In this episode, I sit down with Chris Waters, a retired dentist who successfully transitioned to financial freedom.
Chris shares his real-life experience of using Infinite Banking to fund investments like real estate, debt funds, and even natural gas projects. We dive into how he got started, the lessons he learned, and the flexibility Infinite Banking has provided him to control his money and create passive income.
If you’re wondering, “Can Infinite Banking really work for me?” or “How can I fund my investments without relying on banks?” – this episode is for you.
Learn firsthand from Chris’s experience and see how you can take control of your finances and investments.
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, you’ve heard us talk about this all the time on the show about infinite banking. How do you actually use it? Can it actually work with your investments? That’s what I’m going to have one of our guests here share with us today.
(00:27)
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti financianal advisor. This show is for those of you that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today. You want that freedom. You want that cashflow now. You don’t have to wait 30 or 40 years for it, but you want it today so you can live that life that you love doing what you love to become work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to, but most importantly guys, it’s not just about getting you rich, although that’s a great benefit too, but it’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you now have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. That is a ripple effect I’m here to create for you guys today.
(01:02)
I appreciate so much for you guys to tune in and ensuring and everything else. Shout out to you guys because this episode is especially for you. Alright, so I’m bringing on a guest here that we’ve never had on, and this is just not your typical guru type guest. I didn’t want that. I think sometimes the best things and the feedback I’ve gotten from many of you is you love having guests on that are in the place, doing the very things that you’re wanting to do right now. It’s not like, here’s what you could be doing. This is what can I do right now with my next step would look like? What is it? And that’s why I’m bringing on Chris Waters here. Now, Chris is a retired dentist, retired back in 2021, lives in rural Nebraska with his wife. Corey has a few kids as well. Loving life, enjoying a very active lifestyle, and yes, the guy even does infinite banking too with his investments and everything else, and especially when he sent me an email recently talking about some of the deals he was doing, I said, you know what? Would you mind sharing this with the audience? I know they would love to hear how you are actually using it real time versus just me preaching from the preaching from the podcast over and over. So Chris, welcome to our show.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Hey, thanks for having me, Chris. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
This is going to be weird for you. I know you listen to this show as well, so you’re going to be listening to yourself here in a little bit.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yes, I do. It’s a good show. Enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah. Well, to give us a little bit more of your backstory, you actually are financially free right now. You’ve gotten out of the rat race as many people would call it. I know you’re soldier practice. Tell us about that journey first, what got you on the journey for financial freedom and then second, how’d you get there?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I was just the traditional person just accumulating money for 32 years in my dental practice and I started thinking about retiring and I was like, I don’t really want all this pile of money. I want it to be more passive. I want to be able to get cashflow out of it. So I was studying one of our mentors in my mastermind group that I joined, and that’s how I kind of got started with it. Just saying, Hey, this sounds like a really good idea.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
And so you joined it and what were some of the ahas you had? Because like you said, you were on the traditional path, you were doing a lot of these guys, right? You’ve been taught to stuff your money in your mutual funds, whether it’s your practices 401k plans or whatever else you’ve been doing. What had a shift for you to make that leap towards financial independence?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
It was definitely about 180 degree shift. When I got into the mastermind group, I was like, really, you can do this. So it was just exciting to meet our service providers that provide the investments, but also just the people that were doing it
Speaker 3 (03:40):
And
Speaker 2 (03:40):
That made me think, gosh, I want to do this. I’ve always wanted to be my own financial advisor instead of having to rely on other people. It always says whoever controls the money makes the money. That’s always a thing that I’ve heard since I’ve been doing this. And I said, it’s very true. So my eyes were opened and I enjoyed the group. It was like investors, like-minded people, A lot of ’em were dentists. We could really relate to each other and it was just a whole different experience I never experienced before and I really thought that that’s where I wanted to go with my investing. I wanted to be in control. I wanted to know who I was investing with, who were controlling the investments, and just having the ability to communicate with them instead of having to go through my financial advisor and not really even knowing what investment my money was invested in. So yeah, invested in some mutual funds, but what mutual funds are they invested in a small large cap momentum value, things like that. I was like, I don’t know. I want to do something different. It was a pretty bold move. I retired and then I started doing this, which is probably backwards, but
Speaker 1 (04:52):
It’s
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Been a good experience.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Most people usually try to do this so they can retire or become work optional and you like, I’m just going to get rid of this practice. I’m sure you said it was in 2021, I knew a lot of people in practice that 2020 was very revealing. It either showed you that one you never want to retire, or two, you can’t wait to get rid of that practice. I’m guessing maybe you were the latter, maybe something in between.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, it was an eyeopening experience. I had the opportunity, I had an associate in my practice that was a really good dentist and mature. He was older, he wasn’t just right out of school, so he had a lot of skill and ability and he was with me for three years and he was going to buy my practice actually in January of 25. That was the plan about a five year plan, and we just kind of reduced it to about a two and a half year plan and he said he was ready and he’s thriving and I still go to the office and everybody still works there. So it worked out really well for us.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Really good handoff then.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Well, now that you’ve done things like real estate investments and whatnot, now looking back, what have you learned? What would you say that somebody who’s looking into this, that maybe are in mutual funds right now, but they’re wondering, is this really the thing or should I just keep putting my money in the market? I mean, what’s been your experience?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
One of the best things I ever learned was how to do due diligence on real estate, which I did not do, and I got hammered pretty good when the Fed started raising their interest rates and we just had some really poor managed properties. They just weren’t very high quality properties.
