In today's episode we are joined by three members of the WealthBuilders Community: Chris Henry, Paul Watson, and Mark Stokes. Make sure to tune in to find out how they used a SSAS pension to leave their corporate jobs to grow their own business and wealth.
What is a SSAS Pension? SSAS stands for Small Self Administered Scheme. It’s a type of pension that is available to business owners, and allows access to private pension funds before the age of 55. In this episode you’ll hear from 3 members of the WealthBuilders Community who have transitioned from corporate jobs and used their pension in the form of a SSAS to start and grow their own businesses and build their wealth.
Show contributors - Chris Henry, Paul Watson, Mark Stokes.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Are you eligible for a SSAS Pension? Find out here - https://www.wealthbuilders.co.uk/ssaseligibility
Mark Stokes SSAS Pensions book on Amazon
Register for free access to the WealthBuilders Membership Site to watch the pension videos mentioned in this episode - https://www.wealthbuilders.co.uk/resources
Click Here To Find Out More About The WealthBuilders Foundation Programme
Links to all WealthTalk podcast episodes can be found at www.wealthbuilders.co.uk/wealthtalk
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Unknown Speaker 0:11 Hello, welcome to welcome to Episode 18. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for wealth builders and I am joined this week by Mr. Kevin Wayland founder. How you doing, Kevin? I'm doing very well, Chris. And again, I'm a bit remote from you today
Unknown Speaker 0:26
hoping the hoping all the tech works and the quality is good for for both sides. Yeah. Well, we had lots of good feedback from last week's episode, which was love talk 17. And we were looking last week at this incredible amount of money that seems to be floating around out there, which is the last pension money. And we heard from three of our members, who between them had rediscovered 400,000 pounds worth that they really had just kind of, you know, dismissed almost and just just with very little effort, and we heard the different way
Unknown Speaker 1:00
going about that managed to trace that last pension money.
Unknown Speaker 1:04
Yeah. And it's fascinating as you as you think about the obstacle that people put in the way that this feels like, too big a job, or who do I contact? or How hard would this be? But if you look at the hourly rate that was achieved by each of those, you know, maybe no more than an hour spent by each, and one made 45 grand an hour, the other one made 100 grand an hour and, and Chris made 250 grand an hour. I mean, I don't know about you, Chris. But that's a pretty healthy return on investment. It sure is. Yeah, you know, and that's just three people who were proximate, you know, it's not like three people in a year. This is three people in a week. So we'd love to hear that. Somebody else did that. And maybe, maybe the what we can do, Chris is just think about
Unknown Speaker 1:49
putting together even if it's just a little checklist, you know, where or suggest even now that people just was like a CV, you know, write down their national insurance number, so they know where that
Unknown Speaker 2:00
is not typical define it's on your payslip or you p 60 or so on your tax return if you're self employed and then just lyst from education onwards to where you are now, you know, who did I work for? And you know,
Unknown Speaker 2:14
just cross check that I have a pension you know, if I even if you're not sure, just give them a call, you know, and see if be like a kid on that journey of discovery, you know, just to find a little treasure chest
Unknown Speaker 2:28
you know, like my remember when my son was younger, he was always out chasing Pokemon you know, let's go out and chase pensions and have a bit of fun with it and see if people can tell us, Hey, you know what, I took your advice and I found 10 Grand 10 grand is incredible. You know, look, okay, these three would much larger than that, but, but 10,000 quid is is, you know, not an unhealthy return for an hour's worth of time. So, you know, I do that every day of the week. Even though I don't normally like to trade time for money. I do that one.
Unknown Speaker 3:00
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think for anyone listening to share the message with others, I was out having dinner with some friends during the week and, you know, just mentioned this, and my friend was like, I'm absolutely going to do that, you know, there's definitely a couple of old employers that I need to track down. So, yeah, share the message, because, you know, we actually talked about a figure 10 billion last week, but we have a little bit more research this week, we've seen that that figure actually could be near a 20 billion, which is, you know, there's a lot of people's money out there that needs to be reclaimed. Yeah. And I think the other half actually, because the you have to look at the source of the information and the source of the 10 billion was, I think, all to do with insurance. So that's money in insurance company funds. But remember, as I explained in the pension, podcast, the initial one, there are two main sources on there. There's kind of money and parts that insurance companies typically and then there's money in benefits, which is related to years of service and a job and you know, nobody counted that because the insurance have no way of doing that.
