Becoming Your Own Banker – with Ascendant Financial
Becoming Your Own Banker is a financial strategy focused on your benefits not the banks. It’s a privatized banking strategy that allows individuals to take control of their personal finances by using the power of time-tested dividend-paying whole life insurance. This strategy helps you recapture lost interest and use your capital efficiently, offering a self-financed banking model that grows over time.
It is not to be confused with a sales or marketing tool for the life insurance industry. Rather, at its core, it is a mindset and habit-creating process that helps families and businesses optimize their cash flow and build generational wealth.
Ascendant Financial has been teaching this concept and believes this information should have been taught to Canadians over the last two centuries. The life insurance industry, in general, has done a poor job explaining the vast benefits and financial control features of dividend-paying whole life insurance. R. Nelson Nash, the pioneer of the concept, recognized that during your lifetime, your need for capital outlay to finance the things of life outweighs your need for a death benefit. If you implement his method using this historically proven savings tool, you can optimize your entire financial life and protect your loved ones. Unfortunately, the life industry has chosen to focus on the life insurance death benefit and have completely overlooked the financing abilities and total control available for PAR policyholders. Unfortunately, most life agents don’t have a clear understanding of its practice and are not trained to coach their clients how to effectively implement it into their daily lives.
Dividend Yield
Dividends with participating whole life insurance in Canada have proven to be historically consistent over a long time. At the time this article was written, dividends had been declared and paid for one hundred and seventy-three (173) consecutive years in a row, to be exact. An added advantage is the financial control that each policy owner has over what they elect to do with their annual dividend. These policies allow you to maximize cash value growth and leverage your money for significant financial gains.
One option is for the dividends to be chunked right back into the policy to purchase paid-up additions (PUA) at no additional cost. This not only increases the total death benefit of the policy, but it also contractually guarantees an increase in total cash value. The reason is the total cash value is contractually guaranteed to match the total death benefit by age 100 of the life insured. What that means is every day, the life insured is aging closer to 100, and the cash value is rising. This increasing pool of cash value is accessible by the policy owner at any time, either by policy loan, collateral assignment or withdrawal.
You may have heard a Financial Advisor or Life Insurance Agent say, “Wait a minute, dividends are not guaranteed.”
The only dividend not guaranteed is the one that hasn’t been declared yet.
When a dividend is declared on an annual basis, it is contractually guaranteed to be paid, it cannot be repossessed, and it cannot lose value. When the dividend is used to increase the paid-up whole life death benefit, it creates a long-term ripple effect where cash values are always growing and trying to catch up to the ever-increasing death benefit. This gives the policy owner a much more significant impact than the actual dividend received in any given year.
The policy owner’s behavior is far more critical than the behavior of the Life Insurance Company.
How Often Are Dividends Paid?
Dividends are paid annually on the anniversary date of your policy. The policy year is not to be confused with the calendar year. They are declared by the life company, usually at the same time each year when they release their annual reports, and then they are paid to the policy owners at their next upcoming anniversary. Once paid to the policy owner, it can never lose value or be taken away. It is immediately fully vested for the life of the policy.
Are Dividends Based On Par Value?
Yes, the dividends you receive on a participating (PAR) whole life policy are based on the value of the policy you have. The larger the policy, the larger your share of the divisible surplus. Many factors go into the actual dividend paid each year. The life company assesses how each policy contributed to the net earnings, a formula is applied, and the actual dividend yield per policy is determined and declared.
Be Your Own Banker
Things would have been easier and more profitable if someone had taught us the principles of dividend-paying life insurance right out of the gate. This simple, self-financed banking model has existed all along but the mentality that surrounds the world of finance has hindered people from recognizing it and then teaching it to the general public.
Now, Canadians are waking up to a world where they can experience financial control and peace of mind that previously they did not know was possible. By creating your own personal banking system, you can “live your life insurance” using this mechanism. It is about the usage of cash that runs through our hands every month and year and making our hard-earned money more efficient. Banks and loan companies charge us interest and a ton of fees for the things we require in our lifetime, including cars, houses, education, equipment and even our investments. They have taken the time to capitalize and build up a pool of money. Then we tap into their pile of money because we don’t have our reservoir pooled up. They make the rules when it comes to repayment. They check and ruin our credit when things don’t go as planned. During this whole scenario, a lifetime goes by, and our money flows towards the books of someone else’s bank. They make the rules, and control all the terms. Many have referred to this as a form of financial slavery, as Canadians are shackled into the chains of debt with the easy credit practices of the modern world.
Using the process of Becoming Your Own Banker, we flip the whole situation to our favour. It starts with creating our pool of financial value and becoming master of our own destiny. We control when we access capital. Best of all, we don’t have to ask permission and have total control over when and how we make payments back to our banking system. Then we can access those payments to use again in the future. That includes our retirement. This strategy offers a multigenerational wealth strategy, enabling you to teach and pass on these principles to future generations.
