Jordan: I am on fire to ignite, absolutely.

John: Yes. Jordan is known as America’s money answer man because he’s been answering America’s questions about person finance topics for over 35 years. Jordan take a minute, fill in some gasp from that intro and give us just a little glimpse of your personal life.

Jordan: Absolutely. So, I am America’s money answers man because I worked at Money Magazine for many years, I’ve done 13 books on financial topics, I’m on radio shows, I’m on TV shows. I host what’s called the Money Answer Show, which I’ve done for over ten years. I love to help people with their personal finances in every way possible and hopefully I will be able to give them some good ideas and resources in this podcast to help them really elevate their personal financial situation.

John: Well, I’m gonna hold your feet to the fire right at the beginning Jordan –

Jordan: Good.

John: – because this is where I like to say, what is something that we, the typical entrepreneur, do not know? Well, something that we don’t know about finance that’s your area of expertise that frankly, we really need to know. And let’s not kind of vague and broad, let’s get specific, tactical and cool.

Jordan: So, there’s something called the Mortgage Equity Optimization Strategy, which literally will allow you to pay off your 30-year mortgage in about five to seven years on your existing level of income, that’s probably something that you don’t know about.

John: Tell me a little bit more, because I feel like people are gonna hear that and they’ll be like, you know what, that sounds good, but I can barely make my mortgage payment right now, so how does that work?

Jordan: Okay, so you use a Home Equity Line of Credit a HELOC as it’s called, which is like a second mortgage against your house, which is a liquid line, you can put money in, you can take money out whenever you like. You keep your money, your pay check and your income, which is normally is sitting in the checking account earning zero in the HELOC and literally every day your pushing down the balance a little bit on your HELOC. And over time you can pay your mortgage off much much faster and literally save 25 years off your mortgage and tens if not, hundreds of thousands of dollars interest.

There’s a free website people can find out more about this in detail which is called truthinequity.com. I wrote about this in one of my books called master your debt and it’s just revolutionary, transformative for people. Can you imagine who is 30 years old who’s mortgage is paid by 35 instead of 60.

John: Unbelievable, and the crazy thing is, when you have these loans and these bigger mortgages especially, you’re just paying interest for ever and ever and ever. And you look at the lifetime of that 30 years, you’re like, I paid like double what I bought that house for, if not sometimes more –

Jordan: Correct.

John: Just in interest.

Jordan: It’s all front end loaded JLD.

John: It’s all front end loaded.

Jordan: In other words, when you sign that document, you don’t even look at all the papers, but right there there’s an amortization schedule saying each month how much of your payment goes to principle, how much goes to interest. The first 10 to 15 years it’s almost all interest. After 15 years, maybe you’ve paid off 10 percent off your principle, just pathetic. So, this is a way to use your existing money to pay your mortgage off faster. Literally everyday you’re paying off the principle at a faster and faster rate. You just try to have to learn how to play the game. So, again, there’s a free website to show you how to do it in detail, truthinequity.com.

John: Fire Nation, rip off that band aid, and Jordan is an example here, that 30-year-old to 35, that person will thank the 35 to 60-year-old self a million times in those 25 years for paying off that gosh darn mortgage. So, make it happen and Jordan, for the sounds of it, I just get this vibe that you have it all together, that you always win, you always succeed, everything you touch turns to gold. But, of course, we know that isn’t always the case and 35 years is a long time, you’ve had ups and downs, take us to the worst entrepreneurial moment that you have experienced to date, Jordan. Pull of your band aid, show us that story.

Jordan: Glad to do it. Okay, so I was at Money Magazine for all these years, I was doing a radio show every week with a guy named Sonny Bloch. Was on 300 stations around the country, for many many many years, really really, he’s kind of the equivalent today of like, Dave Ramsey or something like that. And then, he had done 7 books previously, he had never written any of the, but he put his name on them, and so they sold a lot. So, he said to me, well, let’s do a book together, so I did a book called Everyone’s Money Book which was a very comprehensive book about all aspects of personal finance, which the two of us were on the cover.

