it with my full-time job. I want you to do that. And then I just want you to love leverage that knowledge for my benefit. And if you do that, I’m very happy because I could delegate that job. So, there’s the value you just provided me, and then you’re going to help my money grow.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, I think that’s quite a fair exchange. Where it’s not great is where people are just schlepping something at the wall, so it sticks. So, someone gets it and they’re not doing the work of getting them the best price for it, or even selling the best quality product on the market. And that’s what a broker or agent comes into play.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And that’s kind of why I was excited to do this podcast with you guys because I think consumers, the more they get educated and aware of kind of the underbelly of how all this works, the better they can choose good advisors. Just coming into like your guys model, I think commercial real estate is a absolutely huge, awesome opportunity for people. And I would hope that people who understand that are able to discern from some of the actors out there in that market versus you guys.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I mean, you’re working really hard to do a really good job at what you do and hopefully, with some education and awareness, people can start to sift between, okay, where are the bad actors? What are the things that can go off?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Just like the stock market investments, okay? There’s a thing called churning, where you give your money to your investor. And they get a fee, they get a little percentage of every dollar you give them. They also get additional money anytime they change a stock. And some people will just change your stock, so they get a little bit more money. That’s not good. You don’t want that. On top of that, they can sometimes be charging 1% or 2% in addition to what the fund itself is charging. You’re ending up sometimes at 3 or 4% of your money paid to this investor who’s not even maybe even actively navigating the stock market for you.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But there are wonderful advisors who are doing a really good job who have lower fees. So, I think consumer awareness is a big part, Dan, of how we improve things versus changing the carriers. I would say per se, because life insurance rates have actually gone down over time, not up. They’ve gone down. It might be an unexpected answer for me, but I think the products are great.
Daniel Cocca:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Like I said, in the context of the question, not a space I had a ton of familiarity with, and I think my perspective was always if you’re an insurance company, you’re making a lot of money and part of the way that you structure your deals is or policies, what have you is in a way where that’s the ultimate outcome.
Daniel Cocca:
And so, it’s interesting to hear you kind of talk about the market actually being much more efficient, clean than an outsider or someone who’s never actually purchased life insurance has. So, I think that’s actually really informative.
Daniel Cocca:
And then the other thing that you mentioned that I thought was interesting is just this, the challenge you have in intermediary role, you play that role, we play that role. As an intermediary, you’re always being compensated based on some type of transaction occurring, whether it’s a real estate investment or insurance policy being purchased.
Daniel Cocca:
It’s really about at least in our opinion, in my opinion, aligning incentives as best as you can, understanding there’s always going to be some conflict of interest. And you guys are able to remove it in a lot of ways by just saying, “Hey, we’re not looking at commissions, we’re agnostic, what have you.”
Daniel Cocca:
And for us, it’s always about trying to push our compensation to the performance side as much as possible. There’s like, let’s keep the lights on fee and I think people understand that and kind of what we always say, “We’re okay when our sponsor partners make a lot of money, when they make our investors a lot of money. We’re not okay when they make a lot of money and they don’t.” And that’s really the crux of trying to align our interests and our investor interests and the sponsor partners that we work with.
