Financial Wisdom & Folly (4)

Financial Wisdom and Folly in Light of Scripture

Yeah, so we've been covering this study on financial wisdom and folly, which means foolishness. And I know I have participated in some financial foolishness that I want to take those lessons learned and share them with you all, which is what I've been doing.

So, I was covering, I think I started covering last week the seven baby steps from Dave Ramsey and most of these financial advisors that are popular, Dave Ramsey, Crown Financial, which is also supposed to be, you know, Christian, and even a lot of these other ones that are secular, like Suze Orman, they all basically preach the same thing, they all basically tell you the same thing, the same traditional financial planning that is, a lot of which is a really, a really bad idea.

So, we're going to get into a little bit more of that. I think I left off on baby step three, so Dave Ramsey has seven baby steps, and baby step three is to save up three to six months of expenses. That's more, and that's more for anything, emergencies obviously, or if you lose your job or anything like that.

That's not a bad thing to do, obviously, it's not a bad idea to do that. But, part of the issue here is how do you accomplish this in a way that doesn't prevent you from still taking advantage of good opportunities to invest in or things like that.

And so, because the recommendation here, at least from Dave Ramsey's perspective, is to put this money in like a money market account. And, have it just basically sit there and you can have it, use it whenever you need it, which is only meant to be for emergencies of course, it's not meant to be used for anything else.

And so, this is something that we started to do, that we actually did ourselves, but then I started learning more about how utterly unsafe and horrible banks are. And I've been talking about that this past couple studies and everything, that there's a big problem when you have a big chunk of money, because three to six months of expenses, that's a significant amount of money, that's not chump change.

And so, when you have that much money in a bank, and banks, like I've mentioned before, when the lockdowns hit, and you know, we have to be careful with our vocabulary, right? It wasn't when the pandemic hit, the pandemic was, that was a scam, right?

The lockdowns were locked down because of government overreach. And so, but when that happened, the federal requirements for banks to have money in their reserves was dropped down to zero, meaning they didn't have to have any of your money in the bank, or available to give to you if you try to pull it out.

And then, not too long ago, they raised it up to 20 again, which is causing many banks to shut down, many. And a bunch of banks have been closing because of this. And this is one thing that really started to get my attention when I was, started listening to Kirk Elliott, Dr. Kirk Elliott.

And he's a precious metals dealer. I highly recommend that you check him out. He's very, got a lot of good stuff. I found out about him through Alex Jones. And so, I got really uncomfortable with having money in the bank because I was finding out more about how banks are very unstable.

They're not, they're not safe. They're unsafe. It's probably the worst place to put your money is a bank, okay? And the problem, again, is because banks are federally controlled. The feds raise the rates of reserve requirements for banks.

It's like, the federal government controls the banks. They should not be allowed to do that. Just like they shouldn't be allowed to print money, to create currency, or to print currency. And now, they have control of banks because of the FDIC.

You know, that's part of how they control banks. Which is, that's not, you know, Supposedly, your money is insured up to $250 ,000 in a federal bank. And any, pretty much all banks are that way. All banks are like that.

They're federally controlled. The problem is, is that so many banks have already shut down now that that FDIC fund to reimburse you if the bank, for whatever reason, can't pay your money, give you your money, that money has run out completely.

So there's no more FDIC insurance for your money. So the money that's sitting there in your bank, it's very likely that most of it is not even in there. And the, because the banks will loan it out. They will take it and invest it and try to loan it out and use it for mortgages and loans and stuff like that.

So, this is where the precarious situation that the financial system is built on a foundation of sand.

Right?

And so, that's why I'm really wanting to stress this to you all to make sure that you're very careful with what you put in the bank. And then there's the problem of, I think this happened in Canada when the truckers, I believe, were protesting the lockdowns and they garnished their wages, they garnished their bank accounts.

The government just took them, just took the money right out of the bank accounts or they froze them because, again, that's a system where the government controls the banks. So, this is a very, this is a situation that none of us obviously want to be in.

And there's convenience to having a bank. We're all used to having banks and a checking account and a savings account and the whole thing. And we're in a situation where you can't completely get out of the banking system necessarily.

Maybe you could, but it's just not as convenient. It's just more of a, it's a lot more work to do things that way. And it's worth doing if you can, but we haven't completely gotten out of the banks, but we've taken most of our money out of the banks.

