What are your financial future goals? Most people focus on the size of the ROI in investment opportunities rather than focusing on how much and how often they are adding to the compounding. In this episode of Incorporating SuperPowers, host Justin Recla welcomes Angie Merget and Curtis Ray to discuss the power of compound interest. Angie is using her engineering background to help her clients reach their financial goals while Curtis has been helping hardworking people, from all walks of life, maximize retirement income through discipline, secure leverage, and achieving exponential growth. Listen in now as Justin, Angie, and Curtis go over the three key steps in understanding how to leverage compound interest and the vehicles you should be looking at if you want to improve your financial future.

So, Albert Einstein is credited for saying compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. That’s a famous quote and everyone hears it all the time. What I struggled with is that these financial platforms we have from index funds to mutual funds, to real estate rentals, to all the various things that we’re told to do end up underperforming every single time. So, how can one guy who we claim to be one of the smartest people to ever live say, “Hey, if you understand this one thing, it’s the most powerful force in the universe, the most important thing you’ll ever learn in your whole life, but yet nothing actually produces that?” So, I went down this really crazy path one day saying, “What is compound interest? What actually is it?” Because we say it all the time and we think we’re getting it, but here’s the dirty little secret, it’s all counterfeit. It’s fool’s gold. We think we’re getting something we actually never get.

So, I went down this path for four years with actuaries and lawyers and financial advisors, and I wasn’t even in the financial space. I just had a really bad day and I lost a ton of money, and I said, “That will never happen to me again. I want to know how this works.” I came across this math equation. This is going to sound really nerdy, but I came across this math equation that was Y = A (1 + R) to the X power. That is what Albert Einstein actually called the greatest discovery of all time, the most powerful force in the whole universe. I said, “Oh, holy crap, we actually have a roadmap. We actually have a defined equation.” Me being a mathematician and a scientist said, “If we have a math equation, we can follow it.” If you can follow it, it will produce the same result 100% time.

Over and over again. Yeah.

Over and over, you can replicate it. So, I started going, “So, what does A mean? What does one mean? What does plus mean? What does R mean? What does X mean? The five components of this math equation.” I created a platform that follows compound interest to the T without getting tricked or all the noise and infatuation of, what’s my greatest rate of return? What are my costs? What is my leverage? What does all these things that we’re told are really, really, really important? Here’s the secret, they’re all important. None of them have validation over any other one.

No. I love the fact that you bring it up that the way people … most people understand compound interest and how they understand that phrase and how they understand just how compounding interest works overall is it is a myth. Being in a risk mitigation business, our corporate counterintelligence firm has over last decade uncovered … I’ve lost count. I mean it’s over 1,000 different types of Ponzi schemes and opportunities out there that preyed on people’s desired earn compound interest, right? Because it is magic, but it doesn’t work the way people think.

So, I would imagine that we could probably have a ton of conversations around that. That’s one of the things that we look at when people come to us and say, “Hey, can you vet this opportunity?” It’s out there. We’ve seen huge, huge losses. I mean $75 million Ponzi schemes that we got to be a part of and help bring the life and then protect people if they just understand that piece from a due diligence perspective and understanding how it works, that’s huge. So Angie, I’m got to ask, is this the magic sauce that got you excited about how this works?

Yeah. Luckily just my math and engineering background, when Curtis explained what he was doing, it was enough that I could wrap my head around it and say like, “Is this for real?” I spent a little bit of time and getting to understand it, yeah, this is the magic, the secret sauce. Once Curtis explains it, it’s actually not that complex. It’s just understanding the laws of money and how money works and using compound interest.

Yeah. I can already feel the people wanting to chomp at the bit and they’re wanting to dissect what you’re doing, what you’ve uncovered, right, when you reveal it. It doesn’t matter what arena you’re in. They have the cryptocurrency, stocks, it doesn’t matter. The word compound interest will always peak any investors curiosity. It should be peaking your curiosity if you’re watching this show as to what that is, what that looks like, and how do you just shift, right? It’s looking … We’re all in this container. It’s a container that we’ve all been trying to see out of and we were talking about having to innovate, right? You’re innovating on the concept of compound interest. So, before we go on break, let me just ask this question. So, do you do this … do you teach this technique, this idea, these concepts through investing in standard platforms or what does it look like?

No, it’s actually against everything we’ve ever been taught our whole life, because here’s the actual secret sauce. It has nothing to do with your rate of return, but your rate of compounding. Those two ideas are not synonymous. Albert Einstein tried to explain this to him and everyone disregarded, “No, no, we need the greatest rate of return. We need to go for stocks and home runs and in cryptocurrencies and get a 1,000% rate of return just to lose 1,500% rate return.” So, what I teach is don’t get distracted. Look at what affects compounding because that’s a science and that’s a mathematical formula. Your rate of return is just one of five components inside of it, not the be all end all.

It’s a byproduct of it. It’s just a byproduct of it.

Exactly.

That’s brilliant. You flipped it of what’s your rate of return to no, no, no. How fast and how much are you compounding?

Exactly.

Understanding that. Folks, that right there, if you take nothing else away from this conversation, but that right there, that will completely shift how you look at where you’re putting your money. That’s huge.

Here’s one last thing on top of that. It’s never about the home run. How you increase your rate of compounding is slow, steady singles and doubles. Don’t even go for a home run because the moment you go for a home run, even in the great index fund and the mutual funds and the real estate, you will inevitably strike out. The moment a loss and a gain are coexisting, compounding ceases to exist. We think it’s compounding, but it’s a counterfeit. So, you’ve got to be in something that is always compounding forward.

This is, first and foremost, I just had a whole bunch of information come through that we’re going to dive into right after the break, but before we go on the break, Angie, where can people go find more about you and Curtis?

You can go to suncorfinancial.com and my email is angie@suncorfinancial.

Fantastic. Folks, we’re talking about innovating your financial future. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back after this break because there’s a lot more to come in this conversation. This is extremely important. Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

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