Yesterday Tammy and I attended a local event to support Smoky Mountain Service Dogs, a wonderful organization. This was a patriotic event with a couple of retried flag officers, and just a bunch of wonderful local community members. Anyway, prior to the event, we went to a neighbor's house for cocktails. Some I had met before and some for the first time. They all knew of us and generally refer to us as the "young people". The average age in my neighborhood is north of 60 easily. Great people. Everyone I spoke with was either a retired physician, retired military, retired business owner, retired airline pilot, or retired highly compensated employee. The doc in fact was a retired Navy captain pediatric surgeon. Not one of them knew of IBC, nor did they own whole life insurance. One man, on the recommendation of his financial advisor, surrendered his whole life insurance policies and used those funds to purchase a long-term care policy-not ideal but not terrible when compared to simply surrendering for cash and doing nothing with it. Of course, I maintained a poker face and commended him while in reality my mind was exploding. Had we had more time I think that I would have asked him, why not have both? I share this to say that if you practice IBC, and control the banking function at your level, you are truly in the elite regardless of your income level. Your mindset and willingness to self-educate are simply amazing traits that you all have and all things considered, will lead to considerably better results than otherwise could have been realized.

I haven't listened to every episode of Wealth Warehouse, so I might have missed it, but an episode with kids/teens who use IBC would be interesting to hear how they understand IBC when they don't have years of being exposed to the traditional routes of 401ks and IRAs.

Capital attracts opportunity. I didn't really understand this until I started putting money in a place that I completely controlled. This is the view from my backyard. It's like this on most nights, and I hope that I'll never grow tired of just pausing to admire God's creation. I want to be clear about something: a whole life insurance policy did not build this house; although it could have. What a dividend-paying whole life policy did was make capital available on my terms. Cash value that builds on a guaranteed floor. Loans I can take against it without an application, a credit pull, or a 60-day window. Money that keeps compounding inside the policy even while its value is out working somewhere else. Here's what practicing the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) did for my family. Whole life insurance cash value funded the initial land acquisition; it funded the construction loan 25% down payment; it funded the 12 months of mortgage payments my lender required we have in an account at their bank prior to closing; it funded 100% construction of our pool space; it funded our landscaping; and finally it funded builder overages that sometimes occur. Liquidity without liquidation. I didn't have to sell or cash in a damn thing. Every opportunity I've taken in the last several years had a clock on it, and not one of them waited while I figured out where to pull the money from, or which position to sell, or what the tax hit would be. Most people's money exists on a paper ledger their 401k custodian sends every quarter. Liquid capital attracts opportunity — illiquid capital watches it happen from a distance.

I thought people might be interested in this application of IBC that I touched on in my introduction post. In December 2024, we received funds from our health sharing plan to be used to pay our midwife. It turns out, the funds were almost exactly what the annual premiums (base + PUA) are on my wife’s policy (renewal is in December). Well, I’m using rounded numbers here, we paid $5,000 in premium for an increase in over $4,500 in cash value. From there, we took a policy loan to pay the midwife, and this worked well because our monthly expenses were low. We were able to save money through loan repayments very quickly. What I mean to say is, we had a plan to pay it back, which is needed whether slow or fast. This isn’t the whole story though. The death benefit increased by something like $15,000, a guaranteed number from now on…without needing to prove insurability. Sometimes pregnancy can cause complications with getting insured. That paid up death benefit is now producing more dividends which are buying more PUA, so our $5,000 premium paid in December 2024 has been working for us every day since then, and will continue until the day we die.

If you've been an avid listener of The Wealth Warehouse Podcast, practice the Infinite Banking, know David Befort and Paul Fugere, or just want to learn more about becoming your own banker, you are in the right place. To kick us off, feel free to comment how you heard about IBC below!