@Dave Hubberts, I like where you’re going with this. Paying extra principal early will save interest and shorten the mortgage. The part I’d want to test is using the mortgage rate to decide how many years to do it. I’m not sure a 6% rate tells us that six years is the right stopping point. To me, it comes down to what each extra dollar can do. Put it toward the mortgage and you save interest, but that money is tied up in the house. Put it into a policy and you build capital you can access and put to work, while accounting for the policy costs. With my 2.25% mortgage, I lean toward keeping that capital available. At 6%, I’d take a closer look at paying extra principal. One thing I appreciate about practicing IBC is that we get to set the rules for our own banking system. Your approach could be a good starting point. Run the numbers, see how it serves you, and if things aren’t working the way you hoped, adjust the rules. I’d be interested to see what you find.

@Travis Fairbairn dark stuff. Just like dividend paying whole life insurance.

@Christopher Benner IBC is the concept, and a properly structured dividend-paying whole life policy is the vehicle used to put it into practice. My thought would be to focus less on convincing your wife and more on understanding what gives her pause. If you can agree on an amount you can both comfortably commit to, beginning small can be better than waiting for the perfect time. Plant the seed, nurture it, and allow it to grow. When the time is right and opportunity presents itself, the policy gives you options—the ability to act or not act based on what fits your situation.

@David Waller I am glad the conversation gave you some positive energy. That tension between opportunity and responsibility is real, especially when every decision touches the broader cash-flow system. After losing my W-2 income, I spent a lot of time looking for the next opportunity and trying to replace what had been lost. At times, that caused me to force outcomes. The biggest shift for me has been recognizing the system as provision already available to steward, not something that must always be deployed to prove that it works. I still evaluate opportunities, but now with more patience and discernment as life happens. Buying the right asset at the right time is not only about its potential return. It is also about whether it fits your present responsibilities and preserves or expands your options. Sometimes stewardship calls us to move, and sometimes it calls us to wait. The value of the system is having the ability to make either decision from a stronger position.

@Paul Fugere beat me over the head with IBC for a few months back in 2020 before it finally sank in. Best beating I have ever had—and I thanked Paul again a few days ago when I made my sixth annual premium payment since initially funding the policy. In all seriousness, Paul was simply letting folks he knew and cared about in on this amazing concept—and, of course, building his client book along the way. 😉 Love you, brother. It definitely took more than one introduction. I understood pieces of it, but it took several conversations before I recognized it as an asset with real potential. At that point, however, I did not yet see or use it as part of a complete system. I funded that first policy with capital from a Roth IRA that I could no longer contribute to because of income limitations. I then redirected the cash flow I had been contributing to my 401(k) toward premium payments. Since then, we have funded three additional policies for my wife and me and incorporated six other family policies into our family banking system—ten policies in total, with more to come as the system allows. Including my most recent premium, I have now funded nearly $170,000 into that original policy. Through that policy alone, I have accessed more than $424,000 in policy loans and recycled more than $346,000 back through loan repayments, including interest. That repeated movement is what made IBC real for me. The same pool of capital has been used for family needs, investments, and business opportunities. Still, for the first several years, I largely viewed and used our policies as individual assets. It was not until my layoff last November that I began intentionally defining how the policies, our cash flows, outside investments, and family needs could operate together as an actual family banking system. Losing roughly 75% of our household income forced me to move beyond simply owning good assets and begin understanding how to coordinate them. What initially “caught” in 2020 was the potential of the asset. What has developed since my layoff is a much deeper understanding of the system those assets can support.

I like the idea as well. Monthly might be a sweeter spot on frequency.