Time Is the Ultimate Currency: Shootin' It Straight With Stan

Today's topic is a good one. With all the cryptocurrencies and currency, this and that. And is the new administration going to create its own cryptocurrency? And are they going to make it all digital? And is it going to go global? And will it be a global currency, or will they take out my money? Are they going to tax me in real-time? All of that talk about currency and currency traders. What's the dollar worth? Is the dollar going to be here? Is it going to be the one? What's it going to be? I don't know. Who knows? If I knew I wouldn't be here in a baseball cap and Stan The Annuity Man gear, I would be trading futures on a jet somewhere, but no one really knows. But the topic is, time is your ultimate currency.

My friend, Moshe Milevsky, is one of the smartest people I know, and he's just a treasure that we have him in our industry and to talk to, and I'm so glad he was on my annuities podcast, Fun with Annuities. Shameless plug. But he talks about healthspan and lifespan. Lifespan is how long we're going to live. Healthspan is how long we're going to live well. And as we all know, once we turn 50 and past 50, and if you're not past 50 yet, trust me and the rest of the people listening to this, once you pass 50, things just start going haywire. Doctors like yelling at you. You're taking medications. You have got to watch your diet. Please exercise. You might have the sugars, those types of things. I don't care who you are. And for me, who played college sports, I'm broken down. The mornings, watching me walk through the office, the house, or wherever I'm at, it's sad. It's like someone really needs to help him because he looks like he's hurting. I am hurting, for God's sake. My knees hurt, my hips hurt. My ankles hurt. Everything hurts. My toes hurt. The ones that I can feel. Can I get an annuity hallelujah on that. I mean, it's tough. But life, the ultimate currency in life, is your time. And so, what I want to do today is dovetail annuities, which I can only do so subtly into this topic; time is the ultimate currency.

Spending Your Time

How are you going to spend your time? How are you looking to spend your time in chapter two of your life? When you retire, slow it down, or when you only work two days a week, or even if you're working, what's important to you? Time is a currency, and time is the ultimate currency. That's all we have. And it's finite. I've just come to this fork in the road moment, and I picked the fork up. As you know the saying, you can go left or pick the fork up or go and do all of them. But the fork in the road moment with me is I grew up in kind of a sports household where sports were king, and life was sports. Life was competing at sports from the time I was tiny to my senior year in college when I walked off the court for the last time and threw my shoes into the crowd, never to play again. I came to a fork in the road moment. I don't want to watch sports anymore. I'm not saying you don't need to. I'm just not going to do it anymore. I'm tired of it. I've seen every play. I've seen every machination of the play. I really don't care, and I respect those people. The other thing is these people are getting overpaid. Why am I watching pro sports? People are making a million dollars a year, $20 million a year, or someone just signed a $240 million contract. I love capitalism. I love it. That doesn't mean I have to watch.

The other thing I've shut off is politics on cable news. Why? Why not? I don't care what side of the aisle you are in, and I'm not political. I could care less, but the fact that we can't get straight facts with news is unbelievable. Now, I know a lot of news people. I do. "Well, I do, Stan. I'm a straight fact person and work for X, Y, and Z company." Yes, sure. Okay. At the end of the day, I haven't found you, and I don't think many people have found you. And that's the reason 1% of the public watches cable television. But I've shut that off too.

I told my wife the other day while I was sitting down. I'm trying to relax as I sometimes try to get my blood pressure down slightly. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to watch something on TV that's not sports and politics." It's kind of hard and not stupid. Not sports, politics, or stupid because time is the ultimate currency. I'm wasting my time. I'm wasting my time flipping channels. So, I want you to think about your life, and I know this isn't about annuities, but it's getting ready. I'm getting ready to dovetail a little bit there. If time is the ultimate currency, then how are you wasting it? Are you really getting value out of it?

How Can Annuities Fit In?

Now, how annuities can play in, and yes, here it comes. Get ready, put on the seatbelt, baby. Annuities are contractual guarantees. They provide lifetime income or principal protection. They can provide a legacy, a benefit, or long-term care coverage. But what does all that do? That acronym is PILL, Principal protection, Income for life, Legacy, and Long-term care. Those are the four and only four things that annuity solves for. No, they do not solve for market growth, not from bonuses, participation rates, and all that junk at the bad chicken dinner seminar. Annuities are lifestyle products. They're healthspan products if you want them to be. They're lifespan products, period. Whether you're healthy or not, they'll pay you as long as you're breathing. But as long as we're breathing, let's maximize it.

I was just recently read the Riot Act by my doctor, and he is a good friend of mine, but he has the bedside manner of the till of the hut. I love it because I'm brutally factual too, and one of the reasons I go to him is he walks in, he goes, "Hey, Stan, how are you doing? These numbers look horrific. What have you been doing? What are you eating? Are you exercising? What do you do?" I mean, he yelled at me, and it woke me up. I'm like, "Yeah, you're right. I know better. I know better. I know better. And I know that I got to get on top of all of this" because I want healthspan, not just lifespan. I want to maximize time because time is the ultimate currency, and I need you to also think about that.