Unknown Speaker 4:00
But I think, another organization, you know, counter that and said, Hey, it could be 20 billion, you know, so. So whether it's money in a part, whether it's a few years of service that you just forgotten about, just you know,
Unknown Speaker 4:12
take the time and just find out and let us know. And don't forget, Chris, if you had dinner with someone, press them again and say, hey, how did you get on? It's always good to to nudge people and that's all part of the benefit. I think of why wealth builders is a community, isn't it? We buddy people up and try and help help them nudge each other to get things done, because it's easy to put things off and like getting them. Yeah, indeed. I think it's just worth mentioning as well for anyone listening who may be just picked up on the wealth talk podcast, you know, in the last few weeks, and hopefully enjoying listening to, to us discuss, you know, these different areas, but I would definitely recommend going back and listening some of the earlier episodes because everything we've come to now Kevin is is really centered around the Seven Pillars of wealth.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
We kind of laid the foundation for that in the earlier episodes. And what we're doing now over the next few weeks is actually going through each of these Seven Pillars individually. And we started with pillar one couple of weeks ago, which was home capacity. And obviously last week, we started on pillar two, which was pensions and today with the sticking with pensions, because anyone who heard last week's interviews would have heard this term SAS being mentioned. And when we say SAS, we're talking s s as Would you like to explain a little bit more about what exactly a SAS pension is? Kevin? Yeah, so So, you know, as I said before, whenever you're on a journey, to create wealth, there is always going to be some new language and and that's true of the principles of wealth building are like our allies, for example, and we've touched on that many, many times now. And the different oros and also when you get into each individual pillar, whether it's property or pensions or investments or
Unknown Speaker 6:00
business or IP or, you know, joint ventures, there's always a new piece of language so, so it's always important to stop and learn the language, just to make sure you embed that you don't feel overwhelmed by it. So SAS isn't complicated. It's just an awkward title. So it's not SMS, it's not, you know, the armed forces in a, in a curious way. It's not software as a service as as, but it does actually link to the thought of a subscription model because it's a way to create recurring income for yourself. So just as as, as is subscription based software. This is a subscription based pension where you can generate high levels of recurring income in short, small self administered scheme is a very small piece of the pensions landscape, which is broken down as I've said earlier on, if you think about it, is you know, on one side of the coin, we've got the big insurance company
Unknown Speaker 7:00
pensions, you know, the, all the big organizations who manage money. On the other side of the coin, you can imagine flipping a coin on the other side. So heads of the insurance tails is the big, the big employers, you know, and I mentioned loads of those who've had final salary pension schemes in the past and I think we mentioned Marks and Spencers and Tesco and all sorts of different organizations and
Unknown Speaker 7:27
there's lots of them around. And but if by chance, the coin landed on its edge
Unknown Speaker 7:35
and that very slim edge that represents the balance between the two is something which is known as a member directed scheme. In other words, instead of being relying on your employer, instead of relying on an insurer,
Unknown Speaker 7:50
you take responsibility for self. So it's no surprise that self administered scheme or small self in scale
Unknown Speaker 8:00
Welcome back to that. And second is about self. And this isn't about being an insurance company or being an employer. It's about being responsible for money, which you can now do something with. And that money smarter. risky means small means less than 12 people. In other words, it's designed to be operated by people and families and small businesses. It's not meant to be the massive schemes that you will see, you know, where there's thousands and thousands and thousands of members. It's meant to be managed and controlled in that way. So that small self means you now so in an insurance company, you know, it's the insurer who's responsible, they legally are the owner of the scheme because a trust which is pensions always written under rules of trust and some benefits of that which I guess I'll come on to during the course of this session on pensions, but one of the things
Unknown Speaker 9:00
huge benefits of trust is tax free. And it's enhanced this tax free income tax free corporation tax free capital gains tax free, I don't have to do any more taxes CRISPR. That's, you know, pretty tax free. So it's a tax free Trust Fund, run by yourself or up to 11 people. So you can buy a big family together or small business together. And scheme is just another word in law for pension. So, small self administered scheme means a pension plan, run by the people who own it. They take control, and then they invest that money in the way that they think reflects their wealth dynamic, reflects their past experience reflects the future direction of where they want to go. And as a real incredible opportunities I'm sure you heard here from the three participants today. You know, who shared their knowledge and their experiences Chris, they will have all learned something that they do.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
didn't know before. And this is a really key thing about how the suspension can works. It's it can facilitate your personal growth and an increase in your personal ROI. That's a return on your intellect you become a smarter investor, it increases your financial ROI return on investment. And because you're building this, and it's a trust fund, it never ends. So it means you can pass that on to the next generation, and the one after that, and the one after that, so you're building a, almost like a
Unknown Speaker 10:35
wisdom inside the SAS as you learn more and do more. And then you can invite your children and family members in from age 18. You have to be a team to be a trustee. That's the technical definition of somebody who's runs a scheme as trustee. And while it more sounds quite complicated, isn't it's teachable. it's manageable for people who are saying
Unknown Speaker 11:00
was about building their wealth because wealth is a business. Even in your mind building wealth is like a business. And a SAS is a pension scheme that's run just like a business. And you know, it's a business has a board of directors, a SAS is a board of trustees. That's the same. A business makes profit on which you pays tax. A SAS makes profit, but it's tax free, as I mentioned. So that's pretty busy. And you know what a pension or a company has to report to the revenue every year what they're doing. And that has to happen in a SAS, it's an annual reporting system, because all these things are done. There's, there are people like us and and others who provide that support and that education and that training to make this highly, highly possible and interesting and pleasurable for people to get involved in. But anyway, I could wax on about services all day long, because I love them. You know, I'm assassinated.