So, we only have what we need to use for the month, basically. Just whatever we need to use for our short-term saving stuff and our monthly expenses, that's basically it. And so, this is the problem with, one of the big problems with Dave Ramsey's recommendations is that he doesn't give you this big picture perspective of economics and like, the government should not be doing, controlling money and banks the way that they do.

Because they're the ones who cause all of these problems. All of this inflation and all of this financial disasters that have been brought down on our nation. The Great Depression, all of those things were caused by the government.

Those are all government problems. It's government corruption. And that's not how banks are supposed to operate. I mean, sorry, well, banks, but also governments. Governments. And, so that's why we were not, we got very uncomfortable with having our savings just there, just sitting there in a bank, basically waiting to be taken.

And so that's why we ended up making that decision to take the money out of the bank and look into putting into precious metals instead. So, that's something that's, I would highly recommend that you all look into.

Dr. Kirk Elliott, very much recommend that you all check him out. I've posted his link several times on Miwi, on the church group. And it's just a much safer, a much better approach to having something that won't lose its value.

Well, apart from that, because we didn't even, I didn't even get to the problem of the American dollar itself is about to expire. Right, the value of the dollar has all but collapsed. And you see the world economy now trying to move away from the dollar.

And the instability that the dollar is creating because our government is so unstable and out of control. Because they keep printing money and money and more money like crazy. So, we have to, we need to be aware of these things.

It's important to be aware of these things and to be responsible with our livelihood, with our finances so that we don't get taken advantage of. Right? And with some good planning with respect to these things we could be well prepared for the disaster that is already before us as a nation.

And one thing too is, so one thing too is that with respect to that, it's kind of like the story of Joseph in Genesis. Right? The story of Joseph is where there was going to be a famine in the land of, in Egypt for nine years.

Right? And so but then they were able to prepare for that famine by storing up food in advance so that they could weather out the drought, the storm, and be okay. And that's, this is what it basically is that we're trying, that I'm trying to get us to do.

To be prepared. Right? Be prepared, have a plan, have a plan to be able to secure what you have, what you need, and not rely on the government. Okay? We need to not rely on the government as much as possible because the government is not reliable.

They are not trustworthy. They are criminals. And we are living out their criminality every day. You know there's a guy, there was I think a French philosopher, an economist I think, well he was a philosopher.

But his name is Frédéric Bastiat. And Frédéric Bastiat, or Bastiat I don't know how you pronounce it, but he wrote a book called The Law. And very good little book and there's actually a Tuttle Twins episode based on that book they also wrote a book.

The Tuttle Twins series by the way, it's like a, it's a series of books for kids, for children, that teach kids like basic free market, conservative free market, capitalist principles. Very sound, conservative principles that line up with scripture.

The only thing that you have to be careful with them is that they are hardcore Mormons. So just be aware of those things. But there, this thing about, so Frédéric Bastiat, he talks about something called legal plunder.

Legal plunder. And legal plunder is basically when governments take advantage of you. They take your stuff and either they use it for themselves illegitimately or they distribute it to somebody else who doesn't have money.

That's basically socialism and it's a very corrupt form of government. So the issues there, and the government has become a bunch of treasonous pirates. That's basically what they are. Right? They engage in this act of legal plunder because they take your money by stealing it essentially but it doesn't look like it because it's the government doing it.

So it gives you, it's like okay well the government, it's like it doesn't matter if it's the government doing it. Obviously the government can do wrong things. Can do wicked and evil things. And in the Bible, God judged many nations for being evil.

You know, for evil governments. And engaging in acts of sin and idolatry and war and all of these things that were sinful. So that's why we have to, this is something that I started to learn some years ago and recognizing that I became so very upset at the fact that I just sort of listened to whatever Dave Ramsey was telling us and didn't properly examine it with scripture and with other wise counsel.

Right? And that's the big problem is that you have to be careful with who you trust. You have to be very, very careful with who you put your trust in. Because now you know, sadly, well, I mean I listened to this guy for many years and some things were helpful but some things really hurt us.

And they set us back significantly. So and one of the ways that this really, I think to really drive this home and I should have brought my books with me for show and tell. Next time I'll bring Nelson Nash's book.

