In this episode, Josh Krafchick, founder of 369 Financial, shares his journey from being a financial advisor to starting his own financial advisory firm. He emphasizes the importance of educating clients and helping them build wealth strategically. He discusses the pitfalls of traditional financial institutions and their focus on sales rather than the best interests of clients. Josh also highlights the misconceptions around whole life insurance policies and the need for a comprehensive financial plan. He advises investors to take calculated risks and adapt their investment strategies throughout their lifetime.
Listen To The Podcast Here
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What’s Covered In This Episode
- In this episode we’ll cover:
- Traditional financial institutions often prioritize sales over the best interests of clients.
- Whole life insurance policies may not be the best option for building wealth due to high commissions and limited growth potential.
- A comprehensive financial plan should consider factors such as investment strategy, expenses, and retirement goals.
- Investors should take calculated risks and adapt their strategies to take advantage of market opportunities.
- Building wealth requires a long-term mindset and a willingness to make uncomfortable decisions.
Connect with Josh:
Instagram: @joshuakrafchick
Resources
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Read The Transcript Here
Trevor Oldham (00:01.614)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the REI Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today on the show we have Josh Krafchik. Josh, for our audience out there who is just learning about yourself for the very first time, do you mind just going into a little bit about your background and what you do?
Joshua Krafchick (00:17.084)
Yeah, for sure. Appreciate being on the RIEI Marketing Secrets podcast. So happy to be here. And I essentially went to school for actuarial science, which is the study of risk using statistics. And when I graduated from school, the job market was not very good. So I ended up falling into financial advisory, which I thought financial advisors were experts about investing. And what I quickly found out is it’s a sales job. And that was alarming to me that these people are
helping people with their finances and ultimately they are just in mostly sales, pushing products and just harvesting assets to make money. So I figured there was a big problem in the industry when there’s problems or solutions and that’s when I decided to make it my mission to help educate people on the best ways to grow their wealth.
Trevor Oldham (01:08.142)
I like that a lot and I think of it for a short period of time. I remember my father, he was a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley and he hasn’t done it in a long time. He ended up going 16 years teaching history. So totally different than being a financial advisor. But I remember you telling me stories of similar to what you said, more like a sales gig for him where he would have to go door to door, you know, pitching businesses, try to get their employees to work through him. And I think it only lasted a year or two just because he didn’t like it. And then on top of that,
I’m not sure if Morgan Stanley still does it now, but back when he was doing it, he would get, he would basically get a higher commission on certain stocks that he would recommend. So he would obviously recommend the stocks that they want him to recommend. And then just to get, just to get a higher commission, you know, and I don’t remember the exact stocks, but I don’t think he liked it for that aspect of it. He wanted to be more that fiduciary where he could recommend anything, not just the stocks that the company wants him to recommend. He would have that, that power, but I’m curious, what’s the process been like going out there?
and leaving corporate America say in 20, I believe it was 2017 that you left to now, seven years later now you have 369 financial. How does that journey go from being in corporate America to now running this financial advisory firm?
Joshua Krafchick (02:23.772)
It’s a challenging journey. So when you work at a large financial institution, you have the clients and you just got to work those clients. So you typically already have accounts open. You build a relationship. You can bring more assets over. When you leave that ecosystem, people don’t even know who you are. When you start your own company, people will be like, I’ve never heard of this company. And people are skeptical.
to work with companies that they don’t know because they’re like, well, I’ve never heard of your company. So that’s risky on the what you just said, though, Trevor is these large financial institutions typically have an agenda and they want to push certain products and ideas onto their clients to help their clients make money. But at the same time, they want to make sure that their institution is performing well for its shareholders in terms of its stock price. So.
typically things can get a little bit murky and you never really know when you’re working with someone, especially if they work at a big company. Are they recommending something to you because that’s what they believe is best for you? Or are they telling you this because this is what they’ve been told to tell you?