Unknown Speaker 12:00
Myself and my wife, and I've got, you know, three kids who are all grown up now. So, you know, I'm slowly but surely bringing them into the long term plan. And, and I think maybe we'll touch on that on another podcast, Chris, how we've people have brought their kids in, maybe that's a realization, that would be fascinating. Can you imagine, you know, somebody bringing their kids into a pension plan with an insurance company or their old employer and just simply would not happen? Yeah, it all links into one of the wealth, better values about passing on fantastic legacy, doesn't it along with the wisdom that you accumulated along the way? So you pass on not just money, you pass on wisdom, but But enough of that? Why don't we hear from some of the people who have experienced this for themselves, so it's not just me, it's real, other people, all with different levels of experience and all with different levels of
Unknown Speaker 12:55
where they started, but what's true of all of them, I think, is they were all employed people.
Unknown Speaker 13:01
That's right now. So you know, and then became wealth building business owners. And of course, all of them in the long term are now business owners. But they didn't necessarily start off as business owners their wealth took them in that direction, and will be great to hear from them and maybe just debrief on some of the key lessons after that. Absolutely. So we've got three members of the wealth builders community here in three different ways in which they've utilized the funds from their SaaS. And let's head on over and listen to those right now.
Unknown Speaker 13:39
Okay, so I'm with Chris Henry. Welcome to wealth talk, Chris. overstimulated very, very well. Thank you. Now we're talking today about SAS pensions and the different ways in which the funds can be used. Now, I know you've used your pension to lend to other people. So would you mind telling us bit more about how you've gone about that? Absolutely, Christine. Hopefully you'll feel some of the passion coming through mother
Unknown Speaker 14:00
As I'm talking about this because SAS has been a complete game changer for Tracy, myself and my family, so I really enjoy sharing the story you've been through. So if I just tell you a little bit give you a bit of background if that's all right to me, my background is is accounting and finance so how do you like the number side of life? I also like people
Unknown Speaker 14:20
and I found out about Sastre Kevin Whelan and wealth builders
Unknown Speaker 14:25
as an accountant working for a bank and got no concept of what was actually possible with my final sorry pension scheme. And I'm embarrassed to say that was that I was the person that used to grab the scrub the statement, look at it and bring it in the drawer and you know, it's it's with the power of knowledge is quite incredible. I think what you're going to establish Is that what you can do with a final sorry, pension so so I kept going to contact through a company called Well actually, which is a franchise that I bought the franchise for, and I wanted to find a way of actually acquiring the franchise quite a hefty investment using my pension.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
That was where the connection came with with Kevin sir. And that's where the journey started where I think, quite cautious. But Kevin told me how I could acquire the franchise use them a pension. And over a period of probably 12 months, it took me to really get to understand what the answer the puzzle was, both myself Tracy and my wife moved our pensions out into what is now our own songs. So that's that's kind of where the interface with stuff started. And this was kind of four years ago, August 2015, we established ourselves and transferred in and it's been a, an amazing journey since then, but and, you know, just to the question, Christine, where we started really was, was by lending, again, didn't appreciate when she got your pension out, you can lend it quite ironic that I left the bank and became a bank. I think I think the customer service with my bank is a lot better than it was when when I left that. Yeah, so again, being guided by Kevin and it starts with education, being educated on what you can do in a very controlled manner. We
Unknown Speaker 16:00
started to lend our funds out. And I think it's important
Unknown Speaker 16:04
to have a policy to follow to make sure you can protect yourself because this is all about legacy versus about passing on our assets to our kids. And having a clear set of criteria, which is what we had was where we started. So if I just run through those really quickly, we started off really just been interest interested in property only wanted to land on property. I like the idea of being able to touch what I'm lending against. The security of property for me is, is quite valuable. So property was a strategy. And what Karen has got around him as an amazing community of people and I've got varying levels of expertise. And we wanted to try to lend to people that were experts in prophecy so that they got a track record. I think that's the power of the community that Kevin's got a lot of people that have been to very strict due diligence. So you know, you're dealing with people that have got integrity and credibility. And that for me, is it protection for us. That's the first layer of it.