Oh, great. Yes. Yes. Awesome. Thank you. So I mentioned Nelson Nash's book. Thank you. I mentioned Nelson Nash's book last time, Becoming Your Own Banker. This is it. Highly recommend this book. What I did was I ordered a, it was like a starter set from the Nelson Nash Institute.

They have like an $80 set where they have Nelson Nash's like three books, two or three books and a couple of other books that talk about the economy from a very from a more Austrian perspective, which is a more conservative and more biblically consistent view of financing or money and economics.

And so.

This and I mentioned, by the way, that if you talk to the guys from Banking With Life with James Nethery and their office, and if you try to get a policy with them, they will require you to read this book.

And it is a very good book. It's very much worth reading. But here in this book it's extremely fascinating because this is really a study on human behavior. And it's also a study on going with the flow of financial advice and having it fail miserably and going with non-conventional ways of thinking and realizing how much better it really is.

And this is one of the things that I wanted to really bring out today. Because you all know Dave Ramsey, right? Did anybody go through his financial peace university? Yeah. So with Dave Ramsey he went he had become a millionaire, I think, early on in life.

And then he lost everything. And he had to declare bankruptcy when he lost all of his money because there was some real estate stuff going on, I think. And so he had to declare bankruptcy and as you know bankruptcy, that's a drastic last resort decision where you're basically, it's on your record for seven years depending on what kind of bankruptcy you declare, but bankruptcy you can't, you're like, that means basically you couldn't pay off your debts.

That's what it means. You couldn't pay off your debts and so you basically stuck you either have to liquidate everything you own in order to pay off whatever debt you can and then you're sort of just stuck paying off you're sort of in a financial limbo for about seven years, roughly.

But the interesting thing was that something very similar happened to Nelson Nash when there was a time he was also heavily invested in real estate. He became very successful because he was following all of this financial guru advice about real estate.

And at one point, I believe, I think it was in the 80s the government drastically raised interest rates from one year to the next, drastically. And soared the interest rate. And that took a lot of people by surprise especially people who were heavily invested and had a lot of debt in real estate because then people started to lose their homes and their mortgages and they couldn't pay them and all this stuff.

So all of this has consequences. Irresponsible lending and financial practices has consequences. And so he became like instantly $500 ,000 or more in debt within just a matter of a year because of the interest rates changing so high.

But something very interesting happened with Nelson. Nelson, he didn't declare bankruptcy. Instead, he realized that he was already paying a lot of premiums, high premiums into a life insurance policy and he realized that he was able to tap into that capital by taking out policy loans and things like that.

And so he took advantage of that life insurance policy in order to pay off all of his debts. And that's how he was able to climb out of debt without ever having to go declare bankruptcy. So it's pretty remarkable.

It's pretty amazing that on the one hand, you have Dave Ramsey who's famous probably the most famous money guy even in like not necessarily Christian, even just everybody knows who Dave Ramsey is pretty much.

But his way led to bankruptcy, yet Nelson's way, he was able to get out of a huge amount of debt. I mean, we're talking at least half a million dollars. That's not chump change. And that was back in the, what, 80s?

That's even worse now, right?

So.

The way he did it was by applying these infinite banking principles. This is why it's so important to understand these things because they're so powerful. They are so incredibly powerful and they help us to manage our finances and control our capital wisely to give us more control over our money.

Because the life insurance company those agencies are not banks. So they're not regulated and controlled like banks are. There's no federal deposit insurance corporation attached to the life insurance companies.

There's no regulation of that sort because life insurance companies operate with their insurance. They deal with insurance. And insurance is a different kind of thing. And that's where we get a lot of the advantages of life insurance.

Especially mutually owned dividend paying whole life insurance. Now there's a whole bunch of other types of insurance and most of them are pretty much scams. Variable whole life and universal life and there's all kinds of index.

There's all kinds of these gimmicks that people will try to sell you. And a lot of those things are just rip offs. They're not wise. They're not good ideas to get into. But this kind of life insurance you can use to as a way of creating for yourself your own bank.

And it's extremely powerful. So powerful that the way Nash took advantage of it, he was able to get out of debt without ever having to declare bankruptcy. So that's really powerful stuff there. Something that I want to really drive home here as well is I wrote a book review of this book and I shared it on the MeWe group.

