Posts by Rachel Marshall
Before You Buy: The Questions Every Infinite Banking Practitioner Should Be Able to Answer
Infinite Banking has grown fast. Really fast. And with that growth has come a flood of practitioners, coaches, agents, and advisors all claiming they can help families become their own banker. Some of them are exceptional, some are undertrained, and some are simply using the Infinite Banking label to sell products they were already selling,…
Read MoreFear Is the Most Expensive Financial Advisor You’ll Ever Have
The most expensive financial advisor many people will ever have doesn’t send an invoice. It doesn’t show up on a fee disclosure. It never introduces itself. But it has shaped more financial decisions, and quietly eroded more wealth, than almost any market downturn, bad product, or conflicted advisor ever could. That advisor is fear. Fear…
Read MoreWhat 54 Life Insurance Policies Reveal About Family Banking
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and his wife reportedly own 54 life insurance policies. Yes, fifty-four! Most people see that headline and think it’s extreme. Maybe even a little absurd. Why would anyone hold that many policies? Who does that? But there’s a more interesting question worth asking – what does someone who owns 54 policies…
Read MoreIndexed Universal Life Insurance Is Not for Everyone: Who Should Not Buy an IUL
IUL gets pitched to young professionals, families, business owners, retirees, and pretty much everyone in between. The message is always consistent: this product can solve your financial problems, provide market upside with downside protection, and generate tax-free retirement income. One product, all things to all people. For most people, IUL is the wrong tool entirely.…
Read MoreWhen Financial Complexity Hurts More Than Helps
There’s a belief in the financial world that complexity equals sophistication. The more moving parts a strategy has, the smarter it must be. The harder it is to understand, the more impressive the advisor must be. And if you can’t quite follow what’s happening with your own money, well, that’s just the price of having…
Read MoreSave Automatically & Invest Intentionally: The Order That Changes Everything
You set up your 401(k) contributions years ago. They go out of your paycheck automatically, before you even see the money. You’ve been doing this for years. And you’ve been telling yourself you’re saving for retirement. You’re not saving. You’re investing. Automatically, often without much thought, into a market-linked account where the value can drop…
Read MoreWhole Life Dividends Explained: What They Are – and What They Are Not
When most people hear “dividend,” their brain goes straight to stocks. That’s understandable. And completely wrong when applied to whole life insurance. That one assumption causes real problems. People chase companies with the highest declared dividend rate. They compare illustrations side by side and pick the bigger number. They make decisions based on a metric…
Read MoreBoost Investment Returns with Infinite Banking
Every investor faces the same quiet trade-off. The moment you move capital from savings into a deal, the money stops growing where it was. It is now in the deal,or it is in the bank, but it is not doing both. That is the either/or trap of conventional investing, and almost nobody questions it. There…
Read MoreUsing IUL for Retirement: Smart Strategy or Costly Mistake?
You’ve probably seen the pitch. Maybe you sat across from an advisor, or watched a video, or had a friend forward you something. The illustration was impressive: tax-free income in retirement, market upside without the downside, a number at the end that made your eyes widen a little. An Indexed Universal Life policy, they said,…
Read MoreWhat Is Limited Pay Life Insurance?
What Is Limited Pay Life Insurance? Most people assume that owning a whole life insurance policy means writing premium checks for the rest of their lives. It’s one of those assumptions that gets repeated so often it starts to feel like a rule. But it isn’t. A limited pay life insurance policy lets you fully…
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