Unknown Speaker 17:00
who you're dealing with. And that, for me is the crucial part of the process. So lending against property.
Unknown Speaker 17:07
So these are developers that are looking for funds on their developments, we would generally take a first charge against that property, that's our policy. Again, always trying to protect yourself, only ever lending, no more than 75% of the valuation of their property were development. So we take evaluation on the development to make sure we can have those headroom. When we will end up getting good returns, you know, getting good returns against against the, against the,
Unknown Speaker 17:36
for ourselves and for our pension and for our future. So I think that that's that's kind of where we started. And now two or three of the deals we did with people. On average, people asked me an average, how much did you land and generally it was between 1500 and 50,000 pounds. That's what we're lending out to people did about eight, eight lending deals. Two of those were what we call lender learn
Unknown Speaker 18:01
Now London learn is where you're lending money and you trading a little bit of interest for quite a lot of knowledge. So you would you would lend a lower rate but you get the benefit of going out to see a developments going on to spend time with the people that are experts in a particular strategy and so there's a win for them it was a win for us. Now Tracy myself set off with a plan to learn property not realizing that he can actually be have property without learning it you can be an armchair investor. And once we learn to get through Kevin that you can do that. We can decide what we're going to do versus and that's the way it's pronounced. We've got a passive income now it comes through prophecy. And I haven't met any any of our tenants. We've got five eight channels at the moment. 3030 units 30 rooms. So that's gonna work. That's where we've got to look at all sources. Yeah, well, that's fantastic. So many lessons there wrapped up in in one and I like the way obviously that in a pension and allows you to actually purchase the business franchise.
Unknown Speaker 19:00
as well, which, you know, the people just I'm sure would never say that that's possible. Yeah. Well, that's brilliant. Thanks so much. And I think you've really displayed there many of the wealth builders values in terms of really taking proactive responsible hands on approach, you know, for your financial future there and, you know, wanting to pass on a fantastic legacy as well through through the work that you're doing. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing that story today with us, Chris.
Unknown Speaker 19:28
I'm with Paul Watson. Welcome to wealth talk, Paul. Thank you very much. So we're talking today about SAS pensions and the different ways in which the funds can be used. Now you've used your pension to do something which we call a loan back. So would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about that, please? Yes, sure. And so bit of background on me, I am already in property. So I run a portfolio of HMO houses and multiple occupation. We already had four up and running and we were in the process of working out the funding for our fifth property.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
Having come from a corporate background, I had my company pension and through my introductions to wealth builders, that was obviously transferred from a corporate pension into a SAS pension that along with advice from wealth builders, I'm managing with my wife. And having done a number of different just sort of standard investments, we were obviously introduced to the concept of a loan back. And the idea of being able to borrow a chunk of money from the pensions certainly worked for us for this next property. And with the acquisition of that property, obviously, you can't hold a residential property in your sass. So it's very clear that we couldn't use funds to buy the property, but that was okay because we had working capital. But the acquisition of the property meant that we used up all of our working capital, so we didn't have funds to do the extensions of the property that we wanted to do or the refurbishment work. And what our plans were for this property were quite chunky. So we will look
Unknown Speaker 21:00
at something just over a couple of hundred thousand pounds. And now luckily in the SAS, there was sufficient funds for that. So we were able to borrow just a little over 220,000. Obviously, the rules are that you can loan back up to 50% of your SAS. So we were sort of getting up towards that mark. But But we were able to borrow 220,000 that went from the SAS pension to our sponsoring company, which was the property operating company effectively. And then we were able to use that money to do a large extension to the property and a major refurbishment of the whole property. And under the normal rules of a loan back, you borrow the money at 1% above sort of Bank of England rate and at the time that we took it out the the interest rate was only a quarter percent. It's obviously gone up a little bit since then, but it was a quarter percent. So from my point of view, to be able to borrow money
Unknown Speaker 22:00
one and a quarter percent was a was a great opportunity. And one of the other key rules on a loan back is that the principal loan needs to be paid back over typically a period of a maximum of five years with the capital going back at sort of 20% a year.
