Complaint Review: The Guardian Life Insurance Company Of America - Kim Butler - Bethlehem Pennsylvania

Wow is there a lot of misinformation in a some of these comments...

First off, if someone was looking to build savings to later invest, yes, high cash value whole life insurance could be a very appropriate financial vehicle. Long-term it pays better than bank CDs or anything else that is "safe" and it can be leveraged for investments. It's not for super short time periods and if one did not have any spouse or dependents, I could see how it might be less attractive as the (additional) death benefit portion wouldn't be valued as much. It's not a standalone "investment" with a potential for high returns, rather, most people who purchase these types of policies do so as an effective long-term savings plan and/or to leverage for other investments.

It is unfortunate that Linda either did not understand the product or decided later that it wasn't what she wanted (probably after reading misinformation online or being advised by someone who doesn't truly understand life insurance), but mutual whole life insurance is a solid product. I mean, would you fill out a rip-off report for a bank CD? Of course not. The policy likely would have paid much better than a bank CD if kept long-term but was probably cancelled too soon.

I am a client of Kim's and am very familiar with dividend paying whole life insurance. I know that Kim structures her policies for maximum cash value, which minimizes her commission but is good for clients as it gives them better rates of return (provided that they fund their paid up additions.) I also know she encourages people to read her book, Live Your Life Insurance (maybe it was published after Linda was her client), which taught me a lot. It explains the value of whole life and many ways to use a policy.

Second, there is a different complaint here (the person talking about a class action lawsuit) that has NOTHING to do with Kim or her company and doesn't belong here. This is especially misleading as the class action lawsuits in the life insurance field are all about the type of life insurance Kim WARNS people about. The types of policies she sells are the gold standard and the companies she represents (such as Guardian) are top-rated.

Third, it sounds like a client has lost money on an investment with Kim during the financial crisis. That is unfortunate as Kim tries hard to recommend things that are non-correlated to the markets. But losses happened to virtually EVERY investor and advisor in the country during the financial crisis, so have some perspective. (Except... that whole life policy that Linda thinks is bad did not lose a penny even when stocks and banks and real estate all tanked.)

Then a review that gets personal... no, Kim is not a scientologist, neither is her sister (they are Christian Scientists which is very different!) and she has a wonderful close family. She does not charge $7500 for advice or run her businses as suggested. (If she ever did, it was a long time ago.) And she does not actively engage in any network marketing. (She is a customer of send out cards and recommends it but doesn't actively recruit.)

Kim has been named two years in a row on the Investopedia 100 list of top advisors and is anything but a scam artist. If anyone wants to understand Kim's philosophy or whole life insurance better, they should read her books on it, or the ebook that she gives away through her company's website. She does a lot of to educate people, most of it for free.

If you are investigating P4P I urge you to do your own research, educate yourself as to the pros and cons of various strategies, and ask Kim your own questions so you can decide for yourself. And don't put too much weight on a misleading review! 

Linda,

I also live in Phoenix and was sold an "Infinite Banking" policy by John Mints. He lied about how interest would be handled, how the cash balance would accumulate etc. in order to sell me the policy.

I am looking to organize a group of people for a class action lawsuit. I bet there are 100s of people like us.


People should file a Ripoff Report so maybe a government agency will contact us to take action and to get us our money back.

If enough of us post a Ripoff Report and tell about our experience Ripoff Report said they would help bring everyone together if we find an attorney willing to take on our case. So, be sure to provide good contact information.



Thanks,
Nick

Thanks for the additional information. I personally don't have an extremely personal relationship with Kim so I don't know how much of what you said is true. I know she does refer people to things like "discovery'. I don't know why she does, it may be related to a marketing philosophy that says "if you want to be referable be willing to refer people".

As far as real estate investing and securities licenses go... A lot of the even "traditional" financial advisers I know hate that the SEC regulates the advise the can give about real estate. My father only does real estate investing  --he does very well with it--, and even he experienced huge losses in those investments over the last few years. He also experienced even grater losses in the 80's recession because he didn't have the experience he has now. He always tells me that "traditional financial Advisors" have lost him more money in securities than he ever lost in real estate. He also quotes the saying that " real estate has made more millionaires than the stock market ever has". I personally like that Kim doesn't tell clients to speculate in gold or in the stock market. Especially when I see the position my great uncle is in now that he is about to retire and has $500,000 to live off for the rest of his life in his 401(k) instead of the 1million he was planning on simply because of the huge hit it took in 2008. I think it is neat that she was or is securities licensed (that usually means she knows a whole lot more than the average person about investing in the market) and she felt more comfortable referring you out to someone who knew about real estate. You may not realize this but if she had told you to put that money in the market she would be paid whether your portfolio gained or dropped which easily could have been a lot more than any "referral fee" she would've received by referring you to a specialist.