I really do recommend that you check this out because it's like honestly, how do you describe this? It's almost like the best thing since sliced bread. It's better than sliced bread. This stuff is amazing.

And I want to read my review of this book. So it says phenomenal paradigm shifting life changing book. Get it, read it, apply it. Don't listen to financial gurus like Dave Ramsey on life insurance who misled me.

Who not only don't understand but apparently refuse to be corrected regarding the amazing power of mutual whole life dividend paying insurance policies. Which you can use to finance purchases and actually earn interest on policy loans.

So this is a little bit misleading here. You earn interest on the money that you have put into the life insurance policy. The reason you can continue to earn interest is because you're not taking the money out.

Because one of the lessons that you'll learn here is that interest, you're either earning interest or you're losing the opportunity to earn interest when you use your money to pay for something. But when you take out a loan, your money stays intact and it's still continuing to earn interest.

So in addition to having more control over the repayment as opposed to paying someone else the interest or foregoing the opportunity to earn interest by putting it in a sinking fund, a savings fund like Dave Ramsey recommends, that's what I talked about last week.

To start and fund businesses and even create loan or leasing type businesses. To generate a passive source of income, tax free eventually to live off of completely once the policy matures into retirement age and to still give a substantial death benefit to your beneficiaries even when you die old.

Whereas the term life that Ramsey recommends becomes prohibitively expensive by the time you're more likely to die. And more. Listen to this. This is a powerful solution to the failed unbiblical government banking system, savings and retirement accounts, welfare schemes, all the way from the FDIC to 401ks to 529s, which is a college savings account, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.

On and on. All these government accounts and plans are just ways of bandaging a problem that they caused. It is a powerful means of setting up both yourself and the next generation, your legacy, for financial success and freedom.

For a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children and the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous. That's Proverbs 13 .22. Amen? That's why I really want us to take hold of this and take advantage of it.

Now, I know I'm saying all these good things about it, right? But there are caveats. There are qualifications to being able to do this. There are certain things that you have to do in order to make this work properly.

One of the things that you have to be able to do is to save money. Right? Because in order to create a banking system, you have to pay premiums. And that's the big question that they're going to ask you.

How much money... The big question that they're going to ask you when you try to open up a life insurance policy in order to do an infinite banking system, they're going to ask you how much premium are you willing to pay?

How much premium are you willing to pay? You're going to get out of it what you put into it. So if you don't put a whole lot into it, you're not going to get that much out of it. So the more you're able to put into it, the more you're able to save your money and set it aside and have it work as a sort of sinking fund but better.

It's better than a sinking fund because your sinking fund will stop earning interest the moment you use it up. Right? That's the problem with the sinking fund. The minute you take the money out, it's gone.

You're no longer earning interest on it. But when you use an infinite banking system through a whole life insurance policy, you never take the money out. You get a policy loan out instead. And you pay for things with policy loans if you need to instead of taking money out and losing the interest on that money.

Okay? So that's what makes this so powerful. And when you understand this principle, that's the big thing is that you have to be able to save money as much as you can so that you can put it into a banking system for yourself and your family to take advantage of and to use.

And it's extremely powerful. Like I already said, there's so much control because when you take out a policy loan, policy loans are unstructured. Unstructured loans means there is no repayment plan. There's no terms.

There's no conditions. If you stop paying it or if you don't pay it, you're not going to get your wages garnished or your bank account frozen or your assets taken away or your house taken away or your... none of those things.

Because the life insurance company will simply take it out of your death benefit that you're paying for. It's very simple. So your collateral is your death benefit. That's what's going to be used to collateralize your loan.

So you can only take out money that you have saved up in your life insurance policy. So it's a system that's much sounder because it doesn't allow you to borrow beyond your means because it's only what you paid into it.

And the life insurance company is not going to take... they don't take risks. Life insurance companies are the most conservative types of companies that invest in certain things that are long term because they are long term players.

They don't try to go for these schemes and stuff. That's what the Bible says to do, right? You shouldn't be looking for get rich quick schemes. We should be looking for long term wealth, accumulation of wealth and building up of our capital and resources.

That's what the Bible says. And that's exactly how this system works. This system is designed to work for years over time. You build it up gradually over time, over the years. And it's incredibly powerful.

