“Infinite Banking” or “Be Your Own Bank” via Whole Life Insurance…where to start?
Can't tell you where to go for a good policy, but I can tell you that most brokers make a hefty commission out of your payments for at least a year before you even start funding the tax sheltered investment account that you're trying to buy under the umbrella of life insurance. You'll have to do a lot of homework to hunt down a reputable discount broker or a direct policy purchase from the insurance company. Life insurance requires insurable need. The description is vague enough, that you can probably still get the account despite being a single male with no apparent heirs to benefit, but it raises the question of why you are buying the insurance. Whole life policies require you to maintain a certain ratio of investment to premium payment and you will likely never be able access all of the money in the account for your own personal usage. Compare several policies from several brokers and companies. Read all the critical sources you can about the pitfalls and dangers of commissions, fees and taxes eating the benefits of your account. Verify that the insurance company you buy the policy from is financially stable after the market crash. You are paying a commission to pool your money into their investment fund, and if your insurer goes under, you'll have to get a portion of your money (possibly only the principle) back from the state insurance commissioner. Some companies sold pretty generous policies during the bubble and have cut their offerings way down without fixing their marketing literature and rosy promises.  Finally, let us know what you find. It never hurts to see hard numbers and to run multiple eyes over the legalese in these contracts. "Keep in mind that the only advantage that using a tax favored account gives you is tax-free growth of the cash value of the policy. This ""Infinite Banking"" spin isn't some sort of new revolution in money management, its just a repackaging of techniques that people have been using for years to manage tax liability with some breathless marketing spiel. Before you jump in, compute the following: Now comes the hard part: Life insurance is sold, never bought. The guy pushing this does seminars at hotels sponsored by life insurance agents. The purpose of the program is to generate sales of insurance. Be wary. If you actually have the significant amounts of money required to capitalize this, there are much better ways to get an income stream from that money -- you need a good financial advisor. And if you have a huge tax liability and a scheme like this somehow makes sense, find someone who does it for a living in your state who isn't a crook." "Why would you give them the money and borrow it back?  If you didn't give it to them in the first place you wouldn't need to borrow!  It makes no sense at all. It USED to have a different use--as a tax dodge.  You would buy ""life insurance"" for a low amount of coverage and way overfund it.  Let the money grow and in your later years you would ""borrow"" against the extra value you had built up in the policy.  Since this was a loan rather than a payout it wasn't income.  When you died the tax liability went poof. Thus so long as what you had to pay in life insurance + the inefficiency of the insurance company was less than the tax rate it was a good deal. Congress closed this loophole a long time ago by prohibiting too great overfunding." "There are a lot of false claims around the internet about this concept - the fact of the matter is you are giving yourself the ability to have money in a tax favored environment with consistent, steady growth as well as the ability to access it whenever you want.  Compare this to a 401k plan for example....money is completely at risk, you can't touch it, and you're penalized if you don't follow the government's rules. As far as commissions to the agent - an agent will cut his commission in half by selling you an ""infinite banking"" style policy as opposed to a traditional whole life policy. @duffbeer703 clearly doesn't understand life insurance in the slightest when he says that the first three years of your premium payements will go to the agents pocket.  And as usual offers no alternative except ""pick some high yielding dividen stocks and MLPs"" - Someone needs to wake up from the Dave Ramsey coma and realize that there is no such thing as a 12% mutual fund....do your research on the stock market (crestmont research).  don't just listen to dave ramseys disciples who still thinking getting 12-15% year in and year out is possible. It's frustrating to listen to people who are so uneducated on the subject - remember the internet has turned everyone into ""experts"" if you want real advice talk to a legitimate expert that understands life insurance and how it actually works."
There would be a catastrophic collapse in the financial industry.   Not exaggerating. Every bank is a company that's technically held by another company, a bank holding company. Every investment firm typically has anywhere from dozens to thousands of separate little companies (depending on the size of the overall firm) that it uses to manage money and risk.  There's ways to try and solve agency problems and moral hazard problems in corporate governance, but disallowing corporations from creating wholly owned subsidiaries is not the way to do it. Hey I used to do this for a job.          having two separate policies is a bad idea. If you decide you need more life insurance just increase the one you currently have. There are usually discounts for having higher levels of cover. Not only that but if you have multiple policies all you're getting is the task of doing multiple claims and maybe some additional policy fees depending on which companies you're looking at.        