Does it mean putting contractual guarantees in place so you can focus on wellness and focus on yourself and your health and on getting it together finally, after putting it off all these years, and it's never too late? Hello? Is it time? Maybe. It is for me. I mean, I love what I do. I'm Stan The Annuity Man, the mythical Stan The Annuity Man. Licensed in all 50 states, America's annuity agent. I'm just a dude from North Carolina that's been in the financial services industry forever, and now I get it. I get what the purpose is. The purpose is in life, health, family, and friends, not in that order. Religion, if that's important to you. But notice, I'm not saying market growth, more money, and I'm a pure capitalist. I am a capitalist. I'm a serial entrepreneur, period, which is probably the reason for the blood pressure medication and the statins to keep the cholesterol and sugars down because I love my candy from North Carolina. That's what we do. We go to the restaurant, and we go, "Hey, can we see the dessert menu first? We're from the south. That's where we're going to start." Not anymore though.

The Brutal Truth

Time is the ultimate currency. Forget cryptocurrency. Time is the currency. Forget the dollar. It's time. Forget the one. It's time. Forget the peso. It's time. You know I'm right. Why is this guy called Stan The Annuity Man, talking to me about that? It's because you need to hear it. You clicked on it. The title was Time Is the Ultimate Currency. It clicked something in your brain, and you go, wait a minute. What is he talking about? But you knew what I was talking about. You knew where I was going to go with this. You just need to know that someone like me is joining you in that plight, joining you to make sure that I'm not wasting my time. Now, some of my competitors may think I do. Do I have competitors? My consultants say, "Stan, you don't have competitors. The numbers show it", whatever. I'm just a competitive guy. But they might say, "Well, Stan's wasting his time with these videos. Because he's goofy, why would anyone spend their money with him?" Why? Because I know what I'm doing. I'm shooting it straight, and I tell the truth because I don't have to remember anything. That's why. And my team does that as well. Or they're fired, period. We're here to help you. We're here to get you to the point where you understand that time is the ultimate currency and that time is what you're focused on, your time on the planet, your time here to leave a legacy. I always tell people, "I'm not going to leave a legacy. I'm going to leave a scar," if you know what I mean. There's an excellent Southern rock band that has that. That's a song called Leave a Scar. Meaning, leave a mark out here, leave a good mark of what you've done. It's not narcissistic to do that. You're trying to help people.

My wife and I were having that conversation the other day. What are we going to do? Can we help people? How can we do that? How can we get healthy? How can we get better? How can we be better people? How can we have a better marriage? How can we communicate better? How can I run a better business? There's only so much time in the day, so how can I maximize that time? I know this is a Shootin' It Straight With Stan blog featuring Stan The Annuity Man. But I like talking to you one-on-one about life and the struggles we're all going through. I cringe thinking of all the time I wasted watching frivolous sports and political commentary. I can't believe I did that. I followed in the path of my father, who was a professional channel flipper.

A Story From Stan

In fact, here's a great story. Remember, before you had a channel, you had remote controls. Do you know who the remote control was? It was me. Like when I was a kid, we had the flip thing where you and my dad would sit on the couch eating popcorn and sucking on his teeth which drove me crazy. I'm like, "Stop eating. Stop. Just stop." I mean, he'd do that when he wasn't eating. It's just like a tick. Anyway, he'd say, "Stan, go change it to channel eight," and then a minute later, "See what's on 10", and there's like four or five channels then, but I was the channel flipper. Were you the channel flipper for your dad, Uncle Bob, or somebody? I was the remote control. I tell my kids that, and they're like, "What do you mean by that remote? There was no remote control?" I'm like, "Not only that, but there were also no touch-tone phones. There was a rotary dial." They're like, "Oh yeah, I saw that in a movie once." Yeah, back in the day. Back in the day. But I think back, and my dad was a professional waster of time watching TV and sports because that was his passion. I'm not putting that down, but it's got to be bigger than that for all of us, right? I always tell people about the political side. Think of the dumbest person you know, you've ever met or talked to at a cocktail party that you walked away from feeling that you had lost IQ interacting with that person. Let me give you a brutal fact about that interaction. That person's vote nullified yours. The dumbest person on the planet, dumb as a box of hair, as they say in the South, nullified your vote. Was it worth arguing about politics with that idiot? No, because time is the ultimate currency.

I want you to think about that. Next time you're doing something stupid and wasting time and flipping channels, not doing something. Forget productive, but better. How about better? Do you know what that is? Talking with someone, interacting with someone, helping someone, volunteering, exercising, getting more sleep. Hello, yes, sleep. Next time all that happens, remember time is the ultimate currency. It ain't cryptocurrency player, and by the way, you can't trade time. There's no shorting, there's no long, there's no arbitrage. Time is what it is, and it is static, and we are still determining how much there will be for each of us. Guess what? Let's maximize that. Let's get a good return on investment on time, which is the ultimate currency. My name is Stan The Annuity Man. That's Shooting It Straight With Stan, as you come to expect. See you next time.

Never forget to live in reality, not the dream, with annuities and contractual guarantees! You can use our calculators, get all six of my books for free, and most importantly book a call with me so we can discuss what works best for your specific situation.