Unknown Speaker 22:19
In this particular case, our initial intention was to to manage the whole of the reefer project within a 12 month time frame, that was certainly the going in intention. However, our friends at the planning world and I'm sure you have property people out there listening will be familiar with the planning world never quite goes according to plan. So actually, the overall timeline of the refurbishment, dribbled over the 12 months and ran to about 15 months. So what that meant was that we had to obviously find some funds which we were able to do to pay back 20% of that initial capital lump sum, so a little over 40,000 about 45,000
Unknown Speaker 23:00
We paid back. And that was fine. We had we had sufficient funds to do that. So we paid that, that back into the pension. And then at the point where the reefer was finished, which was around about 15 to 16 months after the project began, we refinance the house re mortgage debt obviously had a significant valuation uplift, we were able to pull out all of the referred funds back out of the property, and then we repaid that back into to the pension.
Unknown Speaker 23:31
So that was kind of what happened overall. Now obviously, some of the key points in there are
Unknown Speaker 23:38
the you know, being able to borrow up to 50% of your, your, your SAS amount. One of the key things that's required when you do something like that is the the security side of things and through conversations with wealth builders, learning from them advice from them, there were two key elements. One is that
Unknown Speaker 24:00
We needed to have a security trusty clause in the loan agreement. So that was obviously put in place. And then the other part of it was just, you know, what was I going to be using a security for that low. Now, for everybody that's doing SAS loan backs, it'll be a different amount. And it'll be different elements of security that they need to put against that that loan. In my particular case,
Unknown Speaker 24:25
my my father and I jointly owned the property that he and my mom were, you know, happily married in for goodness knows how many years when my mom passed away, that property came or her half of the property came to me. So I'm on the title deed, that property is unencumbered. And so I've been able to use that property as the security against the the loan that I took out from my pension.
Unknown Speaker 24:50
So yeah, I think hopefully that gives you a bit of an overview as to what we what we did, how much we borrowed, what it was used for, and the sort of timeframes Yeah, that's
Unknown Speaker 25:00
fantastic example. Thank you very much for sharing that with us today, Paul. So I'm with Mark Stokes. Welcome to wealth talk, Mark. Thank you very much Christian. How are you? Yeah. Excellent today. Thank you. Now, Mark, you've used your pension to enable you to focus on commercial property. Would you mind giving our listeners a bit more of an understanding around how you've been able to achieve this? Yeah, brilliant. And first of all, thank you for inviting me on to your excellent podcast wealth talk. So I retired about four years ago, from 26 years of corporate life. And as part of taking control of my personal economy. We created a SAS very quickly, so we've had one for nearly four years now. And given my background in real estate and construction and infrastructure, commercial property was right up there front and center. For one of our acquisition and investment strategies, my background has always been about bank grade due diligence, and that was a natural momentum and inertia from corporate life and we were able to apply that and continue
Unknown Speaker 26:00
To apply that to commercial property development and long term hold investment decisions, in fact, I actually wrote a book on exactly that subject commercial to residential conversions. And now with our SAS, in particular, our assets acquired very quickly a lovely five story Edwardian terrorist block which was used for commercial property. And we acquired that and worked very hard on it for quite some months and achieved a planning gain and subsequently sold that out for later development by others. So that was one particular example Christian of where we created catalytic value within the SAS, which which was wonderful. So there's there's just one example and would you like to hear some more? Yes, please do.
Unknown Speaker 26:51
So we are eco group business. We do a lot of commercial to residential conversions and many of our investors in scheme
Unknown Speaker 27:00
In each development may come from private high net worth or from SAS trustees. So that's another area where we use SAS to enable others
Unknown Speaker 27:10
learning and advancing. So it's about creating shared value. Now, one particular
Unknown Speaker 27:17
commercial acquisition we acquired was, was only last September, and we're literally finishing it now. We're now recording this in in late May 2019.
