Content: Page 13, Becoming Your Own Banker Fifth Edition

We continue to learn how the Infinite Banking Concept got started. So far, you have heard only a part of my story. The beginning of my awakening was in November 1980 when our first grandchild was born. Interest rates had begun to zoom upward. That was Bunker Hunt’s heyday – do you remember him? Bunker and his brother were going to “corner” the silver market – and as a result silver prices went up higher than anything, relatively speaking. Gold went up to $800.00 per ounce – that will give you an index.

Well, what did that cause out in the big wide world? Among other things, “drug junkies” started supporting their habit by stealing silver from homes. While my wife was visiting our new granddaughter for several days, some 60 miles away, the thieves broke into our home at 3:00 p.m. and “cleaned us out.” Have you ever been burglarized? You won’t believe what they can do to a house in just a few minutes. Luckily, I got to clean up the mess. If my wife had seen it I don’t believe she would ever feel comfortable in that house again.

Two months later my 52-year old brother dropped dead from a heart attack while playing racquetball with a son. Poor selection of ancestors – our father died at age 64 from the same problem.

Five months later our second granddaughter was born out in Hawaii. Five weeks later her parents discovered that the baby had cancer. I didn’t even know that babies could get cancer. She went on chemotherapy when she was 6 weeks old. Six months later she went through surgery to remove the tumor on her right adrenal gland. The cancer was a neuroblastoma, a very rare kind that attacks children. The lesions had involved her liver and she had to go back on chemotherapy for several more treatments. My story has a good part – she is now 20 years old and is cured [June 2019 – 38 years old with two children]! We have seen a miracle!

And now for the bad financial news – it was that summer that Interest rates went to 23% – and there I stood owing $500,000 under those circumstances. When a number of bad things like this occur in fairly rapid succession it will increase the quality and quantity of your prayer life dramatically. The basic idea revealed in the Infinite Banking Concept was born over a period of many, many months at 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. in the kneeling position praying, “Lord please, show me a way out of this financial prison that I have created for myself.” The answer came back about like a baseball bat across the eyes. “You are standing in the midst of everything it takes to get out – but you don’t see it because you look at things like everyone else. You can get to money during these awful times at 5% to 8% interest from three different life insurance companies through policies that you own. The only thing that limits how much you can get to is the same thing they tell you at the bank when you ask them how big of a check you can write – how much have you put in?”

If I had not been accustomed to paying very large premiums, by worldly standards, it is doubtful that I would have seen the message. Hardship often helps us to see things to which we are normally blind. It was evident to me that I needed to increase my life insurance premiums dramatically to create a pool of cash values from which to borrow to pay off the bankers that I owed. But I owed $500,000! How could I do both?

Honest introspection revealed that I could revise my spending pattern. This was a starting place. When I started teaching others to design their financial dealings along these lines my income tripled and that helped out. Thirdly, it occurred to me that the American public will buy anything if you give them a time payment plan. So, I started fragmenting lots of my rural property and financing the sales. With that chain of payments, I bought more life insurance.

Practically everyone thought I was crazy – it was opposite to what all the “experts” said. But an objective look at the facts of how life insurance worked, plus reason and logic – and continued sessions of intense prayer for guidance has proved that the system works.

Maybe you have found yourself in such a financial prison – or maybe you want to develop a system that will keep you out! Maybe yours is smaller or greater. Whatever, the principles are the same and they will serve you well. It requires understanding – and it requires discipline to implement the idea, but it can change your life dramatically – even beyond your fondest dreams!