And then, he started doing all kinds of shady and crazy things after the book was out. To make a very long story short John, he ended up in jail, okay, for selling unregistered securities. Here I am at Money Magazine and I’m on the cover of this huge book selling all over the place with me and Sonny Bloch. So, it was not easy, but I had to kind of get him off of there, I figure out a way to get a note to him jail to have him write permission to take his picture off, which he did give. So, we immediately came out with another edition with me on there only, but it was a definite stain on my reputation even though I didn’t do anything wrong.

And I knew him extremely well with having worked with him weekly for ten years. But that was definitely one of my worst entrepreneurial moments was being dragged down by Sonny Bloch’s mal contents and things that he did wrong.

John: Love it or hate it Fire Nation, guilty by association is a reality of the world we live in. That’s why you’ve just gotta be careful. You’re never gonna be able to completely protect yourself because you really never know. But listen to that [inaudible] [00:05:13] sense, listen to your gut to your intuition because there’s probably gonna be some red flag there at some point. Now, for you Jordan, what is that big take away, what was that lesson that you kind of said, you know what, I’m not letting that happen again, this is my big take away, what was that?

Jordan: Well, you’re exactly right. Know who you’re dealing with and if something starts going sideways, get away from it as quickly as you can. Now, in my case the book was already, I couldn’t recall the book because by the time the book came out everything was fine. But then he started doing these things after that. So, I immediately, when that happened, I recalled the book as much as I could and put out a version with me on it only. But be very careful on who you deal with, make sure they have integrity, do things in the right way. Because you’re right it’s almost a gut sense. It’s like, oh, this doesn’t feel quite right, step away when that happens.

John: Was there something there? Was there a time that you were like, ooh, Sonny, I don’t really know –

Jordan: Yes.

John: What was that?

Jordan: There were. So, for example, he would seminars that I would go to and some of the things just seemed a little shady. He used to sell these cells, that were like the original Disney movie cell kinds of things for like thousands of dollars, and I was like, that doesn’t make sense to me.

John: Yeah, what is that can you explain?

Jordan: When you have the old films from the 1930s, each cell, literally, from a reel, they would sell Snow White or something like or Cinderella. And they would sell each individual cell from the movie for some thousands of dollars; it just didn’t make sense to me. Or various real estate deals that just didn’t make sense. What really got him in trouble in the long run, was he bought radio stations and was selling shares in those radio stations on his radio show. The SEC brought him down because it was considered sale of unregistered securities, which it was.

So, I said to him at one time at the start, Sonny you don’t need this, you are a multi-millionaire you have a huge brownstone on the eastside of New York, you’ve got a radio network you don’t need this, don’t be greedy. And yet, when you’re that big you think you’re untouchable. And we saw that this last year, Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and all kinds of people. When they get really big they think they’re untouchable, they’re not.

John: Fire Nation, like Jim Kramer likes to say, don’t be a pig, don’t be greedy, don’t be greedy. So, Jordan, you probably have had a lot of great ideas, in fact I’m gonna take that probably word back. You’ve definitely had a lot of great ideas over your career, a lot of what I like to call aha moments. Take us to one of those great ideas, tell us that story.

Jordan: I’m doing it right now actually, I like to be very current. I’ve had a website moneyanswers.com, where I’ve got loads of content for many many years. But the great idea is to bring all this in to video. So, I’ve now created Money Answers TV, I’m creating a Money Answer YouTube channel, moneyanswerstv.com. Distributing all this content over a video, is I think, gonna be a fantastic way to get people out there and help them in all kinds of ways. People just don’t wanna read anymore but they’re willing to watch videos. So, I think that’s gonna be very very successful and I’m in the middle of that right now.

John: Well, like we at Heads At, we call that re-purposing content, it’s created, it’s there, you have the personality the knowledge, the ability to create and just kind of distribute in that way that you want. Something I’ll kind of throw out there as a little bit of a flyer, Facebook Watch. No, that’s not a time piece, that’s actually like a YouTube type channel but what Facebook is coming out with. Has a great opportunity for people that are first movers, so, I would check out Facebook Watch as well Jordan. What would you say is the biggest take away that you learned from this aha moment that you’re going through right now, that you think Fire Nation can maybe take and apply to their lives?

