The father (let’s call him Andy) of a friend with whom I work is involved with Primerica at the organizational level as well as the investment level (mutual funds). This is not his job, he does this on the side for his own benefit. He owns and operates a successful HVAC business and has done quite well for himself, but like any prudent and self aware individual he knew more could be done to obtain independence.

So yesterday, as a matter of fact, Andy’s regional trainer (let’s call him Bob) was visiting and they had a cancellation. Some months prior, through talking with my friend, I had learned that Andy is an adviser of budgeting, saving, investing and the like. Being new to the job, and realizing that I was now making significantly more money than I was used to in the past, I had an opportunity to build a nest egg and expressed my interest in wanting to speak with him.

Flashing back to yesterday, I had completely forgotten about Andy and what he does, so he and Bob thought to stop by and pay me a visit. Now, in the time between expressing my interest in learning more about what he did and having the sit down yesterday, the thought of saving money and investing etc, had quickly faded and I fell back in to the cyclical nature of bad spending habits and going from pay cheque to pay cheque wondering “where the hell had all my money gone?”

This month I decided to do something about it for myself, and came up with a budget that based on my past spending habits I knew I could actually stay within, assuming I adhered to a few minor lifestyle changes (eating in more than out, structuring payments so that each paycheque is balanced and one is not left with significantly less money than the other etc). Between my mandatory expenses, and the expenses to pay back student loans along with a personal loan to a family member (which amounts to over 600/mo) I have discovered that I could at the end of each month have nearly $500 not allocated to anything. It may not seem like a lot, but when you are counting your dollars and making the determination of how you’re going to make it to next pay cheque with 14 dollars in change and 5 days to go, it suddenly becomes a lot more significant.

Anyhow, as Bob began his short presentation I quickly caught on that this was simply informational. It was intended to make people more aware of how their money could be working for them, rather than them working for their money. So I stopped Bob and let him know all the things I have done in the past month, and that I had already taken the decision to take charge of my money and start wanting to do something with it.

Very quickly, he could see that I was not a dullard and could actually understand the nature of the model (dollar cost averaging, how group fund portfolios work etc) and immediately delved into the numbers. We ran through the FIN chart, went over the Rule of 72 and looked at the Concert series of Funds.

The entire meeting took approximately 30-45 minutes, and not once did I feel pressured. I was simply asked questions, often which were questions I had never asked myself before and when I answered, I found myself coming to a realization that it’s really a simple concept (saving money, the distinction between being a bank slave and financially independent).

At the end of the presentation during an impromptu question and answer period, I asked the questions on how this can work for me and not how much money will I make). Bob was very clear that this is not a crystal ball, but at the same time that the proof was in the pudding. The model is established, and yes while there was fluctuation, sometimes wildly so, in the end there was still a gain.

I then asked the question “So, speaking from the business perspective of what you do, what is the residual effect of all of this. How do you make your money.” He stopped for a moment and I could tell he wasn’t asked that question very often. As it turns out, with how these mutual funds are managed by the banks, percentages are taken off the top to pay the various levels of management (bank, regulators, Primerica, etc) after the small top percentage is removed the rest is where the returns come from.

Now, it is a very slight yet critical distinction. The money is not being taken from your pocket, the money in effect is pooled to purchase your shares, the pool value of all those shares combined is where the management fees are docked from which I am entirely comfortable with. I understand like anything in life this is a business and something is never achieved from nothing.

At the end of the day, would you rather take the top 1-2% from the pool overall, knowing that your investments are being actively managed and not just thrown aside to be tossed and turned with every climb and fall of the market and receive a slightly lower return or risk losing everything and being worse off than you were before?

One final thought and I will depart. When it comes to these group meetings or presentations, naturally I am as skeptical as the next person. I have not been specifically to a Primerica one, but out of curiosity I had attended a few Amway presentations just to see for myself. It makes me sad really, that so many people will blindly jump into something because of feel good stories and presentations. Now, I’m not judging nor am I directly comparing Primerica to Amway. They are two completely different species, though distantly related by a few common principles.

The first is referral based business, do you see aggressive marketing campaigns on TV, or in radio for Amway, or even Primerica? One of the reasons these businesses tend to work for some people, is the fact that there is relatively LOW overhead, so associative costs are much lower when compared to the “traditional” business model.

The second key principle in common is the inclusion of a human element to business. We in this day and age have become so programmed, that we don’t understand what it is to retain our humanism in the face of business; for a large majority of people it’s pure numbers and risk/reward averaging. So, being greeted by a friendly person? Stories of how certain people have managed or are enroute to achieving their success? It’s all designed to get you to break the mold, shake free your shackles of relative destitution and take charge of your future.