And this is just a sample of what to look forward to. But again, you have to be able to use your money, save your money wisely and practice good budgeting principles like we talked about last time. The first time is knowing how to budget wisely your money and not... you need to tell your money where to go.

Tell your money where it's going. Okay, I'm going to allocate $1500 for groceries. That's a real number for us. Some of y 'all may not even know how much money you spend on groceries or on gas. You may not even know and the numbers might shock you.

So you need to be able to track your expenses and budget because you're probably spending money in areas that you don't need to be. Or it's just not necessary and you can probably find much better ways to save money on by making simple changes in a lot of cases.

One of the things that I do appreciate about Dave Ramsey is the way he advocates for insurance. There's different views of insurance. Some people believe that insurance makes you a target. So if you have a lot of insurance it sort of makes you more likely to be you know, get into a situation and they find out that you have a lot of insurance and they're going to try to take it out of you.

Other people like Dave Ramsey, they recommend getting maximum, maximum liability insurance. Get the highest insurance that you can afford. And in order to not have a situation that you don't expect and then you're stuck having to pay for it.

So I think biblically speaking it's probably a better idea to have insurance because it's a way of planning. It's really just a way of planning. Planning ahead and planning for unexpected things that could happen.

Because if you get in a car accident or something, well first of all you're obligated, you have to get insurance. If you're driving around with no auto insurance you're riding dirty and if the cops pull you over you can go to jail for that.

You could get into serious trouble. That's illegal. But regardless of that it is good to have those things because if somebody you could be liable for things. People could accuse you of something or you could be liable for certain things and if you don't have the money you could be stuck in a situation where you might have to declare bankruptcy or you might have to forego all your assets whatever the case may be.

So it's just wise to be prepared and insurance is one of those ways to prepare. But a smart concept that Dave Ramsey recommends is when you get auto insurance or renter's insurance or home insurance or things like that, he recommends getting high premium insurance.

Because when you get high premium insurance the rates are lower. High deductible insurance because when you have high deductibles the rate of premiums are much lower. So your insurance will be much cheaper if you have higher deductibles.

So if you set a thousand dollar deductible on things, because going back to his step one, you should have the thousand dollars at least saved up in case you need to use it for emergencies like an auto accident or whatever.

So there's a strategy behind it. And so if you save up money, but better yet if you put it in a life insurance policy, you can have the capital saved up there that you're paying into through your premiums and you can get insurance with a high premium on it that's significantly cheaper because getting a thousand dollar deductible is much more affordable.

And so that's something those are things that you can do to take advantage of because insurance can get extremely expensive. And that's another reason not to get big fancy expensive cars like I know most of you have.

JK. But you have to be, this is part of being wise with our money. When you get a fancy car, a new car, it's more expensive to insure. They are a lot more expensive to insure as opposed to getting something older.

I'm not talking like 20 years, but typically, honestly, the older cars tend to be better. These new cars can get hacked so easily. They have computers on them and downloading stuff on the 5G and they got radiation beaming at you.

I mean, there's all kinds of stuff with these new cars. And these cars are also more expensive to repair because they've got all this fancy machinery that the older cars don't have. So just be aware of these things.

It's so much cheaper to buy something used, gently used. Have a good mechanic that you trust and look for mechanics that will educate you, not the ones that will just try to take advantage of you, but will educate you on how to understand the inner workings of your car so that you know how it works and how to look for problems and what things to look out for.

A more expensive house is more expensive to insure. It's just the way things work. So that's part of us being wise with our finances and not reflecting worldliness. I'm not saying you need to forsake everything you have and sell it all and become a beggar.

I'm not saying that. That's not what Jesus meant. I'm not saying to do those things. I'm just saying to be wise with your finances. If you can't afford those things, don't get them. Because they're going to just be a burden on you and that's going to give you anxiety and health problems and that's going to affect your health.

You've got medical bills that you're looking at. So just be wise with your finances. Not to say that you can't get those things, but you're going to pay a cost. A significantly higher cost that honestly, why would you?

So.

These are all just so many basic things to look at. Those are some things that were helpful from going through Dave Ramsey's system. It's just that so much of it now, I realize is really, honestly, garbage.

It's bad advice. It's very bad advice. Having your money in banks, that's one of the worst things you can do, like I said. So that's a big thing to be aware of. Now, another thing is like, so his baby step number four.