(06:27)
I didn’t know any better. My wife and I didn’t know any better. We thought, okay, yeah, we’re just going to invest with this and that’s going to be the end of it. That’s fine. No big deal. Yeah, we’ll just invest in the properties. Well, you really have to be able to look at the properties and if you have to go there, physically go there, I’d recommend that. But real estate’s all about property. If it’s turnkey management properties, it’s all about property managers, and that’s the whole thing about real estate for me. But there’s other aspects to real estate funds, oil and gas. I’m invested in just different debt funds and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That’s great. Any regrets?
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I wish I wouldn’t have 10 31 exchange into the six properties that I have. They were pretty worthless. But other than that mean you learn from your failures and we’re just trying to learn from that. That’s the one thing I would recommend just learn how to do due diligence. We didn’t know how to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah. I know in our program we put a big emphasis on that, especially nowadays, we put a lot of responsibility on our members to do that kind of stuff, and it’s not always easy. I mean, there is something kind of enticing about being in the stock market where you can just set it and forget it. You just set it aside, don’t do anything with it. But at the same time, I haven’t seen anybody really be successful with it, not on a good grand scale.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, I would agree. When I listen to your podcast and watch your YouTube videos, I mean, you really break it down with the numbers. I mean, people just don’t, financial advisors don’t do that. They don’t break it down with inflation and how you break it down. So it’s just nice to be able to have cashflow coming in, whether you call it passive income, I guess you could call it passive income, but that’s a relief. It just shows up in your account. So hey, it’s how much money I have now. So it’s nice. You don’t do have to work a little harder at it, but that’s like anything in life. If you want to succeed, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to grow and learn how to best do that. I enjoy doing that. I don’t think my wife really does, but that’s just kind of part of being married. So one person likes to do stuff and other people person may not, but
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (08:45):
It is been good.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Well, like you were saying before, that upfront due diligence, so then you can be passive, right? Which it’s not like you just throw your money at something and that’s it. You do nothing. You sit back. You really do have to become a student, and definitely I’ve seen you grow in that very respect. Well, let’s switch gears about how you’re using this with infinite banking. I know a lot of people, some are like, they get it, they’re like, they catch the vision, they’re like all for it. There’s others that require a little bit more. They’re like, I don’t know. Should I just invest my money? Why would I do this too? Tell us your experience. You’ve only done this for a few years, but tell us about first and foremost, what actually got you wanting to do infinite banking?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Well, like you said, I started a policy in November of 2022.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
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Speaker 2 (10:07):
I wanted just to be in control of my money. I wanted to be able to not have to go to the bank all the time, fill out all the paperwork, get three years of income tax returns, which I should have on my desktop by now, but just things like that, just to be more in control and what I, I’m, I’m pretty risk adverse. I’m conservative, but I don’t mind risking stuff that I know about.