Unknown Speaker 27:29
And in nine months, we've created the acquisition of five commercial properties all side by side in in one, one cluster.
Unknown Speaker 27:40
we've acquired planning permission to convert the offers into three residential property and through a little bit, a little bit of structuring not too sophisticated. We've been able to create five commercial properties with brand new,
Unknown Speaker 27:58
fully repair and ensure leases
Unknown Speaker 28:00
So we have tendency for between 10 and 18 years, and we have set out to our managing agent. And literally that will be a long term hold for us. And with the planning permission, we're selling those uppers, which will become three apartments and they'll all be complete by mid June and they will be held outside of ourselves. So we have made maintaining compliance and governance at all times. So that will create as a combined 75,000 pounds a year forever. income stream is on a conservative level.
Unknown Speaker 28:37
But what I find really fascinating Christian is I reflect quite a lot and then utilize the skills over many years. And on that particular opportunity.
Unknown Speaker 28:48
I calculated out my personal contributions and returns in my pension over 26 years of corporate life has now been doubled. Equipment
Unknown Speaker 29:00
doubled by that one transaction in nine months. So approximately half a million have forced equity into that one development equates to all of my 25 years of pension contributions and the returns and I find that absolutely staggering. And then if that isn't the catalytic power for SAS light in action, then I don't know what is just wonderful. No, that is quite incredible and very inspiring indeed, Mark, and in what way as wealth builders helped you along some of that journey, Mark? Well, a number of ways actually. I first met Kevin, a couple of years ago, we already had our SAS but we we probably wanted to increase the the engagement level with our with our corporate trustee. So wealth builders became our corporate trustee. We did a takeover process. Kevin and Lars and the team, they came in and supported as no believer
Unknown Speaker 30:00
We're really turning up the heat under our SAS and enabling our personal economy. So that's one particular area. And then of course, wealth builders, and my organization SAS Alliance, were strategic partners together so we're spreading the great word of SAS pensions, but also how to engage with SAS pensions in a responsible manner. We both share that understanding that duty of care and the due diligence, so we work side by side, hand in glove and it is just wonderful working with with so many SAS trustees, who are wealth builder,
Unknown Speaker 30:36
SAS members, as well as SAS Alliance members, so many different ways, shapes and forms and it's a wonderful relationship. Yeah, certainly. Yes. Well, thank you very much for sharing your story today on wealth talk, Mark. No problem anytime, Christian. Okay, so three very different examples there of how SAS has been used. Kevin, should we should we start with Chris with the land and learn strategy there?
Unknown Speaker 31:00
Yeah, I mean, the thing to note about Chris is, you know, Chris was a banker
Unknown Speaker 31:08
and an accountant. So what does that give you an impression of caution? diligence, you know, solid approach to things. Now, I don't know if Chris, you know, would, I'm sure it'd be okay for me to mention that. him and his wife took good 12 months to make their mind up. And you know, quite rightly, they wanted to really think it through and that's fine. There's no hurry into SAS. SAS is for life. Once you make that decision, and now we have Chris is a banker. What was logical for him was to see the money that he accepted into his ass, basically, is a large cash lump sum that came in, he became a bank and why wouldn't he bring the knowledge of the banking industry with all of the risk mitigation measures they have in play?
Unknown Speaker 32:00
And simply built his wealth by doing exactly what a bank paid. You know,
Unknown Speaker 32:06
so being a banker becoming a bank makes absolute sense. Because you're not learning everything from scratch. It's not like how to learn loads, you'd already brought decades of experience, and just made his pension be a reflection of who he was in the past. But as you saw from his lending and learning, he wanted to build an additional skill in addition to that, and that connection came from within wealth builder community, a brilliant guy up in the northeast, in fact, and, you know,
Unknown Speaker 32:37
and we're delighted that that connection has worked for both things. But also, you know, Chris, when he moved on from banking, he became a business coach. And now he's so excited about what he's been doing in his house. He's, you know, you can't hold him back really, if you meet Chris. It's almost like he's becoming part of the wealth coaching process now. You know, he can't stop telling other people about what to do.
Unknown Speaker 33:00
So you can see that all of Chris's dramatically and if you saw the numbers dramatically changed his life around massive pension compared to what he would have had before access to the money much earlier than the normal retirement database banking scheme. And the opportunity to build a business, the opportunity to build a new business in property, but also to build on the strengths and the foundations you already had locked in place. So Chris is a brilliant example of why SAS can be right when people take their time. He did take careful advice, proper financial advice. And we need to keep saying that, Chris, that while we're giving stories of what people have done, they're always always always are looking to make sure that they've taken professional advice before they finally make their Amanda.
