New Trend in Building Wealth Outside The Wall Street with Anthony Faso and Cameron Christiansen

Anthony Faso and Cameron Christiansen are two gentlemen who has a passion for helping people create and preserve more wealth. They are consultants and hosts of the Infinite Wealth Podcast, and they’re also the Founders of Infinite Wealth Consultants. They are from Las Vegas. One of them has served in the US Army and is a self-describing recovering CPA

Anthony Faso served in the US army and a self-described, recovering CPA. He has been a CPA for over 20 years. At some point, he is challenged to find something different until he read the two major books that changed his perspectives, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. He incorporated both of these books into his financial advising practice and CPA firm. He then realized that he can’t be a jack of all trades, master of none. He wanted to be an expert in one area. So he sold his firm and has been an Infinite Wealth Consultant full time ever since.

Cameron Christiansen, on the other hand, moved to Las Vegas 17 years ago and he immediately started a small business. Just like Anthony, he was influenced by the book he read by Nelson Nash. He started sharing with other business owners what he knew and then people were starting to ask for advice. He became an advisor in the industry for 11 years now. He then met Anthony, and just a couple of years ago, they partnered in Infinite Wealth Consultants.

Watch the episode here:

Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. This is going to be a fun episode because there are three of us today, folks, these two gentlemen have a passion for helping people create and preserve more wealth. They are consultants and hosts of the Infinite Wealth Podcast, and they’re also the Founders of Infinite Wealth Consultants. They’re out of Las Vegas. One of them has served in the US Army and is a self-describing recovering CPA, and the other is going to tell us a little bit more because I can’t quite see it on this bio sheet. So please welcome to the show with me, Anthony Faso and Cameron Christiansen, how you are guys doing?

Anthony:

We’re doing great and excited to be on your Podcast. Yeah, dude. Thanks for having us.

Cameron:

Thanks, Brett.

Brett:

Pleasure. Let’s start with Anthony, the recovering CPA Faso. And by the way, you can find these fine gentlemen at infinitewealthconsultants.com. Give us a little bit about your story and your current focus?

Anthony:

Okay, well, I like to say that I’m a recovering CPA, I’ve been a CPA for over 20 years, I worked for Price Waterhouse Coopers, CFO for a chain of restaurants. And then I eventually opened up my own firm. But what I found was the advice that typical financial planning was given, and even me as a CPA was given, was just not working. And I came to that realization, particularly in 2008, where I remember that I had one client, he goes, Anthony, I did everything right. I paid off my house, I stayed out of debt, I maxed out my 401k. And then now, all the equity in my house is gone. My 401k is now a 201K. And now I’m 70 years old. And now you’re telling me I need to go back to work when unemployment is in double digits. And then I kind of realized that really hit home to me for one, he was literally in tears standing across my desk. But then eventually I came into tears because I realized that I was on the same path that he was, I started doing some research and there’s a “crash or correction”. About every 10 years, there was in a way there was 2000, the 90s 80s I mean, what’s unreal, is we haven’t had one yet, which I think we’re on the cusp. But what that did is that challenged me to find something different. And so I what I noticed some of my clients did really well in ‘08, ‘09. So I started asking them, what are you doing? Like? What’s your mindset? What? How are you thinking differently? And also, what books are you reading? And so I started following and practicing the same concepts that they were doing. And the two major books that they told me were Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and then also Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. And so I started to incorporate both of those books for me personally. But then my clients kept on saying, well, Anthony, what should I do, I don’t fully trust Wall Street. And I want some guidance. So I started sharing what I was doing. And then eventually, I had a financial advising practice and a CPA firm. And I realized that you can’t, I didn’t want to be a jack of all trades, master of none. I wanted to be an expert in one area. So I sold my firm probably about six or seven years ago, and have been doing this full time ever since.

Brett:

Fantastic love that. We’ll dive into some of that stuff here in a minute now. It’s Cameron Christiansen, you’re up go, sir.

Cameron:

Yeah, absolutely. As my story is, I moved here to Las Vegas maybe 16, 17 years ago. And what I did is I immediately started a small business and I had that for man six or seven years. And similar to Anthony in that is I was a small business owner and I did not have an HR department. So I can turn to someone to kind of say, this is what we’re gonna do as far as financial kind of avenues. And so I started looking at my options and to be honest, I was really, really frustrated with the options that were available for me as a small business owner. All the options that I was presented with, were essentially me putting my money somewhere where I was not going to have access to it. And so what I did is actually just set on cache for many years, and kind of kept doing research. And you finally get to a point where you’re just so overwhelmed with the amount of information out there, they just don’t do anything. So I did that for several, he just sat on cash and was frustrated. And to be honest, my story is my wife and I was buying a house. And I walked into this broker’s office, and we’re sitting down with him. And I asked him, I said, Do you have a good book for a young couple. And he turned around, he handed me Nelson Nash’s book, and he goes a father read this at your age, it would have been the difference of millions of dollars. And so I went home, I read that book three times the first night. And, Brett, man, if I’m honest, I was really upset on page 45. In that book, it teaches you about collateralizing. And it shows you that paying cash for any major purchase is not the best option. And so there I was kind of the mid-20s, pretty successful, had a great income, and thought I knew everything. And this book started just tearing apart everything that I knew about personal finances. And really, I felt like I was starting over at that point. And so the strategies that I found in that book were really designed for me as a business owner. And what I did is similar to Anthony, I just started sharing with other business owners that I knew. And then people start asking for advice. And what you find kind of in this space is that once you learn some of these strategies, you almost feel an obligation to share them with others that are in a similar situation. And so I became the kind of advisor. I got in this industry about 10, 11 years ago now. And I met this guy about eight years ago. And then we partnered up just a couple of years ago. And so here we are now fast forward, we got Infinite Wealth Consultants.