Trevor Oldham (03:35.79)
Yeah, I can’t agree with more than I’m just making a note here. The product I found that has been pushed and I know that there’s pushing the real estate space. There’s people that that use it. But for me, it was like whole life insurance products. And depending just having that push time without having like a full understanding of what it is, I know that there’s a lot of high commission and that product as well. And I know that there are real estate investors that they use that product to their benefit to to store cash. But that was one area where it’s like
Are you looking out for my best interest? Because at that time I was shopping for life insurance and then that’s why I was introduced to the whole life product. I was like, is this actually for me or are you just getting a nice fee on it? Does it actually make sense for what I’m looking to do? But at 369 Financial, what are the ways that you’re helping your clients? Is it wealth planning? Is it tax management? Is it potentially helping them get life insurance depending on what their financial needs are? What is the full scope of what you guys do out there to help your clients?
Joshua Krafchick (04:34.14)
So we focus on education and building a strategy to help put people on the path so they can build as much wealth as possible.
So since I went to school for actuarial science, insurance companies hire people called actuaries, and actuaries are really good at math. And they know exactly where all the numbers are at all times. So for example, term insurance, 99 % of term insurance policies never pay out. That means 99 % of the premiums that insurance companies get, they keep in form of income. So they’re never going to pay that out. So whole life insurance on the flip side,
People say like, well, you can be your own bank. That’s like the big thing on social media. Hey, Trevor, be your own bank. Buy this policy here. Because you can borrow against it as cash value and blah, blah, blah, blah. However, there are large commissions associated with whole life insurance policies, typically like five to 7%. So if your annual premium is call it $5 ,000, they’re going to make five to 7 % on that. You’re buying like a large premium, then it’s going to be a lot more. And you’re essentially putting a cap.
you’re putting limits on how much wealth you can build with insurance. So you might talk to someone like, hey Trevor, there’s a market downturn like in 2022, your money’s safe. You’re not gonna make any money, you’re not gonna lose any money. But if the market goes up a lot like it did in 2023, you’re only gonna make five or 6 % and you’re gonna be capped out. Now, what most people fall for the trap for is they want the free advice. They don’t wanna pay for a consultation, they don’t wanna…
People don’t like paying for things for some reason. But what they don’t look at is what is the cost of searching for something that’s free. Typically, I don’t know, have you ever seen the documentary, the social network or something, those on Netflix about like social media?
Trevor Oldham (06:22.19)
Yeah, yeah, I think I have.
Joshua Krafchick (06:23.868)
Yeah, they like said, like if there is no product, you are the product. So just because something’s free doesn’t mean they aren’t using what you’re giving them to make money in some sort of way, even if you don’t see it. There’s always phantom costs. There’s always hidden costs. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. So essentially the people that we work with, they see value in like, Hey, I’m going to pay you a flat fee, Josh. You’re going to look at my situation. You don’t sell insurance. We’re not selling any products and we’re going to build out a recipe for you to follow so that you can have
Trevor Oldham (06:27.886)
Mm -hmm.
Joshua Krafchick (06:52.54)
the best financial solution to take you from where you are to where you want to go. And that’s the big misconception is if you work with someone who’s like, hey, Trevor, I’ll do a free financial plan for you. Typically that’s going to point to a specific investment product, life insurance, something that has some sort of a cost associated with it that you are typically not going to be aware of, especially if you’re new to financial planning. Because with financial planning, especially if you’re new to it, you don’t know what questions to ask. You don’t know what to look out for.
And it’s very easy to get sold on something you may or may not need. And that’s one of the biggest problems in the industry right now. And people are still falling for the same tricks, unfortunately, even though all the information’s out there online for people to take advantage of.