Jordan: I agree with you, it’s re-purposing content. I’ve got great content, I’ve got great affiliates, but it’s another way of getting the same content out there that reaches more people. So, if they’re gonna do a search on Google or YouTube it’s gonna bring up this affiliate and what I do is I interview the top people in each of these areas. So, it’s not just me talking about it but you’re hearing from the best expert in each area. For example, we talked about before, the mortgage optimization. I interview a guy named, Bill Westrum who is the Nation’s expert of paying your mortgage off in five years instead of 30 years.

So, it’s not just me talking about it, but it’s bringing the best expert on each area to the viewer and I think it’s gonna be very successful.

John: Now Jordan, you’ve been doing this for over 35 years, there might be some people, you know in a more friendly way than you were doing with Sonny, but there might be some people being like. Jordan, you really have to keep working, I mean, can’t you take a deep breath, take a break, you know, go kick your feet up in Puerto Rico, enjoy life. Like, can’t you do some of those things? And my question to you is obviously I can hear in your voice, I’m very attuned to voice and you have the energy, the excitement when you’re talking about these things and you love it. So, of course, you don’t wanna do that, like tell us why, why are you fired up right now, what excites you the most today?

Jordan: I’m fired up to help people solve the problems they’ve got in their personal finances and I see the problems. Because people email me and I’m glad to take emails from your listeners as well at moneyanswers.com. I just love to help people, either in trouble, you know they’ve gone bankrupt of they’ve got huge debts or something like that. Or to make the most of their money. The thing I’m most fire up about right now is helping people earn higher yields on their cash. Banks are ripping people off terribly.

John: It’s brutal.

Jordan: Drives me crazy. Here, the Federal Reserve raised three times in the last year, so what banks are doing is raising what they’re charging you on credit cards, student loans, car loans, small business loans, everything else they’re raising the prime rate and so on. But they’re not raising what they’re paying you on deposits. So, bank profit margins are widening, which is great for banks and bank shareholders. But the poor depositor is left there, like, how about me, why don’t I get an interest rate increase, you know.

So, I’ve got a solution that’s helped an awful lot of people and hopefully can help your listeners as well. I’m involved in something called the secured real estate fund, which gives people an eight percent yield over one year with monthly checks, it they wanna take checks fine, or if they wanna reinvest it. They can do it inside an IRA outside an IRA, it’s very safe. Had a long-term track record, website for that securedrealestatefunds.com. So, there’s a way the average person, minimum is $5,000.00 to get in to it, the average person can get eight percent instead of the bank earning zero. That’s got me very fired up.

John: So, Jordan, I honestly have no idea how you’re gonna answer the following because, you know, frankly you might know a lot, you might know a little, you might know something in between. But, just quick, we don’t have to spend a lot of time on this. What are your thoughts on Block Chain? What are your thoughts on cryptocurrency? What’s going on in this area?

Jordan: I’m very involved in that actually, I’ve gotta be, this is my field right, I couldn’t ignore something like that. I think it’s going much much higher. As far as Bitcoin specifically, there’s currently about 16 million Bitcoins out there, the total that could ever be created is 21 million. So, there’s limited supply and huge huge demand. I heard recently that places like Coinbase are adding 100,000 customers a day.

John: Yeah, it’s crazy.

Jordan: They went from zero to like 13 million customers last year and it’s not only U.S. Korea is big, Japan, China, India, all over the world. So, there’s huge demand for these things, I mean, it’s getting kind of bubblicious I would agree, but I think it’s going to go much much higher. Last year it went up about 1600 percent, something like that.

John: It feels a little tulipee from the Holland days, I don’t know.

Jordan: It is a little tulipee, but the difference is these are actually being used in real transactions.

John: Right, right.

