E111 - Afterburners & Infinite Banking: A Fighter Pilot Becomes a Banker

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For the first time on the show, Hans sits down with a client. Major Jonathan Wright is an active duty Air Force F-35 pilot who started his first policy in December 2023 and has been listening since episode one. Before the financial conversation, he walks through how he got here: growing up in Knoxville, following his father to Embry-Riddle, earning a fighter track slot at ENJJPT, and then giving up the F-16 he had wanted since childhood when a 24 hour window opened to become one of the first Air Force pilots to fly the Navy's EA-18G Growler. Two deployments later, including a Christmas Day flight of nearly nine hours, he transitioned to the F-35 and now flies red air at Nellis.

Major Wright is candid about the hesitations, including his first assumption that IBC was a grift and the shock of routing that much of a paycheck into base premium and PUA. Four years in, the family holds five policies, and he walks through the four turnkey rental properties and the options account he funded with policy loans, the dividend that grows each year, and why he weights death benefit heavily with three kids at home. Chapters

00:00 – Opening segment

05:05 – Embry-Riddle, ROTC, and building hours for a pilot slot

09:50 – ENJJPT, NATO classmates, and selection for the F-16

13:25 – Trading the Viper for the Growler on 24 hours notice

16:10 – Al Udeid, jamming comms over Syria, and eight hour sorties

19:40 – Misawa, and the start of 2020

22:50 – The F-15C, F-22, F-16, and F-35 compared

32:55 – Congress, the Fed, and the defense contracting loop

35:00 – Navy versus Air Force squadron culture

38:15 – Call signs, and the story behind Bundy

43:45 – The 2019 flu shot and what happened that night

50:40 – The COVID czar, quarantine, and four weeks in a room

53:25 – Credibility, compliance, and what it cost

58:15 – The F-35 transition course and arriving at Eielson

59:25 – The mandate, the RAR, the LORs, and three months grounded

01:02:45 – Meeting Cassidy, marriage, and three kids

01:08:50 – Finding IBC and reading Nelson Nash

01:12:45 – The hesitations: premium, PUA, and "is this a Ponzi scheme?"

01:19:35 – Rental properties, options, and the dividend

01:23:15 – What his finances looked like before

01:26:00 – The gap between IBC and conventional planning

01:28:50 – Closing segment

Key Takeaways

The debrief process is the through line of this episode. Fighter pilots take a problem, list every contributing factor, isolate the primary one, name a root cause, and produce a fix.

Doors that open unexpectedly are worth walking through. Giving up the F-16 closed a lifelong goal but put him in a Navy squadron, then in the F-35 community, and eventually in the group chat where he met both his wife and this show.

Being good with money by conventional standards is not the same as having a system. Before IBC, he maxed his TSP and his Roth IRA, carried no debt, and kept an emergency fund, and he would have passed any mainstream checkup with high marks.

What he does now is layered rather than singular. The policies are the foundation, and the cash value funds rental properties and an options account while continuing to grow inside the contract.