Brett:

Amazing. Love it, guys. So let’s dive right in. What in the world is infinite banking for those who are learning about it for the first time? And then the second part of that would be for those that are ultra-wealthy, what are they doing to take advantage of infinite banking?

Cameron:

Great question.

Anthony:

Infinite banking really started from the book called Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash. And there are other people who are putting their own spin on the word. So maybe it’s becoming your own bank or cash flow banking, or there’s some other terminology, but it all started from Nelson Nash’s book, becoming your banker. And one of the key things he talked about was, you finance everything you buy, meaning, if you pay cash, then we give up interest that we could have earned without money. But then if we use credit, we pay interest. So he’d say we either give up or pay up. Right. And so what he talks about in the book, and we’re kind of just gonna give a high-level example, but what he talks about is creating your own banking system with a high cash value life insurance policy. Now, this policy is I like to say is not your mama’s whole life policy is designed very different, minimize death, benefit and maximize the cash, and what it is, we can leverage that cash kind of like what Cameron had mentioned, instead of us spending it, we borrow against it. Right? And it may sound complicated at first, but you know, it’s just like using a rewards credit card. Let me ask you, do you use a rewards credit card?

Brett:

I do. I have American Express for traveling to Florida or traveling Francis here, we’re getting all our points to get some free flights.

Anthony:

Exactly. So why use that credit card as opposed to just paying cash?

Brett:

Because they’re giving you free flights?

Anthony:

Exactly. You’re gonna buy it anyways. But you add one extra step, your credit card, you get a bonus in the form of miles, if you can understand that, you can understand infinite banking. Okay, perfect. All break it down. Okay, so let’s say you wanted to buy some real estate what we can do is, instead of what do is we use our policy first, to make maybe to do the downpayment, or to pay for it in full. And then by doing that, instead of getting miles, we’re getting more money. And the reason being is because just like when Nelson talked about if we pay cash, we break that compound interest curve, right? We drain our account and buy the asset, and then we save up money to buy another asset, and then we drain our account. The problem is we’re continually breaking the compound interest curve, but by structuring and leveraging an infinite banking policy, we never break that compound interest curve. Because when we go to borrow against the policy, we’re not taking it from the policy, we’re borrowing against it, insurance companies using it as collateral, and you’re actually using the insurance company’s money. So the advantage is your money is still there, still compounding, even though you’re using it, so that’s where you get that extra AK mile, you’re getting more money.

Cameron:

But if you don’t mind, I’ll jump in there and add a little certain to what he just said is there. A lot of times what we’ll do with clients, especially if somebody new like you had kind of propose to us is we’ll break it down into two different categories, what we call it is we say 20%, of what we’re doing is going to be the product. And that’s going to be the whole life insurance policy. What’s really important about the product is that you got to get a properly designed policy. And so proper design you need to have, it needs to have certain features, right, we want to have those loan provisions that Anthony just talked about. But number one, by putting our money inside properly designed policies, we’ve got access to it, we’ve got collateralization, we’ve got creditor protection. So the number one concern with most real estate investors is that they’re usually sitting on some cash kind of waiting for the next deal. And so what we’re doing is we’re just repositioning that cash to kind of have a wrapper around it inside of that policy. And also one of the biggest features is that we also get a really good earnings rate on that cash value. And so those are kind of the features around the 20%, which is going to be the product. What’s even more important is what you do with the money. And what I tell people all the time is that we can get you some we can create some wealth for you, but to be wealthy, is you’ve got to put this money to work for you. And that is going to be the process of infinite banking. And that’s going to create probably 80% of the returns for you. And so your example was using real estate, where you would take you would fund a policy and then you take a loan against your cash value, and then you go buy some sort of real estate investment. We’ve got a lot of clients that use turnkey or permanent syndications. But anything that creates cash flow in that cash flow is going to come back to replenish or repay that loan against your policy. We’ve got many, many examples of clients that will buy cars or will do college tuition or those things. And so the process is really what I would say kind of separates Anthony and I, from most people that are in this space, is the policy is important, but it’s not as important as what you go do with that. And so that’s where we spend most of our conversations with clients is what opportunities can we find to go create cash flow, you’re creating that cash value?

READ AND LISTEN TO OUR FULL EPISODE

CLICK HERE