(10:34)
So what we’ve been investing in is I invested in, this is a long-term play, but a liquid natural gas pipeline company. I also took a loan out for a rehab that I needed to get done so I could sell a property, which is a nice thing. And also, I mean a two year debt fund, that’s kind of more of an arbitrage play. I’m getting, having to arbitrage rate like 5.8%, just like a two year commitment, things like that. But I just wanted to be able to just get my money in a week or whatever it takes to get it from just the freedom just to be able to control my money, and I just try to pay my, try to pay my loan. I don’t set up an amortization. I just try to chunk it when I get stuff back. It’s called strategic loan balance. You have that loan in there, but you’re going to get something paid off, so you do it. So if I sold a property, I’d pay some of it off, things like that. I mean, it just makes it so much easier. I get it. I mean, I’ve studied this stuff. I’ve over a hundred hours at least, maybe 400 hours of infinite banking. I really get into it. I really like it.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
The ironic thing, Chris, is when I told you my testimonial about Wish I would’ve known this 20 years ago,
(11:52)
I had my financial planner slash insurance agent slash patient slash friend set me up with a whole life mass mutual policy and goes, yeah, this is really cool. You can loan yourself money and take the money out at 3%. And I’m going like, why would I do that? That’s stupid. But he wasn’t calling it infinite banking. I don’t think he really knew it was infinite banking. So I just shake my head. I was like, and I think when we bought a newer house in 2017, and I used my cash loan policy to pay off my loan like Dave Ramsey would. So
(12:29)
That’s how much I’ve grown. So it’s just unreal when I think about that stuff. If he would’ve explained it like you guys explained it, I think I would’ve gotten it, but probably wouldn’t have done it. Everybody follows a herd. No, you got to do your 401k, you got to do this, that, and everything else. I just chuckle now. Now, and the guy that was selling it to me is still alive, and he’s probably in his mid eighties. I should go over there and just talk to him and chuckle about it. That’s what he was trying to teach me, but I just wasn’t willing to listen or I didn’t know.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (13:02):
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Well, that’s the hard thing. Even whether he, obviously the loan aspect he might’ve known, but whether he knew by infinite banking or not. The thing is that there’s so many different agents, so many different strategies. No wonder it’s so confusing for people to want to do that strategy because like you said, I mean, you’ve done hundreds of hours of research right on infinite banking. So I know you haven’t been just watching my stuff. I don’t have hundreds of hours of material for you to watch. So it’s definitely, it’s different. How would you say it is different from what you study versus what you hear from me? Anything you hear out there that you say, Hey, guys, stay away from this, or, Hey, this is something else you should consider too.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Most of the guys or podcasts I listen to are really similar to yours because they’re not in it to make money off you and your premiums. They understand. Most of the guys I listened to are just really big disciples of, I mean, they’ve met with him, they’ve talked to him. They were personal friends with him before he passed away, and they’re really, really into the Nelson Nash part of it, which is he discovered it or he founded the IBC structure. But most of the guys I listened to are similar because a lot of them might promote, I like using mine for investing where I may get another, I talked to Parker last week. I may get another policy for my daughter eventually and maybe just do finance a car or finance her wedding, which is getting married in about a year, finance something else, my taxes or whatever. A lot of times people will talk about that, but that doesn’t really interest me as much because I’m not really getting the cashflow or the return on my investment that I feel like I can if I do it with investing. So that’s what a lot of the guys talk about, especially in real estate. I think that’s a big thing and just other alternatives.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
That’s very true. I know that’s one thing where I started off with Nelson National almost 20 years ago, learning from the book and everything else, and the guys were disciples of his. But then I realized pretty quickly I said, oh, you know what? This could be done better. Because when I realized that I wasn’t paying myself back as an example, you hear a lot of those guys say that like, oh, you pay yourself back interest. No, you don’t. You pay the insurance company interest. And so when you mentioned the car, the car could work, but if you can get a car loan for around the same interest rate as the loan you’d get from the insurance company or less, go with the bank, use that for the bank, and like you said, use it for investing instead, where you can arbitrage that, make more money off of it than you would just trying to quote, not have debt. Even though you have this loan out there, right, this debt, so to speak, that is collateralized by your cash. So it is not like you’re in debt, but at the same time, you’re still paying interest rate to the insurance company. They’re the bank anyways, so why not pay the same or less of the bank and then use that harder money for something else.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