What did you consider when deciding how much life insurance to take? "The point here is actually about banks, or is in reference to banks. They expect you know how a savings account at a bank works, but not mutual funds, and so are trying to dispel an erroneous notion that you might have -- that the CBIC will insure your investment in the fund.  Banks work by taking in deposits and lending that money out via mortgages. The mortgages can last up to 30 years, but the deposits are ""on demand"". Which means you can pull your money out at any time.  See the problem? They're maintaining a fiction that that money is there, safe and sound in the bank vault, ready to be returned whenever you want it, when in fact it's been loaned out. And can't be called back quickly, either. They know only a little bit of that money will be ""demanded"" by depositors at any given time, so they keep a percentage called a ""reserve"" to satisfy that, er, demand.  The rest, again, is loaned out. Gone.  And usually that works out just fine. Except sometimes it doesn't, when people get scared they might not get their money back, and they all go to the bank at the same time to demand their on-demand deposits back. This is called a ""run on the bank"", and when that happens, the bank ""fails"". 'Cause it ain't got the money.  What's failing, in fact, is the fiction that your money is there whenever you want it. And that's really bad, because when that happens to you at your bank, your friends the customers of other banks start worrying about their money, and run on their banks, which fail, which cause more people to worry and try to get their cash out, lather, rinse repeat, until the whole economy crashes. See -- The Great Depression.  So, various governments introduced ""Deposit Insurance"", where the government will step in with the cash, so when you panic and pull all your money out of the bank, you can go home happy, cash in hand, and don't freak all your friends out. Therefore, the fear that your money might not really be there is assuaged, and it doesn't spread like a mental contagion. Everyone can comfortably go back to believing the fiction, and the economy goes back to merrily chugging along.  Meanwhile, with mutual funds & ETFs, everyone understands the money you put in them is invested and not sitting in a gigantic vault, and so there's no need for government insurance to maintain the fiction.  And that's the point they're trying to make.  Poorly, I might add, where their wording is concerned." the cash is not penalty free. if you take up loans from the policy to pay for retirement growth essentially stops and the interest will eat away policy value over time. so instead of gaining 7-8 % per year and taking withdrawals, you would be taking loans and losing whatever the interest rate is.  Dividends are just the profits made from the company which is why its tax free. its considered a return of premium. you are just overpaying for the policy by its dividend rate.   whole life is a great vehicle for some situations, but it always comes after a 401k or other retirement savings. whole life doesnt even begin to make sense imo until you are making a few hundred thousand a year and need it for a business buy sell agreement or legacy money to leave children/grandchildren.  it doesnt scale well to lower incomes. (in response to last comment to me) Ok. I understand now. Forgive me if I appeared to be splitting hairs. When it comes to understanding, exact wording is important. I keep money at home, enough to not be a frequent ATM user, not enough to imply any distrust of the banking system or preparation for Armageddon. You last comments implies the brochure said 13% keep all their money at home, i.e. have no banking relationship. A recent poll concluded 25% of people had less than $2500 available if they had an issue, such as the need to repair a car, or furnace. From that factoid, it wouldn't surprise me that half of those people have no bank acount at all. Not for lack of trust, but lack of money to deposit. Again, you are asking people to trust you with their life savings so you can take your 1% and the best you can do is google? You don't have a lawyer or anything? Plenty of advisory shops allow you to set up your own business within their infrastructure. It depends on your situation. For families with small amounts over the FDIC limit, there's account structures that let you get multiple coverages. Things like holding 100k in an account in joint with your wife, each of you holding 100k in individual accounts etc. For larger sums and institutions, there's CDARS. This system spreads your money out to multiple institutions with an eye to FDIC insurance limits. Some people feel this system is abusing FDIC, so I suppose it's possible it gets outlawed / shut down some day. Alternatively, you can just invest it yourself. Treasury Direct allows small buyers to buy US govt bonds at finished auction rates, or submit a qualified bid at auction. You won't get great rates, but Treasuries are about as good as dollars. "From the bank's perspective, they are offering a service and within their rights to charge appropriately for that service. Depending on the size of their operation, they may have considerable overhead costs that they need to recoup one way or another to continue operating (profitably, they hope). Traditionally, banks would encourage you to save with them by offering interest growth on your deposits. Meanwhile they would invest your (and all of their customer's) funds in securities or loans to other patrons that they anticipate will generate income for them at a faster rate than the interest they pay back to you. These days however, this overly simplified model is relatively insignificant in consumer banking. Instead, they've found they can make a lot more profit by simply charging fees for the handling of your funds, and when they want to loan money to consumers they just borrow from a central bank. What this means is that the size of your balance (unless abnormally