As far as hard money loans go a lot of people get excited about that, especially after reading "Becoming Your Own Banker" and "The Infinate Banking Conceept". I think that that is because they that is when you really become your own bank. The sad thing is that some people forget that once they start implementing that part of banking they also have become their own collector and who likes to foreclose one someone for failing to payback a loan. The thing I like about the idea of hard money loan is even with the risk your assuming you have a greater power of ownership. A lot of people that are good at hard money lending have the attitude that if they don't get paid back they'll take the loan collateral and make even more off of the collateral than off the interest on the loan itself.

In full disclosure I am not an advisor associated with Kim, I have thought about it but was turned off by something similar to what you mentioned about John Baker. Other advisors have mentioned that it is difficult to work with her because she does make you pay her for a lot of things. So the jury is still out on whether or not it is worth it. However, I do like a lot of her idea's. She uses the concepts behind l.E.A.P. and the Infinate Banking  well and can teach them in a way that people understand them. There are a lot of advisors that either don't know those concepts or don't know how to explain them well enough that a client could ever use them. She seems to lean more toward the ideas in L.E.AP. than what pure Infinate Banking Concept advisors do. I personally like Infinate Banking more than L.E.A.P. However both can work together without much effort.

I started out at a company similar to Guardian Life, just a lot larger with a higher industry rating and --from what I've seen-- a better reputation. My problem with them was that they thought "traditional financial planning" was the only way someone could prosper and so they would not allow anyone to challenge that idea and still be contracted with the company. Every day I had to tell people that they should do this or that with their money to succeed and then turn around and see people like my dad do things almost the opposite of what I told a client and be far better off than my client was. The straw that broke the camels back was when my mentor and I were working on my friend/CPA's disability insurance and his wife's life insurance case. My mentor helped me to go through with writing a ten year term policy on the wife. The sad thing is that it went against everything he believed about helping people have financial security. See the problem was she is young and healthy so in 10yrs the possibility of her being alive is almost guaranteed, when 10yrs is up if she still wants the same security that her 10yr term policy provided.The premium for that policy will be close to triple the price of a 20yr term. If her health declines it could be even more or even impossible for her to have coverage. There are other problems like the fact that that term policy is purely an expense unless she dies within 10yrs and she'll never see the advantage of a dividend from a mutual company (which was what we were apart of) etc. My mentors attitude was that it was better to go with this policy because it was cheap up front so the client wouldn't have any of the regular misguided price concerns that you often get, we could renew the policy or sell her a different one at a later date as long as we kept a good relationship and we were in a hurry --cause as much as people think people in my industry make a lot of money we don't unless we see a lot of people-- so my mentor wanted me to move on a.s.a.p. After that experience I decided even if I lost the cases presented to me I was going to fully educate the client on what I felt was the best and why I felt that way and allow them to make their own decision whether or not they would blame me for troubles in their life down the road.

As a lover of the doctrine Jesus Christ myself I understand your desire to work with people that emulate him. I have met Nelson Nash face to face, spoke with him and spent time with him. As far as I know he is a person that emulates Christ and has pure motives. There may be somethings I don't know about him but, I doubt there is something contrary to the character I understand him to have. I also believe that in many similar ways Ghandi emulated Christ and was more Christian than some I have come across. I also know the sting of being taken advantage of by someone presenting themselves as being of the same faith. When I was in ninth grade my dad invested time and money into a man's  business. That man said he was a leader in our church (and he most likely was, I just never associated with him cause he was in a different congregation in our the state). That man turned out to be a professional scam artist that had committed fraud before in other states. He stole over 1millon dollars of my fathers money and many others money as well. I went from having no worries as a kid financially to having nothing, all over night. My dad still hasn't recovered fully from that. In one way I am grateful for that experience it taught me that the real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. It also inspired me to help people reduce wealth transfers and teach people how to be stewards of their own money.

Nelson Nash's book states "infinate banking is a process not a product". I've learned enough about the financial planning industry and Whole life insurance to know that their are certain products that are better to use for infinite banking (even within mutual companies that have dividend participating Whole Life policies). However even if the product is the best for the situation you are in, if you never learn or use the process the Infinite Banking Concept is useless to you. You do end up with a nice policy that has more value ,use and  is much less (with the internal rate of return) expensive than any term policy you could purchase. Which in my opinion is a great situation to be in. Anyway, my point is a lot of the things that Nelson Nash, Robert Kiasaki, L.E.A.P., Kim Butler, Dave Ramsey etc. are trying to teach is that it is more important to be in control of your finances than it is to have your finances (i.e. Banks, Investment Banks, the IRS, Debt, death, lost opportunity cost, disability) take control of you.

In my experience it is not good to base the decision of who you recieve financial advise from on the fact that they claim the same religion or belife as you. If it ends up being the same great if not then it doesn't matter because you took their advise because it was just that... advise, and unless God revealed to you that their advise is what you should do you don't have much of a reason to bring that aspect into finances. I personally think that people should pray about and examine their own principals when making financial decisions. At the same time I hope they realize that God gave them the power to choose and make decisions. In addition to that God has used many rich people and many poor people to bring about his purposes on the earth so losing  money can be just as much a part of what is best for you as gaining money can. I know I'm not perfect and I haven't always given the best "ultimate" advise as a financial representative. In saying that I try to prefect my life each day and give the best advise to clients with the knowledge I have. I just hope they understand that it's their money and their decision. I want to help as best I can but even though I have an idea of what types of things may happen in the future I don't know everything that will happen to a client over the next few decades. I'm not there to make decisions for them. If one of my clients finds a financial principal or tool that works better than the ones that I've taught I hope they have the guts to tell me about it.