Trevor Oldham (07:37.006)
Yeah. And then I definitely felt like that with the whole life insurance policy where I was just going through and talking to a financial advisor, more so just like, I just want to make sure like, you know, do I need for my business for myself personally, do I need like disability insurance? Let’s say hypothetically, I get like carpal tunnel syndrome. I mean, I work on my computer all day and all of a sudden I can’t type. Like, do I need something like that? And the next thing I know he’s pushing me on the, on the whole life insurance. And, you know, the cost was pretty substantial. And again, I know that there’s some people that use it, but I’m like, I’d rather
for me it was just, I’d rather just go get a term policy and then just invest the rest of it. I mean, as he was recommending like a $2 ,000 a month whole life policy and I was like, that’s just a little more than I wanted you off. I’d rather, you know, I went through and I got like, I pay like 300 bucks a year for like a $500 ,000 or a million dollar policy. You know, each me and my wife have one. I’m like, I’d rather take that extra, I’m talking like 24 ,000 a year almost. I’d rather put that in the market or other, you know, products that I think would,
you know, whether it’s in real estate or whether it’s in the stock market, I’d rather, you know, I feel like it’ll get a little bit better. I’ll return it. And the thing for me, I can never get with the whole life insurance policy was if I put in say 24 ,000 the first year, it’s going to be like, or let’s say I put in 20 ,000 the first year, it’s going to be five years. Then I’m at a hundred thousand. Like I’m finally at a hundred thousand where you know, maybe after one year I put in 20 ,000, I can only access like 10 ,000. So it’s like,
I mean, I’m five years in and I’m breaking even what happens if I had that money compounding or somewhere else for those previous five years? I know I couldn’t wrap my mind around it not to get too much on a on a rant. I was going back and forth. I thought about getting it. I must have gone. I must say my blood drawn like four or five different times in the last year. I couldn’t decide. I couldn’t, you know, because I would go over like, I want to get this whole life policy. It sounds good. And I’d be like, no, then I want to go to the term and then flip flopping back and forth before.
before deciding I’m poor insurance companies, I definitely lost money on me going to the lab to get that checked out. But when someone comes to you, what does it look like when it starts to come to build out their financial plan? Are you looking at like maybe, I don’t know if you would call it money, but like the assets that they have versus like the debt that they have. Like if they have a very expensive mortgage, expensive car loans, student debt, maybe it’s going to be a little bit trickier. Maybe a ton of credit card debt or
Trevor Oldham (10:01.006)
Is it, yeah, I guess just, how does it look like when someone’s coming to you and, and you start to build out that financial plan to help them out.
Joshua Krafchick (10:08.732)
It’s kind of like if I’m hungry at home, but I don’t want to go to the store, I see like what I have at home and what can I make with those ingredients. And so based on the ingredients that I have, what could I make that I’m going to enjoy eating? So if all I have is like ketchup and peanut butter, that’s probably not going to be a very, very delicious meal to eat, especially not together. Maybe peanut butter by itself and not together. So you have to figure out what ingredients do you have.
and what can you make with the ingredients you currently have. And if all you have is peanut butter and ketchup with the ingredients that you have in your home to make something, then you have to go to the store and find more ingredients so that way you can make something that you actually enjoy eating. And building wealth is no different. If you are in a situation where you’re limited on ingredients, you have to figure out how to get the ingredients that you need in order to get the outcome that you desire. So for example, typically, there’s two ways typically people take to build wealth.
You have the people that work a job and they save their way there. And I mean, they get raises and bonuses over time as they progress in their career. The other option is to figure out how to increase your income faster and keep your expenses at the same level that they’re currently at without increasing your lifestyle. That’s typically the two ways that people take to build the wealth. And that is what we want to look at based on someone’s specific situation, because I can’t take someone who is a teacher and they want to be a teacher.
and tell them to go make more income. I can’t really push them unless they want to get some sort of side hustle. So you have to get strategic on their strategy. So for example, let’s just say, Trevor, when do you want to retire?
Trevor Oldham (11:38.062)
Mm -hmm.
Trevor Oldham (11:49.742)
Let’s say 25 years from now.
Joshua Krafchick (11:51.871)
25 years from now. So if I look at your situation and I ask you about investment strategy, you’re like, I don’t want to be aggressive. I want to be conservative with my money. But if we look at that and say, if you’re conservative on your money, you could retire, but it’s going to be in 35 years. But you want to retire in 25 years. So in order to make that happen,
We have to adjust your strategy and allow you to understand like you could be conservative, but it means you’re going to have to work longer. So if you actually want to retire faster, you actually have to put your money into things that are going to compound and grow. Even if you, maybe you’re not comfortable with it. And that’s where a lot of financial advisors are not going to do. They just want to be like, Hey Trevor, you’re good. You like me. We’re going to put you in this conservative strategy. That’s what you want. And thank you for your business.