Jordan: People are buying homes in Bitcoin, they’re getting paid salaries. McDonalds is gonna start taking Bitcoin at the counter. So, it is being used. Tulips are pretty to look at but they didn’t really have any use as such. But this actually does have use and there are other ones coming along as well, the hot new one now is called Ripple XRP.

John: Right.

Jordan: Which went from about $1.00 to about $3.00 in the last month or something like that. There are others coming. Some people say it’s just a fraud, it’s not a fraud, this is kind of the new gold, kind of think of it that way. So, it’s exciting, it’s dramatic it’s volatile, you’ve gotta learn about it and I’m very much in to it.

John: Yeah, you’ve gotta learn about it and there’s actually a Planet Money episode that just came out about Bitcoin which I found fascinating. And one thing they shared, which I think is interesting Jordan, to the point that you said about 21 million Bitcoins. There’s estimate four million Bitcoins already that are lost forever that will never be recovered. So, we’re actually talking about 17 million Bitcoins total that are gonna be out there. So, we’re talking about a very scarce commodity that frankly, again, is only gonna get more scarce because it’s pretty easy to lose your Bitcoin stuff –

Jordan: Yeah, apparently there’s one guy who had it on a flash drive and he threw it out and he went to the garbage dump to try to find it. He had like, 27 million dollars’ worth of Bitcoins –

John: Yes, that Brit, he was like a Brit.

Jordan: – on this flash drive, Britain guy correct. Crazy. Let me give you a one quick tip by the way.

John: Cool.

Jordan: If you don’t wanna play Coinbase and all that there’s a very simple stock the average person can buy which is called the Bitcoin Investment Trust, the symbol CBTC which last year started about $200.00 recently it was about $3,000.00. so, there’s a very simple way on the stock exchange you can buy and play the Bitcoin craze without having to actually go and do all the currencies and Coinbase and all that.

John: Well, let me go one step further there because, you know, like we just kind of shared, there’s Bitcoin, there’s Ethereum, there’s Ripple, there’s Litecoin, there’s Lyceum like there’s all those different things. There’s all these different things, one of those is gonna win, multiples are gonna lose, more are gonna come up all over the place. So, is there a more broad like crypto or block chain one like that that doesn’t necessarily have to focus on Bitcoin in case Bitcoin does lose but others still win?

Jordan: Well, there are gonna be funds, exchange traded funds and they’re gonna have a lot of them in there. They’re not out yet. The SEC is extremely cautious about this whole cryptocurrency area and they won’t wanna approve things too fast. But there will be kind of mutual funds; there are already hedge funds that have a bunch of different ones. I’ll tell you my source on this, there’s a place called Palm Beach Group in Florida that I find to be the most credible source on cryptos. And there’s a guy named Teeka Tiwari, who is like the guy, the crypto guy and he’s like a rock star in the financial world.

So, I’ve seen him at conferences and he gets rid of all the fluff and he’s the real guy that I follow in actually doing this. So, there are some legitimate people and it’s not only Bitcoin and the ones you mentioned. There are all kinds of other ones, come of which are legitimate a lot of which are not legitimate. So, there’s my source right there.

John: Now does a fund like GBTC, would that go up as a direct reflection of what Bitcoin is going up and down, like is it direct?

Jordan: Direct.

John: It’s direct.

Jordan: It’s only Bitcoin, it’s the Bitcoin Investment Trust.

John: Interesting.

Jordan: It doesn’t involve the other ones but there’s PurePlay that the average person doesn’t know about and again had you gotten in to that a year ago it would’ve been up well over 1000 percent.

John: Incredible, absolutely incredible. Palm Beach Group is the other resource that he mentioned, Fire Nation, so check it out.

Jordan: Correct.

John: And Jordan, your dropping value bombs, more coming up when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Jordan, are you ready to rock the lightning round?