 Everyday I try to put myself in my clients shoes and use the knowledge and experience I have to help them solve the things that do, will or may keep them up at night. My philosophy is that if I can put as much control over your finances in your hands and educate to the best of my ability, than you will be able to take things you already know and make the best decisions you can.

Kim Butler is an excellent sales person that is very good at the "pitch" but not with follow thru.  We were prior customers of hers and after paying $7500 for the "Freedom Fast Track" (the name of the process she was selling at the time) we were passed around from Advisor to Advisor. She also continually recommended that we invested additional money into other ventures, only later to find out she was being paid a commission for our referrals. She presented the other investments as if she were doing us a favor and we were foolishly grateful.  Only to find out that our information was basically being sold by her to others who also ultimately only wanted our money. We trusted her financial advice and were taken advantage of. It is from personal experience that I say she is less than transparent with her agenda.

Kim conducted the initial meeting with us (1 in a series of 7 meetings included in the program), and we were very excited about using the Becoming Your Own Banker concept that she explained.  Our next meeting was scheduled with one of her associates, John Baker.  Before we could meet with him he had dissolved his relationship with Kim and we were passed back and forth between Ronald Weaks and Rodney Stockton....two other advisors.  Neither John, Ronald or Rodney are even reachable any longer thru Kim Butler's Office.  They are also no longer on her website.  After further research I found out that they are still selling Whole Life Insurance, which if used the way Nelson Nash explains in his book it is absolutely a good investment.  However none of them are any longer associated with her Company Partners for Prosperity because of her bad business practices of recommending additional investments after she "hooks" you with the Banking concept.  She recommended hard money loans thru an individual Blair Arnell, as a way for us to make additional money.  These investments were all real estate based, and tanked right along with the market. 

After calling Guardian and complaining we were told that she was not permitted to make investment recommendations beyond the securities she was licensed to sell thru them.  However, after we became clients of Kim's, she even went as far as trying to get us to sign up in a Greeting Card multi-level marketing program.  Kim is all over the place with her investments and it became very obvious at the end of our relationship that she would recommend anything if she had an arrangement to be paid commission.

She also represented herself to be a Christian which is very important to our family, and plays a part in where we choose to do business.  Thru a total fluke we found out she is a Scientologist, and further more has 2 children whom do not live with her, or even in the same state she resides.  I only mention this because it speaks volumes to me when I attempted to understand her motivation and integrity.

Kim Butler also recommended we go thru a "Discovery" process with another company.  This was supposed to assist us in better understanding what we wanted to achieve with our financial freedom. Come to find out the process was basically 3 to 4 telephone conversations with her sister in law Tammi Brannan. The Discovery Process was also based on their Scientology beliefs, which I feel should have been disclosed from the very beginning.  I  would not have willingly exposed myself to "mind over matter" indoctrination.  Of course this was an additional 1000 dollars.

I will say we are very happy with our Whole Life policies, and are finally at a point where we are reaping the benefits after nearly 3 years of premiums.  However we are no where near breaking even because of the other investment she so kindly recommended. 

From my experience if you want to understand and use the Banking strategies outlined in Nelson Nash's book, work with an advisor who's only product is whole life policies used for banking purposes.  We were fortunate enough to re-connect with one of the gentleman that she had "passed" us off to.  He's helped us structure and purchase additional whole life policies without ever asking us to invest in any thing else at all.

Linda,

I am afraid that you are painting a picture about Kim that is misleading. I personally have read Kim's books and sat in on her webinars. She doesn't give deciving advise to her clients. Infact that is completly against her philospohy. If you really listened to what she was teaching or you had read any of her books you would know that. Many people have tried to tear down Whole Life insurance just like you tried.

 I personally own several whole life policys and view them as my most valuable monetary asset. My cars have all depreciated in value and I spend more money on gas alone for them than what my premiums cost each year. I don't make very much as a college student but, I do own more than a million dollars in death benifit with my life insurance policies.

 The problem is not the advise you were given but what you did with the advise you were given. Mutual companies dividend participating Whole Life Insurance policies are one of the most powerful and proven financial tools that exist, that is most likely why Robert Kyosaki introduced you to Kim. The sad thing is that I often see people who have a policy for a short time and all they do is look at the premium as an expense without realizing they are purchasing an asset, they blame advisors for Whole Life policies not fixing their problems. The problem is they are the owner of the policy not the advisor which means it is up to them to use it to their benifit. Call Kim I'm sure she would love to show you how to get more efficent use out of your policy than what you have been... or cancel your policy and blame it on her.

Jackson Sandy, Utah U.S.A.