The main idea is to take back the interest, fees, control, and lost time, the lost opportunity cost we would otherwise pay for such items. Interest rates keep fluctuating, but the banking process remains constant. Banks record bigger profit margins when interest rates are low than when they are high. This idea is not about investments, as many think it is. Quite the contrary, this is about how one manages things of monetary value in life, which may always include potential investments. Those who embrace this process and are coachable, avid learners, can do much better on their lifelong financial journey by simply adding Becoming Your Own Banker into the middle of what they are already doing.
The late R. Nelson Nash created The Infinite Banking Concept, which refers to a person controlling their cash flow by not borrowing from banks but from a financial entity they co-own. While this happens, their capital continues to grow because it is never withdrawn. This creates a powerful lifelong compound effect. The dynamics of The Infinite Banking Concept work correctly when a life insurance policy is optimized for cash value accumulation over a lifespan. It is essential to work with an Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner who has mentored under R. Nelson Nash, completed an entire course of study, and is thoroughly familiar with the concept.
Even more critical is to have coaching from someone who implements this process successfully in their own life. To get the maximum benefit, it is important to learn Nelson Nash’s 5 key principles of a successful private banker; you can learn more about these from our on-demand training. Our site has in-depth videos and articles on many topics related to the concept and the tools that help make it possible. This includes Participating Whole Life Insurance, paid up additions, tax free death benefits, insured retirement plans, corporate owned insurance, cash surrender value and many more.
The materials explain in detail how insurance works, but be aware that the insurance is simply a vehicle for accomplishing an objective. Becoming Your Own Banker is a process and not a product. The product or tool of PAR whole life, when custom-designed, is the means by which someone implements the process. If you really want to discover how Canadians are using this process, register for our training class to dive deep and get your questions answered.
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Advantages of Becoming Your Own Banker
Here are a few of the key advantages for Canadians who want to be their own bank.
- Your principal is safe, and growth is guaranteed year after year.
- You can access your equity whenever you choose and for whatever reason. There are no mickey mouse credit checks or restrictions like a typical lender has.
- Your growth and distributions are not hindered by tax.
- You can be protected from creditors using this strategy.
- You can experience uninterrupted compound interest growth on your money over a lifespan.
- Your gains are locked in every year…they cannot be taken away from you.
- You are insulated from the massive swings of the stock and real estate markets so your cash values do not decrease.
- When you need to use capital for any reason, the company you co-own continues to grow your funds daily.
- Your family is protected for life, and the protection continues to grow and pays out tax-free when you are gone.
- The feeling of control that it provides creates a peaceful, stress-free way of financial life.
- The typical Canadian family or business owner can experience significant tax savings over a lifespan.
- This multigenerational strategy can leave a ripple effect that outlives you by a long shot.
- You can set up a lasting legacy by stewarding this process and teaching the next generation.
- You can create passive income to enhance your retirement substantially.
- You can create a tax-free retirement income stream built on a foundation of guarantees by implementing this strategy.
Becoming Your Own Banker Process
The Ascendant Financial team is built on educating the Canadian market on the concept of Becoming Your Own Banker as Authorized Practitioners, who learned directly from R. Nelson Nash. We assist you in truly taking back control of the banking function and empowering you to leverage your own money. We educate and assist with structuring the policies tailored to your unique financial life. More importantly, with our ongoing training, videos, resources, client portal and coaching method, we are with you for life as your guide.
To be clear, this process is not a “get rich quick scheme.” It is quite the opposite; it is fundamentally a way to build wealth that you harness and control for multiple lifespans. By working on how we think about money and the flow of income and payments you can contain so much more of the cash that passes through your hands. The best financial tool you own is your brain, by working on it you can dramatically improve everything you are doing financially. Becoming Your Own Banker is not an insurance contract or financial tool, it is a behavior that shapes how you interact with your spending, purchasing and investing for the rest of your life. The specially designed high cash value whole life insurance contracts are just the vehicle to make it very efficient. Many people talk about the power of compound interest. However, most Canadians go through their life and never truly experience this miracle. Private family bankers who set up an alternate bank using mutual whole life insurance experience the joy of the composing miracle daily. Nelson Nash and his wife Mary did not see a traditional bank for 30 years before he passed away by using these key principles. He described it as “A peaceful stress free way of life when you get rid of the banks” – Nelson Nash.
Grab a copy of Nelson’s bestselling book Becoming Your Own Banker: Unlocking The Infinite Banking Concept today, start your learning journey, and you can experience the same financial peace that so many Canadians are today.
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