Jordan: I’m absolutely ready to rock the lightning round.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Jordan: So, I was at Money Magazine, part of Time Incorporated for 18 years and there’s a certain safety and a comfort and kind of mother [inaudible] [00:16:15] who’s gonna take care of you. You get your salary, you get your benefits. To jump out of that takes some guts and so, I didn’t just jump I had my other boats ready before I left boat A. I didn’t just like jump in to the water, boat B was already floating. So, my speeches and my website was already up and some of my books were already rolling. It’s doing a transition, a lot of people just like quit their job and just say, now I’m ready. That’s not a good way to do it.

You’ve gotta kind of do it in a gradual way so that you know plan B is actually gonna work for you.

John: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Jordan: The key word in business is leverage, okay. And by leverage, I don’t mean debt, I mean leveraging your relationships and finances and contacts with those of others. And this is what I’ve done for many many years. You as an individual can only do so much yourself but If you combine your efforts and knowledge with those of others, there’s no limit as to what you can do. So, I just gave you an example, we talked about the mortgage equity optimization. I’ve been telling people about that for over ten years, they’ve have over 50,000 customers have changed their lives by paying their mortgage off much much faster.

So, I know about it, I can tell people about it, I don’t actually do it but I can refer people to people that do help you go through the whole process. So, the two of us combined help 50,000 people. Whereas they couldn’t have done it and I couldn’t have done it individually, the combination of the two to leverage it’s just incredibly explosive.

John: What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?

Jordan: Building relationships and I do that a lot. I’m constantly adding new affiliates. I have a very open mind and the world shows up with amazing things that you never expect. So, that’s my habit to be open, I get all kinds of solicitations. I don’t just say no automatically, a lot of people just say no, I’m willing to listen. And sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t but keeping an open mind to build new relationships makes the difference.

John: Recommend one internet resource?

Jordan: So, for small business people they have a hard time getting loans from banks in many cases. Which is a whole alternative kind of ecosystem out there to allow kind of a clearing house to get small business to allow them to get loans. My favorite one’s called corporatelendingsolutions.com. So, they tap in to hedge funds and all kinds of alternative ways of getting loans to small businesses. Now typically not startups, but they will get loans to people based on cashflow, not credit ratings or assets. Banks like assets, they like stuff they can seize if you don’t make the payments.

Well, in the world, particularly that you’re dealing with, you’re not dealing with assets, okay, it’s all virtual. So, if you’re running a website or an app or something like that, there’s nothing to seize basically, but you may have good cashflow. So, using a place like this corporatelendingsolutions.com based on cashflow you can get really good loans at low interest rates that most people don’t even know exist.

John: Jordan, you’ve written a lot of books. Recommend one of your books that Fire Nation should start with that of course, could lead to a great waterfall. But’s the one that, we the listener, the entrepreneur should start with?

Jordan: Well, I would say, Master Your Money Type, I did a book on how your financial personality affects your financial outcome, I guess you might say. And I separate people in to six different money types, I could go in to the details of them but basically the six types are in no particular order; striver, which is what a lot of you people are, high rollers, coasters, ostriches, squirrels, and debt desperados. Those are my six types.

John: Now, are these all on Audible?

Jordan: Yes, it’s on Audible and you can download it as a PDF from moneyanswers.com. And just really enjoy, if you’re dating somebody or you’re gonna marry somebody, know what they’re money type is too. It’s not a bad thing to have two different money types. But if you’ve got –

John: You’ve got to know it.

Jordan: – two high rollers you’re asking for trouble, there’s no safety net, okay. If you’ve got two squirrels, they’re sitting there holding on to their nuts, not enjoying life at all. So, sometimes combining the two money types can be kind of fun.

John: Jordan, what’s one book that you didn’t write that you love, that you think Fire Nation should read?

Jordan: So, there’s a recent one by Rick Edelman called The Truth About Your Money, The Money Guide You Need Now Later and Much Later, and it’s about the future of money and what all the new technologies that are coming and how you can invest in those. Just think about what’s happening JLD. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, driverless cars, 3D printing, biotechnology. There’s all these major developments that are going on that are disrupting businesses left and right. You can be a victim of that or you can be a victor with that. So, this kind of goes through all the different technologies and how it’s affecting things.