Trevor Oldham (12:37.614)
you know, and I like what you did there where it’s like, I’m saying one thing, you know, I want to be conservative, but I’m also saying I want to retire. I don’t know if you’d say quickly, but let’s say 25 years versus your typical 35, 40 years. So I’m telling you, I want to be conservative, but I’m also, you know, but I want to retire early, which means, you know, not like I have to invest in crypto or anything like that. You know, something that has way up the chart, but you know, maybe it is a little bit more aggressive where maybe it’s taken on, I know let’s say it’s a
high growth or large cap index or small cap index fund versus like your, you know, very conservative be like municipal bonds. I think, you know, something that’s, you know, paying two to 3%, you know, you’re hopefully you could get more in a, in a high yield savings account at that point. But when it comes to someone in on your end and they’re building wealth, are there certain mistakes that you see people making that’s hurting them financially? Like the biggest thing that comes to mind is people just using a credit card, you know,
I use a credit card, but I just make sure I pay it off at the end of the month and I get the nice, I like it because I get the protection and I get the reward points that you’re not that it’s a ton of money, but it is, it is nice. But you know, I definitely see people out there and they’re, I mean, it’s not 20, 30 % interest rates and they’re carrying a five figure pounds on their card. I’m like, I don’t know how you ever, I mean, you can get out of it at some point and you just have to work towards it. But it’s, you know, you’re, you’re giving your money, you know, to the credit card company versus you taking that money and you know,
spending it elsewhere, but just curious if there’s certain mistakes you see people making when it comes to managing their finance or whether it’s like you mentioned, maybe they’re just saving their cash in like a bank account and they’re not, you know, they’re not investing it or it’s not in a, in a high yield savings where maybe they’d be getting four to 5%. Like I think of my mother -in -law, like she’s she had a lot of money in a savings account and she was like 0 .01%. I mean like, you know, one on 101%. I mean like
I don’t know if you have a hundred K and that you’re getting one like 10 cents, maybe a buck or example. Like you should definitely be putting your money out there. But yeah, what that said, just curious if there’s common mistakes you see. I don’t want to say mistakes, but maybe they just don’t know of, or they’re just blind to it because there’s, you know, no full understanding of managing their money.
Joshua Krafchick (14:48.188)
Totally, the people that I’ve seen working since 2013, since entering the financial industry, people that I’ve seen that have had the most amount of wealth are the ones that invest strategically in well -established companies that they can grow with over time. Most people…
have like a 401k through work, which you’re limited on your choices. But if you’re getting match dollar for dollar, that’s free money that you definitely want to take advantage of. But most people are not taking enough risk when it comes to their investment strategy. And risk is, what is risk? I mean, risk is like, you can define risk any way you want. But when it comes to investing,
Sometimes the things that people tell you are risky are actually less risky. So like for example, with interest rates going up dramatically, what happened to conservative investments such as bonds? They went down in value a lot. And what also happened to stocks during that time? They went down a lot. But when things rebound, which one is going to rebound better?
investing in well -established companies that produce cash flow and is a real asset or some sort of debt, which bond is basically borrowing money in terms of debt. And essentially what people should have done in 2022, and this is what we did for our clients, is we essentially sold out of all fixed income, took a loss. It wasn’t as big of a loss as owning equities or individual companies. And then we reallocated that into well -established companies.
such as Google, Microsoft, Home Depot, and Salesforce. That’s some of our top positions. So we took advantage of that because when there’s blood in the streets and people are scared, that’s when you have to take advantage of those sort of things. And that’s what a lot of people aren’t doing is they have a strategy and they just stay with the same strategy regardless if the market’s up, down, sideways.
Joshua Krafchick (16:54.396)
whatever direction. So not taking advantage of those downturns is where a lot of people go wrong because they’re scared. But ultimately, if you put a $10 million in the bank today, Trevor, you never invested it. What would that be worth in 30 years after inflation?
Trevor Oldham (17:12.334)
Yeah, probably not that much. Yeah, exactly.
Joshua Krafchick (17:13.628)
a lot less.
And the interest that people get from that, they’re like, well, if I had $10 million, I’d just pay the bank to live it off the interest. Well, you get the interest, say it’s 5%. You gotta pay taxes on that. And you’re not keeping up with inflation. So you’re falling victim to what Warren Buffett calls the Investor’s Misery Index. Inflation in taxes. And inflation and taxes are always there.