huge) is of little interest to a branch manager - it doesn't generate revenue for them much faster than a tiny balance with the same number of transactions would. To put it simply, they can live without you, and your threatening to leave, even if you follow through, is barely going to do anything to their bottom line. They will let you. If you DO have an abnormally huge balance, and it's all in a simple checking or savings account, then it might make them pause for thought. But if that's true then frankly you're doing banking wrong and should move those funds somewhere where they can work harder for you in terms of growth. They might even suggest so themselves and direct you to one of their own ""personal wealth managers""." Looks more like an idea for a business rather than an actual business -- especially since it hasn't even launched. That said, it does have its merits. What bank actually holds the deposit funds becomes irrelevant, and may actaully change from time to time as they forge better partnerships with different banks.  Think of it like a mutual fund -- the individual stocks (if there are stocks) in the fund are less important than the balance of risk vs. income and the leveling of change over the course of time. It offers services banks offer, without fees (at least that is the proposal) with the addition of budgetting capability as well. It does have downsides as well There is an increased level of indirection between you and your money. They propose to simplify the banking business model, but in fact are only hiding it from you.  The same complexity that was there before is still there, with the added complexity of their service on top of it.  It's just a matter of how much of that complexity you would have to deal with directly. With that in mind, I would reiterate that they are not a business yet -- just a proposed business model.  Even the sign up process is a red flag for me.  I understand they need to gauge interest in order to forge initial relationships with various banks, but I don't see the need for the 'invitation only' sign up method.  It just sounds like a way to increase interest (who doesn't like feeling exclusively invited), and is a bit too 'gimmicky' for my taste. But, like I said, the idea has merit -- I have my reservations, but will reserve full judgement until they are an actual operating business. "Term is the way to go. Whole/universal are basically a combo of term and savings, so buy term life insurance and invest the difference in cost yourself. You should make a lot more that way (as far as savings go) than by buying whole life. By the time term life gets too expensive to be worth (when you're a lot older) you will have enough saved to become ""self-insured"". Just don't touch the savings :) You really only need insurance when there is income to replace and debts to cover - house/mortgage, kids/school, job income, etc." "Buy term and invest the rest is something you will hear all the time, but actually cash value life insurance is a very misunderstood, useful financial product. Cash value life insurance makes sense if: If you you aren't maxing out your retirement accounts, just stick with term insurance, and save as much as you can for retirement. Otherwise, if you have at least 5 or 10k extra after you've funded retirement (for at least 7 years),  one financial strategy is to buy a whole life policy from one of the big three mutual insurance firms.  You buy a low face value policy, for example, say 50k face value; the goal is to build cash value in the policy. Overload the policy by buying additional paid up insurance in the first 7 years of the policy, using a paid-up addition rider of the policy. This policy will then grow its cash value at around 2% to 4% over the life of the policy....similar perhaps to the part of your portfolio that would would be in muni bonds; basically you are beating inflation by a small margin. Further, as you dump money into the policy, the death benefit grows. After 7 or 8 years, the cash value of the policy should equal the money you've put into it, and your death benefit will have grown substantially maybe somewhere around $250k in this example. You can access the cash value by taking a policy loan; you should only do this when it makes sense financially or in an emergency; but the important thing to realize is that your cash is there, if you need it.  So now you have insurance, you have your cash reserves. Why should you do this?  You save up your cash and have access to it, and you get the insurance for ""free"" while still getting a small return on your investment. You are diversifying your financial portfolio, pushing some of your money into conservative investments." Size note- last I looked self insuring a fleet is insanely capital intensive as you basically have to put enough aside to cover most instances of risk. It's possible for some companies, but others will need alternatives as it's just too much upfront cash. "Primerica's primary value proposition is that switching from whole or universal life to term life, and investing the difference is a good idea for most people. However, there are a number of other important factors to consider when purchasing life insurance, and I would also be wary of anyone claiming that one product will be the ""best"" for you under all circumstances. Best Insurance? Without getting into a much larger discussion on how to pick insurance companies or products, here are a few things that concern me about Primerica: They have a ""captive"" sales force, meaning their agents sell only Primerica products. This means that they are not shopping around for the best deal for you. Given how much prices on term life have changed in recent years, I would highly recommend taking the time to get alternate quotes online or from an independent broker who will shop around for you. Their staff are primarily part-time employees. I am not saying they