Before you judge and so quickly jump to conclusions, and just because you have attained some measure of what you consider success for yourself (everyone’s consideration will vary wildly), does not mean you are the rule, you are the exception to the rule. For every 1 person who is satisfied in all aspects of their life (personal, financial, professional) there are likely 100 that have some sort of imbalance that they would like corrected.

In closing, it all depends on how you perceive the world around you. Are you stuck in the classical management scheme, or are you a forward thinking individual who doesn’t see the need to be indebted to people who don’t know who you are and likely will never care to?

The world is changing, I’m making sure I’m on the right side of change.

First: I am a rep.

Second: I have a great relationship with my RVP.

I can appreciate that people may try and exaggerate their success, but I consider myself one of the lucky people that have an excellent upline – full of leaders and mentors including my RVP.

I have been to my RVP’s house several times, summer bbq’s etc and his home is easily worth $750,000 (that may or may not be a lot to sum). He has been in business for 12 years and has worked very hard to get where he is. I think people don’t understand that THIS is a business – you have to be dedicated and work hard. period. This would apply to anyone that considers themselves self-employed – be professional, network and meet new people, promote your business and perhaps sell a product. The main difference I saw with this is that I have ACTUALLY helped families that didn’t spend anymore money then before I was there and managed to restructure debt to free up money which allowed me to put life insurance and a retirement savings plan in place. Not a bad business model – focusing on probably the most lucrative market – financial services (debt, income protection, and investments)

With that being said, my RVP confided in my because I was getting frustrated, people are people and may do, or say things THEN change their mind. He said in the first 3 years (busting his ass) he may have made 25-30 thousand TOTAL. Now, with all of this hard work, he built a client base that TRUST him and expanded his business by HIRING others and training them with integrity and honesty. I can tell anyone straight up that I would not be doing this if I saw any shady dealings, or blatant disregard for the “client”.

I am educated and was making just under $100,000 per year on my T4 before I joined Primerica. The reason why, a family friend was a CFP and he sold my wife and I a whole life cash value policy. When I found out how much I was spending ($135 / month for $150,000) I was outraged that a) I didn’t do my due diligence, but b) a family “friend” sold us that when he could have sold us term, but chose to conveniently not mention it – he made $1900+ on that sale.

My RVP IS making on average $34,000 a month deposited into his account. I was on the verge of quitting and he saw that I had the desire ..blah blah blah.. so we started looking over his very first statements then a couple years back then all of last year and I was shocked. I didn’t think that I was motivated by money until I saw the statements – I started thinking that COULD be me ! FREEDOM !

Just to clarify – that money is a combination of:
- personal production (every time he makes a sale)
- overrides from his team (consider that a training and development incentive)
- base shop bonuses (on entire team production)
- royalties on RVP’s that his base shop has promoted
- investment trails (expected in ANY financial services company (not just Primerica). This means, the more money that you have under your management, you get trails (commission from the MER). which can add up. He was making just over $11,000 / month on just trail fees. That was about 55 million in assets under management.

Just my $0.02

I had a client recently switch her funds to go to PFS, if she want to encourage a friend, no problem with that it’s her money. But what I am mad about is the fact this person is not smart enough to pass a MF exam so he/she sells her seg funds and ‘dings’ her with over $1000 of DSC fee. she could have just taken over the existing funds!!!

As for your marvelous return Mr V take a look at any site and you will see that on a one year basis you funds are between -10% and -30% (I know most other are too) and since inception between 2% and 7.5% long way from 8% to 12% you peddle still using those numbers on your FNA to make things look prettier?

All businesses are pyramidal structured! The poor guy on the floor makes the whole fridge for example, the big guy in the office and the ones between cash in the big bucks. Look at every single “organizational chart” and you have your answers! I am not with Primerica, Amway, etc…they have a different approch to make business as the ones we are used to. Very nice posting and very intereseting comments. I really love it.

JCB: Thanks for that ramble, I had a lot of thoughts like that too when I was first looking at Primerica, and that about summed them up. Being a skeptic myself I was ALWAYS looking into the company trying to find the “catch” as well, and even working with the company now, I’m still trying to find one… But after a lot of reading of credible sources, talking to many qualified people, and having experience working with the company, I think it is fair to assume that this company really is as great as it looks.

FB: Love the site, will be on it often, lots of great information.

Always eager to hear from other PFS people, feel free to send me a GoSolo: 866-424-6215

See you at the top!

- CC