Trevor Oldham (17:40.27)
Yeah, that’s that’s spot on and and something else I think about when it comes to Mistakes mistakes I have read about and I’ve seen in my own father make and it kills me and I try to tell him not to do it But he’s one of those individuals. He’s very emotional when it comes to the market and when he’s investing he’s on the markets down he sells and when the markets good he buys and I try to tell him like You know, at least it’s got a dollar cost average where you’re just buying on a consistent basis But is that another mistake you’ve seen people make and I just
specifically with him and it drives me nuts. My dad you can’t like you can’t be selling it like to give an example he was he bought like Exxon Mobil back a couple years ago and you know it was like during the pandemic and it was super low value. I mean the stock was maybe 10 -20 bucks and then he just I know he gets nervous you know and he sells that like $22 or he sells that $18 takes a small little gain small a little loss and then now I don’t know what the stock is now maybe 80 -90 bucks and it’s like there’s so many instances I can look at with him like he owned Tesla
at like 20 bucks a share before I think, I don’t know if they’ve done splits, but it was like way back when maybe like five to 10 years ago, same sort of thing, got nervous and sold it. And I just feel like I see people do that when they’re trying to almost like time the market. So I’m not sure if you’ve come across that before when you’re advising people or previous people’s mistakes where they’re just buying at the height of the market and then selling cause they get scared when the, you know, there might be a downturn, especially
say like during the pandemic where the markets got obliterated, but obviously they’ve come back over the last couple of years well beyond what they ever were. I don’t wanna say well beyond, but they’re beyond what happened early on in the pandemic. But yeah, just curious to get your thoughts on that.
Joshua Krafchick (19:23.068)
You could have the best investment strategy in the world, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you’re not going to be successful. Like literally when you put money into something, you got to like treat it as if you’re never going to sell it. And if you are selling it, you have to know what you’re going to put it into. So if I’m selling, let’s just say the hot stock right now is Nvidia, people are starting to buy Nvidia. Well, I would say is like, well,
Does it even make sense to purchase it at this price? I would say no, it’s a little expensive. And Nvidia is a company with being at the right place at the right time. So they had right now, and I could be 100 % wrong, and this clip could be make me look stupid, or I could be correct and maybe this clip makes me look like a genius. I don’t know, because we don’t know what we don’t know. But what I see is the price is very high.
There’s a chip shortage around the world. They are having to making the best chips and they have an arbitrage opportunity where every company is now focusing on AI and Nvidia is the only place to get the best chips right now. But there’s so many chip makers out there. You would look at Intel. Apple is using Intel for their chips and Intel skyrocketed in market cap because they were riding the coattails of Apple because pretty much every person that has a phone is typically an Apple phone and
If you owned Apple prior to 2008, the company really didn’t do that well until the iPhone. But since they’ve come out with the iPhone, they have been the most valuable company a couple of times. So if you look at Warren Buffett and other successful investors, they’ve missed plenty of opportunities, but at the same time, they know they only like to swing at pitches that they like and buying something that’s skyrocketed in price just because everyone else is buying it doesn’t mean
you should also purchase it just because it’s gone up in value a ton.
Trevor Oldham (21:19.214)
Yeah, I think it’s really spot on and it’s one of the things they mentioned in the video. I think of that as well. I know the share price has gone just so high recently and it’s almost like, I feel like people are like, I’m gonna miss the boat out. I’m gonna miss the boat on it and potentially it’s gonna go higher. Just thinking of that, just something that came to mind when I was thinking of that was my dad, I think he owned like the class, I think it was the Berkshire Hathaway like class B stock when it was like 5 ,000 bucks and then that or a thousand bucks. Now I’m just thinking.
of that again as when he sold way too early and what the share price is now on it. But when someone’s coming to you and they’re thinking of, you know, I want to retire, whether it is in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, how can you make sure that someone’s going to be able to retire? Is it looking at what their like annual expenses is? Is it looking at how much they want to have in retirement? Just, I’m just curious what that looks like. Cause I feel like too many people are
I feel like so many people just don’t have a plan. They just think, okay, once I’m 65, I can retire, but it’s like, yes, but you also have to make sure you sound financially. Like I could, I could take all the money I make and blow it right now on, on things. And then I hit 65 and I have no money in the bank. It’s going to be a little bit trickier to retire. And I don’t, I know personally, I probably want to want to just be living on social security, even if it’s still around back then, you know, I want to have all that money and then both on my own end. But curious on your end, what it looks like when a client is
sort of planning that retirement picture and how they can make sure that they’re on the right track going forward.