Is.

Invest 15 of your household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement plans. So these are the taxing accounts and systems that the government has set up for you, for us, for many of us who have an employer and they offer a 401k.

Some of them even match your contribution up to a certain percent, like 2 or 3 or whatever, and it may look like a pretty good deal. Like, okay, well, yeah, they'll match me, so if I invest whatever, if I invest a certain percentage they will even match you, your contribution to your 401k.

Now, the only problem with that is of course it's heavily government locked down and controlled, and once you put your money in there once you put your money in a retirement account, can you take it out?

Well, you can. You can, but what happens to it when you take it out? It gets taxed. Massively taxed. It gets taxed going out. That's what makes it worse, right? Because taxes, are they going up or are they going down?

They're always going up, right? So when you invest money into these accounts, not only will you be taxed when you take them out, but if you take them out when you're not supposed to, if you take them out before you reach 59 and a half years old, which is like your entire life, your money's stuck there.

You are basically putting your money in a prison, hoping that it'll still be there by the time you get old enough to get it, because they will tax you heavily. They will fine you. Not just tax you, but they will fine you if you take it out before you reach retirement age.

So these plans are, they're this like, they have this appearance of saving and wisdom, but the reality is, it's a scheme. It's a scam that the government is trying to do to help make up for the problems that itself is causing.

That the government itself is causing, right? So, yeah, you have a question? You can take it out, but you're going to have to pay taxes and it's going to be fine. You have to pay a penalty. If you don't want to get penalized, you know, that's what happened with my dad.

My dad, when we fell on hard times, he had a 401k and he ended up taking the money out heavily penalized and taxed and used it up and now it's gone. There's nothing there. Because you can't take it, I mean, you can take it out, but it's like there's so many strings attached that you're not really taking it out because you're losing so much of it, right?

And, you know, there are ways, like, if you've already invested a lot of money into a 401k, there are things you can do to preserve the wealth that you've built up there if you're already stuck with it.

Because if you can't take it out, that's the problem. You can't take it out. Unless you want to pay all these fines to the government for having done so before you were allowed to. Or should have.

Oh yeah.

So you're paying a heavy amount of fines and taxes on those things and that's part of the problem with having these schemes.

Yeah.

That's another problem. Yeah, of course. You're not earning interest anymore, right? And one of the things you can do if you do have money saved up in a 401k is you can have it backed by precious metals.

And Dr. Kirk Elliott's team, their office, they can work with you on that if you want to have precious metals to back up your 401k. So that it's not just relying on the stock market because the stock market is so inflated at any point now it's going to absolutely collapse along with the real estate market.

So they have done an amazing job of expanding the bubble without popping it. But boy, are they stretching their they are really stretching things. And so we're like the market is basically a Frankenstein right now.

It has the appearance of looking vibrant and stuff because they're pumping so much money. They're printing so much money. But man, you really have to be careful. And so part of what you have to also this is just one of those things that you want to watch out for.

And then that's the other problem with retirement accounts is that you can't keep the account intact. So after a certain while when you are retirement age, they will do mandatory withdrawals for you if you don't take the money out yourself.

So they will force you to take the money out of that account. So now again, you're no longer earning interest on it. It's a total scam. Total scam. This is so disgraceful that people like Dave Ramsey and all these financial gurus are pushing these schemes.

It's a scheme. Pushing these schemes on people without really having them understand what you're getting yourself into. Because when you put your money in a life insurance policy, you can still tap into it and take policy loans out of it while it's still earning interest.

And you're paying into it. And not only that, you're paying into it so that it actually becomes passive income to the point where you can completely live off of it if you pay enough into it. This is the amazing power of having a life insurance policy like that.

And not only that, but when you pay enough into it again you have to pay a good amount. You have to save good pay a good amount into it. But if you're able to do it after a certain while, the policy ends up paying for itself.

So you don't have to put premiums on it all the time. After a certain number of years you start earning dividends that are high enough, that are so high that they pay for the premiums. So the policy becomes self-maintained simply because of the dividends that you're earning back.

And then it continues to compound interest. But then, once you graduate, meaning once you pass away, once you die, you will if you have a good life insurance policy with enough money saved up, you will have left potentially millions of dollars of death benefit to your beneficiaries.