Daniel Cocca:
So, a long tangent, I just went on there. But the intermediate role is unique. I think a lot of times, we find our self in a position where we need to justify our fees, even in light effect that they kind of make perfect sense in the context of what you’re giving versus what you’re getting in return. And so, yeah, nevertheless, just my thoughts on the matter.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
That’s really interesting. And I agree with you that models where everyone’s goals are aligned towards the same outcome are great. You want everyone to want the same result, which is okay, everyone’s making money and this commercial real estate venture has done well. That’s a good thing.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
If it’s a scary model going back to a little pet peeve of mine, well, I have my soapbox, where an investment advisor who’s got your funds in the market is getting paid, no matter what the market does. If it goes up or it goes down, they’re getting their 1%, often 2% no matter what. They could literally be asleep and they could be making their money. And often when the markets down, they are just telling you to stay in it, write it out. And I understand that and I understand the power of investment over time very, very well.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I’m not here to completely only bash on stock market or investment advisors. But I think one of the concerns that I have is just like overall financial savvy of the general average person and how much faith they put and how they don’t even question the fees that these like middle men who handle their 401(k) or their IRA get for doing literally nothing actually.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Like most of the time, almost literally nothing if you really know how these things work, versus people like you who are curating and sifting and researching and keeping your finger on the pulse and kicking the tires and doing diligence before you team up on a plate special opportunities for people for their benefit. That’s actually very hard work and worth every penny.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And then on top of that, when you align that with, and on top of that, I really only do anything besides breakeven, if you also come out ahead. I think that’s more than a fair equation. I do.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And then ours is a little tricky because we’re still taking people’s wealth and doing something with it. But where I’m looking at is how do I set them up to be really, really safe? How are they no matter what happens in their life, they’re going to be better than if they did nothing and came to me and a lot better.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Another thing I wanted to touch on because you helped me think about it, Dan, is one area where life insurance companies really come out ahead is people who buy insurance but drop it. If you buy a policy, and you pay even 400 bucks a year for it and drop it three years later, and you never die, they made $1200 off you and never paid out that million dollars that they would have paid if something happened to you.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
You do need to work with a really good adviser in your insurance so that you’re getting the very best rate you can while you’re healthier and younger than you’ll ever be. And then keep it. Because if you’re doing it in the hands of a good advisor, it’s going to be the best deal you could ever have gotten. You won’t want to drop it.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I explain to my clients sometimes it’s like a lot of the bad actors focus on talking you into something. “Hey, here’s the scheme. I know you don’t really have the money to do it anyway, it’s 2500 bucks.” And three years later, like, the dust is settled, and you’re like, what did I do that for?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I don’t even know or I’ve had even worse stories where friends have talked somebody into taking a big chunk of their money and putting it into this Ponzi scheme, kind of where the bank will pay the interest it. There’s lots of stuff that can happen. And when they finally realize like, “Wow, this didn’t do everything that I was told it would do,” they drop the policy. And that’s where you really see the sort of the, the bad stories.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Again, those are due to the bad actors who are “talking somebody into something” as opposed to doing it like the way we are doing things, which is we’re, here’s the very best value you can get. Here’s the absolute least it can possibly cost. Here’s why you’re getting it. Here’s complete clarity on what you’re doing with it, what it protects you from, what are the potential other good things that are coming from it. And by the way, it’s going to cost less than anyone else can ever get you to cost, and if you want to keep it in your financial puzzle forever as you layer on all the other parts of your wealth and accumulation in retirement strategy.
AdaPia d’Errico:
That’s such great advice, Jennifer. Thank you so much. That’s a lot. I think you’re going to get a lot of people calling you. I hope that they do. And it’s just great advice. And it kind of speaks to the last question that I want to ask you and kind of talk about because you mentioned it a couple times.
AdaPia d’Errico:
It’s this idea of the healthy financial foundation that we’re all trying to build. It allows us to live a good life today. It allows us to plan for the future. In the midst of so much uncertainty right now, you said this is a risk management strategy. It helps you to feel safe. So, there’s like a big emotional component. And as everyone thinks about and works towards this idea of wealth, my question to you is, what does wealth mean to you?