are incompetent or don't care, just that you are more likely to be working with someone for whom insurance is not their primary line of work. If you have substantial reason to believe that you may someday need whole life, their products may not suit you well. Primerica does not offer whole life as far as I am aware, which also means that you cannot convert your term life policy through them to whole life should you need to do so. For example, if you experience an accident, are disabled, or have a significant change in your health status in the future and do not have access to a group life policy, you may be unable to renew your individual policy. Above Average Returns? I am also highly skeptical about this claim. The only possible context in which I could find this valid would be if they mean that your returns on average will be better if you invest in the stock market directly as compared to the returns you would get from the ""cash value"" portion of a life insurance product such as universal life, as those types of products generally have very high fees. Can you clarify if this is the claim that was made, or if they are promising returns above those of the general stock market? If it is the latter, run! Only a handful of superstar investors (think Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, and Bill Gross) have ever consistently outperformed the stock market as a whole, and typically only for a limited period of time. In either case, I would have the same concerns here as stated in reasons #1 and #2 above. Even more so than with insurance, if you need investment advice, I'd recommend working with someone who is fully dedicated to that type of work, such as a fee-only financial planner (http://www.napfa.org/ is a good place to find one). Once you know how you want to invest, I would again recommend shopping around for a reputable but inexpensive broker and compare their fees with Primerica's. Kudos on having a healthy level of skepticism and listening to your gut. Also, remember that if you are not interested in their offer, you don't have to prove them wrong - you can simply say ""no thank you."" Best of luck!" "Remember where they said ""Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?  That is the essence of this problem.  You have freedom including freedom to mess up.  On the practical side, it's a matter of structuring your money so it's not available to you for impulse buying, and make it automatic.   Have you fully funded your key necessities?  You should have an 8-month emergency fund in reserve, in a different savings account.  Are you fully maxing out your 401K, 403B, Roth IRA and the like?  This single act is so powerful that you're crazy not to - every $1 you save will multiply to $10-100 in retirement.  I know a guy who tours the country in an RV with pop-outs and tows a Jeep.  He was career Air Force, so clearly not a millionaire; he saved. Money seems so trite to the young, but Seriously. THIS. Have auto-deposits into savings or an investment account. Carry a credit card you are reluctant to use for impulse buys.  Make your weekly ATM withdrawal for a fixed amount of cash, and spend only that.  When your $100 has to make it through Friday, you think twice about that impulse buy.  What about online purchases? Those are a nightmare to manage.  If you spend $40 online, reduce your ATM cash withdrawal by $40 the next week, is the best I can think of.  Keep in mind, many of these systems are designed to be hard to resist.  That's what 1-click ordering is about; they want you to not think about the bill.  That's what the ""discount codes"" are about; those are a fake artifice.  Actually they have marked up the regular price so they are only ""discounting"" to the fair price.  You gotta see the scam, unsubscribe and/or tune out.  They are preying on you.  Get angry about that!  Very good people to follow regularly are Suze Orman or Dave Ramsey, depending on your tastes.  As for the ontological... freedom is a hard problem.  Once food and shelter needs are met, then what?  How does a free person deny his own freedom to structure his activities for a loftier goal?  Sadly, most people pitching solutions are scammers - churches, gurus, etc. - after your money or your mind. So anyone who is making an effort to get seen by you and promise to help you is probably not a good guy.  Though, Napoleon Hill managed to pry some remarkable knowledge from Andrew Carnegie in his book ""Think and Grow Rich"". Tony Robbins is brilliant, but he lets his staff sell expensive seminars and kit, which make him look like just another shyster.  Don't buy that stuff, you don't need it and he doesn't need you to buy it." Well, actually in your brother's case it's quite a good idea. Not as a savings method, but as what it is - insurance. As long as he's alive and well he can pay his own debts, they're his problem and it's his responsibility. Once something, god forbid, happens to him - the debts become the problem of his survivors (you, if he doesn't have kids, for example). His life insurance should provide the means to pay off the inherited debts. So the point of life insurance as insurance is to make sure those who survive you have enough of what they need to continue living as they were with you. Some policies take into account injuries and work disability, so that not only when you die there are benefits, but also when you had an accident and can no longer work. Some policies are basically a combination of savings and insurance - that's the policies discussed in the investing threads. edit as clarified in the comments, debts cannot be inherited per se, they will be paid off from the estate before disbursement of such. What it means though is, if the deceased had accrued significant debt, all his assets may go to the creditors leaving survivors with nothing, which may also mean homeless. That was the kind of a problem I was talking about.