You probably don’t sit around calculating how much interest you pay to banks and other lenders each year, but chances are you have financed large purchases, such as homes, education, cars and major appliances.
The interest paid on these items can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps more, in the course of a lifetime. People often have to decide how much money to allocate for their retirement and how much to paying down current debt.
But what if it were possible for people to save for retirement in a vehicle that allowed them to finance their life in a way that provided advantages over borrowing from a bank or lender?
The interest you pay to banks can add up That is exactly what R. Nelson Nash had in mind when he pioneered the Infinite Banking Concept. In essence, Infinite Banking, and other similar systems adapted from Nash’s original idea, involves paying into a whole life insurance policy with an insurance company that allows policy holders to take loans collateralized on their individual policies.
How the Infinite Banking Concept works
Infinite Banking and other individualized banking systems rely on participating whole life insurance policies, which build up equity and pay dividends. Policy holders pay premiums—which vary based on the amount of the death benefit chosen, along with other factors, such as the age and health of the policy holder—into a whole life insurance policy for a period of five to seven years and let the policy increase in value. This is known as the capitalization phase.
“Generally, we try to fund most of the money into it in the first five years,” Tom McDermott, president of Asset Protectors & Advisors Group, said. “The longer you can allow it to accumulate, obviously, the more you can pull out for retirement savings, the more you can pull out for larger items.”
After the capitalization phase, the policy becomes self-supporting; the returns on the policy at that point will be enough to cover the premiums. The annual dividends are based on how well the insurance company did that year. Insurance companies must invest the premiums received “in order to produce the benefits that are promised,” Nash wrote.
Through the use of a paid-up additions rider, policy holders benefit from having their dividends reinvested into their policy, thus increasing the value of their policy and subsequent death benefit.
Policy holders are able to borrow up to 100 percent of the cash value of their whole life policy at any time with no tax penalties. A policy holder “outranks every potential borrower in access to the money that must be lent,” Nash wrote.
With this structure in place, policy holders are able to essentially act as their own personal bankers. They can loan themselves money from their own life insurance policies, and the interest payments go back to their own accounts.
People who participate in individualized b...
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