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
I love this question so much because it’s something that I’ve thought a lot about. I have thought about why am I even in this profession. It’s such a funny thing to find yourself kind of in this and be dedicated to it as passionately as I kind of I am.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And it goes back to that thing I said about loving to make things better than they were before. My mom was a single mom, hairdresser, immigrant. And I saw the wonderful things she did to always make me feel like we were wealthy. I thought I was middle class until I went to Princeton. And then people would like go to the city and try on clothes at Betsey Johnson and then actually buy them.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I was like, I didn’t know that was a thing that people did. I just try them on and walk away and be like, would have been cool if I have that but of course I’m not going to or eating out at restaurants instead of just at the cafeteria, which was already paid for.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And that was where I started to realize like, oh, I guess maybe I’m not I guess “rich”, but I felt good because my mom would do things. Like she’d come home from work with a pair of earrings or a sweater from me that I didn’t even ask for. I’d be like, “I don’t need it. I’m okay. Why did you do this?” It’s just like an abundance.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I realized later now, it’s because they were on sale at Express and they were really cheap. And she wanted to do something nice for me, and that was within her budget. But the abundance was that I wasn’t meeting it. It was beyond what I needed.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I think wealth is having more than you need. Oh, no, like what you need and plus a little bit more. And I think the beauty of that is it can be scaled down or up because the one lever you have is kind of like, well, at the end of the day, what’s important to you.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
So, I have families that have huge means and they spend a lot and then because they do that, they need a lot. They have huge estates and they’re going to have big tax implications. And it all escalates. And that’s okay. That’s actually fine, they’re helping the economy.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And then there are people who can be more full with a little bit less like that I think this time of quarantine has showed us. Do you need as much or what is essential and what’s not? And you can scale things down.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
But the feeling of having, for example, as much love as you want plus a little extra, maybe a few more kisses or hugs every day, then you really just would need or a little bit more money to be able to spend on things that you want. I think that’s wealth. And the thing about our world and economy is not everybody is in that luxurious position. And so, when I’m able to help people say, a little bit away from desperate need and more into like, we’re good, I think that’s how I try to help move the needle.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
And I want that for every human being on Earth. I really do. Because I think the world would just become a much better place if people weren’t … When people are in a corner, they get more scarce, they get more desperate. And then all kinds of things happen. So, the more we can create abundance on earth, and there’s so much to go around, there’s so much to go around.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, I agree.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Sorry. That’s a very preachy kind of thing. You got me really on a big topic, but it’s really important, I think, just to know that it’s attainable for people to have. It’s really wealth, it’s not a number.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah. Yeah. No, I don’t think it was preachy at all. I think it was beautiful and heartfelt. And I feel like the more people in positions of having any amount of wealth, because we all do to various degrees, the more that we can really appreciate what we have and turn that around in some way to help those who don’t.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And we’re seeing so much of that inequality nowadays. It’s really heartbreaking, but it’s also galvanizing towards having that sense of gratitude and personal abundance and then from that place moving, from that place helping, from that place doing something.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And so many of our listeners and our members in our network are very wealthy in their own ways, and simultaneously have concerns about their wealth. So, we just need to kind of bring it home to that centered place and what does that mean to each of us. We all have different ways of describing it. And that’s why we like to ask the question.
AdaPia d’Errico:
So, it was a beautiful, beautiful insights. And everything that you talked about today was very interesting. There’s so much to learn here, so much value. And like we said going into this, hoping to provide a lot of value in education for the listeners. And I would say we’ve definitely done that. So, thank you so much.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Oh, thank you so much. It’s really a pleasure to work with you guys and just help share information and I’m very happy to have gotten to work with you guys today. Thank you.
AdaPia d’Errico:
All right. Thanks, Jennifer.
Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs:
Take care.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Thanks for tuning in to Real Wealth Real Health. We hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and found it both informative and insightful.
AdaPia d’Errico:
We welcome all your questions and your feedback about today’s episode and especially, we welcome your questions about specific topics that you would like us to cover.
AdaPia d’Errico:
So, shoot us an email at [email protected]. And if you have a moment, we really appreciate ratings and reviews as it helps us grow our online community and our interactions with you.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And we’ll also be linking to a number of relevant articles on topics that we might have touched on during our conversations. Some of them are broad. Some of them are technical, but we’re always aiming to provide information that helps you better understand the mechanics of building this healthy financial foundation, especially if you’re looking to do this with real estate.