And then tells you in fact, how you can invest in these things. And I’ll just give you one tip from the book, there’s an exchanged traded fund called XT, that’s the symbol for it, which is exponential technologies and there’s one fund right there that has the 200 biggest and fastest growing companies in the world using exponential technology. So, without having to be an expert yourself you’re benefiting from all the growth in all these industries all around the world.

John: Now, real quick, let’s just say we have $100,000 to invest, just hypothetically that’s the total dollar amount, like what percentage of our overall investment do you think is good for like, to put in to a GBTC and then to put in to an XT, what’s that explore percentage that you’re comfortable with?

Jordan: Well, if you’re younger meaning 20s and 30s, I would put most of it in growth because you don’t need the money for 20 or 30 or 40 years. If you’re 60 and you can’t afford to have things go down then be much more conservative with it. Do, something like the secured real estate fund, where you can get an eight percent yield without having your principle being at risk. But if you’re young, 20s, 30s something like that, put most of it in S&P 500, XT, GBTC, things that have a lot of growth potential. Because in the long run you need your capital to grow because you’re gonna live a long time.

John: So, do you do like the index funds?

Jordan: I do, for most people, and I would mix it up. Don’t only do the S&P 500 that’s the big blue chips, but do some mid-cap, small cap, international. If you do those four, you know, the big, medium, small, and international you’re gonna beat most other people at very low cost automatically without ever having to think about it. And that’s true inside a 401K as well as in an IRA, not in a regular account. Just make it simple for yourself, most people don’t have the time or inclination to pick individual stocks.

John: Right, for instance, Fidelity has a total market index fund and then an international index fund, would those tow cover it?

Jordan: That would be fine, that’s a broader index, Vanguard has the same kinds of things. But what you’re doing is, you have very low management fees when you have an index like that and that means you get to keep more of the money that grows. So, sure a total market index fund would be fine, international one but you should have exposure to mid-cap and small cap as well. So, some combination of those, put it on automatic pilot and you’ll do just fine.

John: Dollar cost average baby, keep on going in every month on the month –

[Crosstalk]

Jordan: Keep adding automatically and then when the price goes down you buy more and when the price is up you buy less without even thinking about it.

John: Love it. So, Jordan, tell us where we can find you, I know you have a gift for Fire Nation and then we’ll say goodbye.

Jordan: My website is moneyanswers.com, I’ve got all kinds of videos and links and TV things showing me giving speeches, just all kinds of stuff including my various books as well. Love to take emails from your listeners as well on all these different topics. I get back to people; this is how I love to interact with people and so on. My gift is I bet a lot of y our listeners have student loans and that is a huge problem. We have $1.4 trillion –

John: Huge.

Jordan: – in student loans outstanding right now and the average person is graduating with $38,000.00 and a lot of people with way way more than that. So, it’s just a crushing debt for an awful lot of people. So, here’s my gift to Fire Nation, if you go to a place called credible.com, put moneyanswers, they know it’s me that way, you get $200.00 off your first loan payment. Now, what they do they re-finance your student loans in to one new loan at typically two to three percent interest rate. Instead of paying four or five or private loans ten or much higher, you combine it all in to one at a lower rate and help you pay them off quicker. If you say moneyanswers you get $200.00 off your first payment right there.

So, there’s my gift to Fire Nation.

John: And it’s a huge gift Fire Nation, if you can cut your interest rate in half plus get $200.00 get kicked in to it at once, what are you waiting for credible.commoneyanswers. Don’t forget about moneyanswers.com, check it out and of course, you’re the average Fire Nation of the five, count them, five people you spend the most time and you’ve been hanging out with JG and JLD today. So, keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com type Jordan in the search bar, his show on this page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. So, if you don’t remember, GBTC because that’s a lot of letters, that’ll be there and it’s all there.

Jordan, thank you for sharing your journey with Fire Nation. For that brother, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Jordan: Thanks very much JLD.