Unknown Speaker 33:48
And last our three guests, they're all talking about property. You know, we must emphasize the SAS can be used for other things, not just property. Yeah, I mean, I think it's relevant
Unknown Speaker 34:00
That in the UK, I think we have a love affair with property and it's logical. But Chris expanded his coaching business, didn't he? So that's not a bad thing to do as well. So that's, you know, that's a genuine business and might be, you know, useful to kind of catch up with what Paul Paul was up to. Yeah, Paul did the loan back. So mentioned a, you know, had the funds to purchase the property, but then would have been out of funds to do all the work that he needed. So he took up to 50% of his his pension partner SAS, which, which, obviously, is the law there. And that allowed him then to obviously accelerate that and make a good return. And there was some good lessons there from Paul's whole story. Yeah, I think, you know, the point is that there's
Unknown Speaker 34:48
there's an assumption that many people make, that somehow pensions and property are simply not possible to combine like oil and water. But if you use the
Unknown Speaker 35:00
The appropriate rule of law and alone back is a method of doing that. There are rules and regulations and we won't go into details of those, but they're not that difficult to learn. In
Unknown Speaker 35:11
fact, you know, we have a training module specifically for that. But let's just think about that. So he access money
Unknown Speaker 35:18
for property, which he owns outside of the pension, and he paid an interest rate back to himself, which he grew inside the pension.
Unknown Speaker 35:28
So in a sense, then what Paul's been able to do is build wealth in his pension and out of his pension, but he had control of that he had control of the choice. Is there any other pension that allows that to happen? I don't think so. Because there is no access to any pension at all. No personal pension, no occupational pension will allow an individual access. Now you've got to have a company and obviously Paul has a limited company where he was buying and developing property.
Unknown Speaker 36:00
But also he got access to those funds at very low cost. So cheaper than, you know, being able to get access to that, say in a conventional mortgage. And if we remember pillar one, when Carol had taken money from the equity in our home, bottom of property, she couldn't have gone because she couldn't have got a mortgage on it and then simply paid itself back. This is exactly the same thing, except the capacity that's been accessed here by Paul was inside of his pension, not inside of the piece of property, we see how the principles are the same. It was leveraging one asset and using in another and understanding how you manage the risk. But either way, you know what it's done is given Christian, given Paul rather an incredible leverage return on money that he left it where it was, would have simply not performed the same level. So he's winning both ways.
Unknown Speaker 36:52
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, we've talked on previous episode humbly about creating value, wealth flows to value and and all of these, you know,
Unknown Speaker 37:00
have used their their backgrounds, their their knowledge, their skills in the areas that they they understood and they were able to obviously then deliver value through the assassin none more so really the mark Stokes there who has that commercial understanding and so it made perfect sense to Topsy focus on those kind of projects with his ass. Well, absolutely. And you know, you know,
Unknown Speaker 37:21
Mark has got a an incredible commercial background and he was a true collaborator as you'll know from his sassy Scott there for people in the SAS. So, you know, comes at it from the point of view of always looking for ways to find shared value, always looking for ways to collaborate ethically. And in the same way, you know, he's able to facilitate the use of this this money owned by four people, right. So normally, can you combine four pensions together now you can't. You can't get four employees working for a big company, put them together or for people with insurance company parts. You can't do that. You can
Unknown Speaker 38:00
do that in SAS is a true tool of collaboration. And again, him and his business partners are holding assets both inside and outside of their pension. But it's the pension that's facilitated down. And, you know, although Mark has got a significant more knowledge, I suppose, then where Chris started and where Paul started in the type of projects, which is more the sort of commercial conversions into residential units. Again, special rules apply for that. But nonetheless, if the use of that money can turn one deal into a half a million pounds worth of equity, and that's just one deal. how big an impact on that from an ROI perspective is that I mean, that's life changing for many people, you know, so, as I've said before, Chris, the ROI that these guys are now seeking because they're in control of that money, instead of being off their radar instead of it being an
Unknown Speaker 39:00
Pop that's Do Not Disturb till 65. They're bringing it to life every single day in their businesses. And therefore they can be seeking that magic ROI. That one relationship, that one opportunity, that one idea. And each one of them has done that. So with with Chris, he found a relationship with Paul, he found his own opportunity. And Mark found his own opportunity. So they're not creating new ideas. There's no IP being created here. But he's there.