Joshua Krafchick (22:49.788)
Yeah, you want to look at two scenarios. Tales, I don’t lose much, heads I win. So the tales, I don’t lose much scenario is like, all right, worst case scenario, where am I going to end up at retirement? So I like to start with worst case scenario because if I underestimate investment returns and overestimate expenses, so overestimate the bad stuff, underestimate the good stuff, and if the outcome is still positive, that tells me we’re on the right track.
So that’s where I like to look at when it comes to financial planning. A lot of financial advisors, especially if they’re working with someone who is entering their peak years of earning potential, like in their 30s and 40s and 50s, they’ll put them into some sort of financial calculator. They’ll be like, hey, Trevor, you want to be aggressive? You’re going to make this return. You’re putting this much money away. You’re going to have like $5 million. So they like to try and sell like best case scenario to get people excited, which it could work.
But now you’re setting someone up for the wrong expectation. And that advisor is going to make a lot of money over that 20 or 30 years if that person likes them and sticks with them. But eventually when the rubber meets the road and the person remembers that conversation, it could be setting them up to be very disappointed and ultimately could cost them a lot of money because the person is attempting to get them to do something so they can benefit rather than actually making something realistic.
And I’ve lost clients by telling them how it is, but ultimately those are not the clients I want to work with. I want to work with people who want real financial advice and sometimes when you give real financial advice you have to give real unfortunate, uncomfortable…
scenarios to people. It’s like based on your current situation, you’re not gonna be able to retire unless we do something. I’m sorry, but we got to make some changes and sometimes people don’t like that. But I’d rather tell you the bad advice now than you get to 65 and now you’re out of money. And I just made a bunch of money off you and I’m saying sorry you spent too much. That’s not my problem.
Trevor Oldham (24:51.502)
Yeah, exactly. I think it is a hard reality for sometimes people to realize just how far behind they are, how much of a hole they’ve dug themselves into. It’s uncomfortable conversation, but you have to have that conversation with them. But let’s say someone’s out there and they’re on their wealth building journey. What’s the best piece of advice that you’d recommend or that you’d give to them?
Joshua Krafchick (25:17.948)
Depends on where they are in life. So if you’re like a younger investor, we’ve been putting a lot of people into our life cycle investing strategy that was developed by Yale professors that essentially teaches them how to invest in a way to get better investment returns with less overall risk over the course of their lifetime. So educating them on that strategy, which is not very mainstream for the people who are starting to accumulate a lot of money. Typically what happens is people get in protect mode too fast. So like
people who get to retirement, let’s just say you’re retiring in 2022 and then you like decrease your risk 50 -50 and then you just stay 50 -50 the whole time. You’re going to miss out on lots of opportunities. So when you retire, that’s when the new journey is just beginning. You want to make sure you’re adapting your strategy to make sure you’re taking advantage of everything the markets give you. So you want to make sure that you’re having an adaptable working strategy, not just saying like, this is the strategy that got me to retirement. This is the strategy that’s going to keep me retired.
Because ultimately if you look at the people who are really wealthy, they build most of their wealth after the age of 60 because of compounding and they got a lot of money and then they let their money do their thing over time. And the most Americans and people retire at 60, they start turning down the volume rather than trying to turn it up a little bit.
Trevor Oldham (26:36.462)
Yeah, I think that’s a spot on. I think that’s a great way to look at it. Josh, I just want to say I really enjoyed our interview today. And if someone in our audience is listening and they are curious about working with you or learning more about you, where should they go to?
Joshua Krafchick (26:51.1)
Just Google my name, Josh Krafcik. I’m the only one. And you’ll be able to find me. The internet is an easy place to find someone with an unconventional name. And it’s not hard to get a hold of me via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, my website. It’s very easy to find me.
Trevor Oldham (27:05.838)
Awesome. That’s him. That sounds perfect. And again, Josh, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
Joshua Krafchick (27:12.056)
Awesome. It was fun. Thanks, Trevor.





