I have two rental properties that require refinance every 5 years. That 5 years came due at the beginning of this month. Even though we have owned these two properties for 5 years, with perfect payments, and we were approved for the loan 5 years ago, they required another personal financial statement. So I spent half a day putting all the documents together they asked for, a complete waste of my time. It definitely crossed my mind to just use my own credit capability to eat this loan and maintain it internally (using my whole life cash value), because it would have saved me half a day of wasted time. I went ahead and bit the bullet and did it because I want to reserve my cash value for other things and use the money the bank was offering. But it was definitely a moment where I appreciated the banking capability I started creating 4 years ago with my whole life policies…. because I know in the future, I can maintain and own my own portfolio of loans of that size if I choose. The entire time I was thinking about the structure that the bank owns that I will be paying into for the next 5 years and how much value will be created off of this loan on their ledger. Banks don’t create value by addition, they create value in a multiplicative. I would rather own the structure that creates multiplicative value, rather than feeding their system, where I’m stuck creating value by addition and playing the risk management game as an investor. The investor is creating a direct value in the portfolio he builds. What the investor often doesn’t realize is the indirect value he creates when creating a loan with a bank, that exceeds the direct value that he is aware of. That’s the additional layer of value that we have the opportunity to capture by playing the banker game (the finance game) rather than playing the 2 dimensional investor game. FYI I’m doing a really cool banking strategy for a new vehicle I purchased for my wife, where I’m going to be capturing that indirect value that goes a step beyond just using my private banking system to capture the loan… I’m going to use the creation of that loan to create an additional layer of value on a different ledger that will end up paying for the car. I hope to do the same in the future for these rental properties.