The Dealys

Meet Mark and Ronica Dealy from Bellingham, Washington!

Mark and Ronica have owned a yard care business for 27 years. Although Mark had always been a hard worker, he found dealing with the “business” side of the business, the numbers and employees, to be extra challenging.

They went to various training seminars to learn how to become better at running their business. “I even hired my accountant to show me how to read business numbers,” Mark recalls. And although having employees reduced the amount of physical labor Mark had to expend, they found that, “Employees are expensive”. Their finances were living proof of this. The Dealys were literally living off their credit cards.

“We borrowed from credit cards to pay credit card payments. We really had no direction financially,” Mark remembers.

“We tried traditional investing. We put our money with an Investment Advisor to put in an IRA, but after 18-24 months we found we were far from making money. We had lost about 25% of our principal.”

At about this time, one of Mark’s friends, who owned a Life Insurance Agency, gave him a copy of Becoming Your Own Banker and told him he should read it. “I was very skeptical, of course, but in the process of reading it, I saw something there that made a lot of sense.”

When Mark finished the book, he went to see his friend and said to him, “This is great! How do we get started?” Somewhat to Mark’s surprise, the agent told him he didn’t know how to get started, and he wasn’t doing what the book taught.

“That forced me to get online and look for people,” Mark said, “and that’s when I found the McFies. They were fairly close (about a 6 ½ hour drive) so it just seemed like I should talk with them.”

Mark set up an appointment in late 2008, and in early 2009 the Dealys purchased their first policy and started working on changing their financial picture. The first thing they did was to live by the 10-20-70 Rule and make sure they were saving 10% of everything they made. This has produced some amazing results.

One of the the first things the Dealys used their policy cash values for was the purchase of a new mattress. But that was just the beginning. Fast forward several years, they have now paid off all their credit card debts, taken several trips and have also been able to loan money to their children. “Our two sons have borrowed money (from us) to buy their first vehicles, and our daughter Sarah was also able to borrow money for her trip to Germany last year,” Ronica reports.

The Dealys recently purchased a new car. They decided to accept the dealership’s offer for financing at 0%. Even though they had the money available in their policies for this purchase, they decided this would allow them to keep the cash value available for other opportunities that might arise.

With a 0% interest rate the Dealys decided they would pay themselves as if they were paying out interest on this loan. It would be a little extra savings for them, but then they went further than that. “When you buy a new car, there are lots of extended warranties you can get,” Ronica explains. “So we decided, not only would we pay ourselves interest every month, we would also pay ourselves the amount of an extended warranty.” That way if anything does go wrong, they’ve already saved up for it. And if nothing goes wrong, as we certainly hope is the case, they will have money saved up for something else. Smart thinking!

“There’s a difference when you start using your own money that you’ve worked hard for and saved,” Mark observes.

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“When you start borrowing it out for other things, you take it pretty seriously. I’m a lot more careful about my financial decisions now because I work hard to save that money, and I want to make sure it gets returned.”

Mark Dealy is also a McFie Family InsuranceWealth Mentor. He says for him, it was a natural progression after learning about and applying The Perpetual Wealth Code™ in their own lives to helping others understand and utilize The Perpetual Wealth Code™.

In their free time, Mark and Ronica like spending time together snowshoeing, hiking, walking, looking at antiques, and eating out. Although they consider themselves pretty adventurous when it comes to cuisines, they heavily favor good American food.