I think too that one thing that I like too is with the insurance companies, they give you a yearly end report saying, this is how much interest you paid. Well, if you’re investing that money, you get to deduct that. It’s tax deductible. Where as the other policies that you’re using for cars or weddings or taxes or whatever isn’t tax deductible. But when the insurance company, if you’re using just one policy and mixing it with investing, mixing it with, I just call ’em pleasure investments, then you don’t know to break down the interest. It’s a little harder to be able to do that and prove that you actually use it for an investment. So when I was talking to Parker, I thought, well, I thought maybe I’d have to use a different insurance company. He said, no, as long as you have different policies, you’ll be able to keep track of it. Which I thought was, I think about that, but that was really good advice. But I think that is a great thing because who wants to pay more taxes? I mean,
Speaker 1 (17:01):
That’s true. That’s a confusing point for a lot of people, especially in business owners because like you said, if it’s a business purpose, you can write off the interest. You pay the insurance company much like I should compare it to a credit card where we were talking about too, right? It’s that you can have one policy, but if you use it for personal and business, the math gets really frustrating and almost impossible to figure out, well, how much did I pay for business versus personal? If you have two separate policies, one that use that is used only for business type of write-offs, now you can say All that interest that they’re charging me on, I can now pay that whenever I pay that, that is tax deductible as well. So not only am I making money on this, it’s like having a business credit card that is not just paying you points, but obviously it’s paying you interest. It’s actually paying you interest on your money that you have in the policy and when you use it, and of course, you also get the business write off too.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
And I think the point you’re making about the business too, I wish I would’ve known this in my dental business. I would’ve used it in my dental business. It would’ve been phenomenal. I think it would’ve been great to be able to do that. I’ve heard other people using it in their business, but also for incentivizing staff, getting policies on them to allow them to have a little bit of extra income or security and things like that to keep ’em longer in the practice and things like that. I thought that was, that would’ve been an awesome tool.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yeah, no kidding. Well, that was leading to my next question. I mean, is there anything you wish you had known before that you now know today that would cause you to use it differently?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Not necessarily. I think if I would’ve just known, you always talk about how your mental side has to, you have your abundance mental attitude and you have your scarcity, but your mind has to be open to these new ideas. And in my mind, wouldn’t have been open. I mean, my mind is open when I went to the mastermind group because it was something totally different than I did. I think you have to have your mind open. You have to study it first and then just strategically use it, and you get the strategies from people like you or other podcasts that you listen to, and then you put your foot in the water, dip your toe in the water and try one and see what it’s like. Everybody’s so used to having an amortization. You got to pay your principal and your interest. Well, these are interest, just interest loans only, and then you can pay it back whatever you want to.
(19:30)
You don’t have, if you can’t pay it back, if you can’t pay it back every month or whatever, just formulate your own plan. Hey, I’m going to have this paid off by in two years. My debt fund’s going to be given back to me in two years. I’ll just pay it off. Although I may pay the interest in the first year and the second year, which is going to be about three grand, but I think it’s just, I wish I would’ve known it, like I said, but I don’t know if I would’ve used it or not. It’s just the mindset that you have to change first, and that’s what I like about your podcast. You don’t focus all your stuff on IBC. You focus on mindset, abundance, scarcity, saver, spend or steward. That was a great podcast on there. We were just save, save, save, save, save. And we’re fairly good stewards. But that made me kind of realize like, Hey, I think we need to give a little bit more than what we’re doing. If you’re generous, the money’s going to flow back to you. That’s kind of the way it is. And it says that in the Bible. It’s in scripture, and I believe that for sure.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Sure does. Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s great advice. That alone, we could probably end the podcast on that, but I mean, would there be any final advice you would offer our listeners that’s listening right now, whether it’s about passive income and investing, or whether it’s about using infinite banking as a tool? I mean, what kind of advice would you want to pass on, whether it’s to your own kids or even if it’s just anybody listening right now that’s maybe trying to break that mindset?