Unknown Speaker 39:33
Now, Mark was so impressed with what he's done, how he's done it. He's gone on and written a book.
Unknown Speaker 39:39
Yeah. Now does that.
Unknown Speaker 39:42
Remember anybody writing a book about my personal pension, you know, so now he's written a book about it and so impressed with what he's done. He's created IP. So and now I think that book is selling so well on Amazon and he's able to teach this so
Unknown Speaker 40:00
Not if he wants for business, but also because he's just a great collaborator and a great sharer. So, you know,
Unknown Speaker 40:07
he's enjoying it, you know, in, did he enjoy the money in his pension? No, I think I remember him saying, you know, all I did was my strategy was I just read the pension statement once a year, and hope it will do better next year. Now look at it, it's a completely different relationship.
Unknown Speaker 40:24
And as these kids are growing up, I absolutely know that what they're trying to do with their families is bringing the kids slowly in so that they become part of the legacy plan, which is an important, very, very important part, actually, for all three
Unknown Speaker 40:41
of our contributors today. So I'd like to thank them for the contribution and the lessons that we've been able to bring out of that, but these are three out of, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds.
Unknown Speaker 40:52
So it would be definitely good to see what other people have done other than property, but to give a real good summary of how
Unknown Speaker 41:00
Three people from different backgrounds have used their money to help their business and build more property. Wow. I mean, that's a success story, isn't it? It sure is. Yeah. And I think just to clarify, Kevin, because I'm not sure we've actually touched on it in this episode, someone listening who, you know, this is kind of new information and thinking about the, the age limits that often apply with pensions. Just to clarify here, we have a SAS, are there any age limits? Or what are the age limits? I should ask
Unknown Speaker 41:28
18
Unknown Speaker 41:31
I'd say you know, all you need to do is be 18.
Unknown Speaker 41:36
Obviously, most of our clients are not 1830s 40s
Unknown Speaker 41:40
and 50s. Right. So you know, so there's no age limit. You have to be a business owner. And as long as you take good, careful advice and you know what you're doing and you have a good plan, then you can bring pensions from old world, you know, part of your history and bring them into a SAS to be a part of the future. And the
Unknown Speaker 42:00
Is what you can do and all they need to do. If anybody's curious about that, check out the resources, you know, slowly, slowly take a leaf out of Chris's book, you know, take time, learn the lessons, make connections, find out who's done things, you know, really get to grips with it, you it's not for everybody, right? It can't be for everybody. Because you have to be entrepreneurial. You have to be willing to take responsibility, willing to get involved, willing to be a person who adds value. If you're not willing to do those things assesses the wrong thing to be considering, you know,
Unknown Speaker 42:36
then in a way, most people who don't really bring any value don't really bring any wealth to themselves and they end up relying on that home equity and downsizing too late and a bit of pension where they have to manage the uncertainty of how are all converts into income in the future and stock market volatility and the same thing with investments. So
Unknown Speaker 43:00
A pretty difficult place. So for those people who we meet with, and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds a month, you know,
Unknown Speaker 43:08
telling us they want to build their wealth and they're willing to take that responsibility. You know, have a look at some of the people doing that and learning lessons on our Facebook group.
Unknown Speaker 43:17
Just take your time and explore it because you know, that one or one ROI and you know, seek that one idea, this might be an idea for you, if you've never heard of it, just explore it. And if you resonate with, with us at wealth builders, we'd love to help you if you resonate with somebody else, get help from somebody else, but either way, just take time to explore it. And maybe to make it even easier, and why don't I put just a link together for someone who is listening right now and thinks this, you know, could be something to explore further. So I'll put a just a simple form for anyone who wants to just make an inquiry and just see you know, if they are eligible, perhaps for for SAS, and so that why don't I do the link wealth builders.co.uk forward slash
Unknown Speaker 44:00
SAS eligibility so that the SS as eligibility and anyone listening right now you can just pop along to that and and and then get in touch with one of our team Yeah sure. So I hope that's good lessons learned for this week's podcast Chris maybe we're still not done with pensions yet so need to have a think about what we'll do the next one because it's it is the biggest topic of all because it's where most people in the UK you know are building their their future wealth upon really so we need to do it justice before we move on. No problem. We'll round things off in next week's wealth talk. Thanks again Kevin for today. You're welcome Chris. As always
Transcribed by https://otter.ai