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, I think do your due diligence. Study what you want to do. If you want to do infinite banking, listen to your podcast. Listen to other podcasts. Read Nelson’s book. I mean, it’s a little outdated, but it’s still relevant today. And if you get an IBC policy, just start with 10,000, 5,000, whatever, just to see what it’s like and then kind of go from there. But action cures fear.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
You
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Just got to take action. You always say on your podcast, you say, I listen to a lot of stuff. I take action on some of it. I wish I would take action more, but it’s action cures fear. I think that’s what you have to do. Just take action, but study what you want to do. Don’t just blindly go in or be afraid that something’s going to happen. Well, if you just keep studying and learning it and then take action, your fears are going to go away. And that’s what I would recommend people do.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
Great advice. Yeah, you got to have that action without, it doesn’t work. Well, let me ask you this too. I got two more questions for you. I mean, this first one here is obviously you’ve studied a lot about infinite banking. Why did you choose us versus any of the other people? I mean, there’s people that are much more known for infinite banking. All they talk about where we talk about other stuff. Why did you choose us?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Well, I have a personal relationship with you and Parker because I’ve met you before face-to-face at our mastermind group. So that’s what got me involved. And just listening to you talk at the group, you’re honest, truthful, you’re not in it to make money for yourself. You want the client to do better, then they could have if they went somewhere else. It’s just a trust factor. It’s not what the investment is. I’ve already heard that. It’s like, who do you invest with? It’s the who, not the what or the how. It’s always the who.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
So
Speaker 3 (22:53):
I
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Had a relationship with you guys, so it made it easy. I mean, I trusted you
Speaker 1 (22:58):
And regrets.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
No, not at all. Think you were going, well, I wish I could fund it faster. It’s like, come on,
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Let’s go. Only regret wasn’t doing before 2022. Yeah, that’s true. That’s like all of us.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah. Well, last question and this question, because you’ve been a faithful listener of our show for many years, but obviously it’s the Money Ripple show. We talk about ripple effect that we create in people’s lives. Chris, what do you feel is your ripple effect? What do you hear on this planet to do you feel like? I think
Speaker 2 (23:34):
It’s just to accumulate information and pass it on to the people that I care about, family, friends. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts since I’m retired, and most of my friends are still working in the dental field. And I say, Hey, you got to listen to this podcast. So I share it with them, and so I think this is going to really help you and things like that. I think it’s just trying to share information that I think is helpful. I think I’ve always been somebody that likes to help people, whether it’s being a dentist or just being a good person, sharing my faith with somebody or sharing my story,
Speaker 3 (24:08):
But
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Also just helping people do better or just get better or feel better about themselves or being financially free, if that’s what you want to say. So
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (24:20):
I think that’s what my thing, my purpose is.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
It sounds like you’re really about accumulating the information then disseminating it to create a legacy.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Yeah, trying to do that. Yeah. I probably listen to way too much stuff if you ask my friends and family, but hey, it’s easy access. I mean, they’re like two 30 minutes. I mean, one and a half speed or quarter, if something catches my eye or my ear, I’ll stop and I’ll write it down and I just incorporated a whiteboard. You can kind of see it back here where I just jot down Id if I feel like I got quotes that I want to write down or scripture or whatever. So I do that. And the green part right here is all about IBC for my notes for this presentation today. So I was just trying to write down some thoughts. It’s kind of nice. I mean, I just painted it on there a couple weeks ago and
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
And it’s been really good. I love it because I can just, if I think of something, a lot of times you think of something, if you don’t write it down, it’s gone
Speaker 1 (25:17):
So true. It’s
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Like, what was I thinking about yesterday? And so now I write it down and it’s been really helpful.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
That’s a great idea. That’s probably something I should do. I actually have a whiteboard that sits there, but it’s on the other side of my desk. It’s almost like out of reach. But that’s a really good idea. You get those little brief moments of inspiration that you know need to act upon. Great way to do that. Well, Chris, I really appreciate your time. Appreciate your trust in us as well over these last few years. Really, it means the world to me, and I know what you just said. I mean, obviously taking hundreds of hours of information, distilling it in just a few minutes in this episode, I know is a massive value to a lot of people. So I know they’re thanking you for that ripple effect as well. So again, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. I appreciate the invite.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So guys, I love what Chris shared with us today. I mean, getting his own experience of how he’s been able to use it doesn’t mean you have to use it the way he did, but it’s nice to know that you have that flexibility that you can design the life the way that you want it, that you can desire your money the way that you want it too. And so guys, just remember you got any good information for this. Learn from Chris, write it down, and then take action. So guys, go and make it a wonderful and prosperous week. We’ll see you later.