Numbers don’t lie.

You’ve probably heard about the magic of compounding. It’s the phenomenon where your money multiplies all by itself. But as we discussed yesterday, compounding is especially magical when it is uninterrupted.

Let’s revisit the ordinary compound interest for a moment. It’s simple: you invest money, it earns interest, and this interest earns its own interest. Before you know it, your investment is growing faster than you can count.

However, a big, ugly gremlin lurks in the shadows: market volatility. When the market takes a nosedive, your compounding interest doesn’t just pause… it takes steps back.

And that’s why the Infinite Banking Concept is so important. It takes compound interest by the hand and promises, “I won’t let the market hurt you anymore.” It ensures your compounding never hits the pause button, never retreats. You are always moving forward.

Imagine a train on a track, steadily chugging along. Traditional investments resemble a train that often hits red signals or occasionally reverses. With Infinite Banking, it’s a continuous green. There’s only one direction: Forward. Faster.

Let’s bring this home with a vivid example: Suppose you have $10,000 and can earn 10% interest annually. With regular compounding, if the market takes a 30% hit in year 5, your investment shrinks. It takes time to recoup, disrupting your compounding rhythm.

With Infinite Banking, it’s a different story. Your $10,000 investment enjoys uninterrupted compounding. In 30 years, even with a modest 4% return, you’re looking at a whopping $32,434! No pause, no backward steps. Just consistent, guaranteed growth.

But wait, there’s more. Infinite Banking is more than an investment strategy. It’s a master key to your own financial vault. You are the bank, the boss, the beneficiary. You call the shots. You set the rules. Best part? This power is no exclusive club. It’s available to everyone.

So, do you want to be a passenger on a shaky, unpredictable train, or the engineer of a smooth, unstoppable express? If you’re ready for the latter, it’s time you dive into our Infinite Banking course.

Harness the might of uninterrupted compounding with Infinite Banking. Join our course, unlock this power, and watch your wealth expand, unimpeded and unending.

Get onboard today – your unstoppable financial express awaits! You can find it right here: Infinite Banking Unleashed.

So, ySo, your capital must reside somewhere. The question is – where do you store it?

Our investment membership The Phoenician League held its monthly discussion call last week. IBC specialist Brian Moody joined us to talk about the magic of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC).

Imagine, for a moment, the perfect financial system… one custom-tailored to your needs. Imagine a system that’s absolutely guaranteed to grow, year after year. A system that grants you total control and liquidity. No ticker symbols going up and down here.

Need to access funds? No problem. Your money is there, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. And guess what? You can access your funds any time, for any reason. There are no arbitrary restrictions and certainly no taxes or penalties.

With the financial system we’re imagining here, it’s your castle. No one can breach it. What we’re talking about is unique in the world of finance.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the standard financial advice. It says we should pour our savings into tax-tomorrow accounts. These are 401ks, IRAs, SEP IRAs, and similar vehicles. They allow us to defer paying taxes on our savings until when we want to access our money.

The traditional financial plan also supplements these savings vehicles with tax-today accounts. These are savings accounts, money market accounts, and standard brokerage accounts. With these, we pay taxes on any money we make every year.

If we listen to the traditional advice, this is the main choice we have to make. Do we want to put our money in tax-tomorrow or tax-today accounts? Or some combination of both?

But the system we’re envisioning today falls outside that paradigm. It’s a tax-never account. It’s a place where our money is guaranteed to grow year after year, and we’ll never owe a dime in taxes on that growth. It doesn’t matter if we make millions inside this account, the tax man will never be able to touch it.

Sounds like a dream, right? But it’s not. What we’re imagining is the Infinite Banking Concept put into practice.

And as Moody informed us last week, this is the primary strategy banks and financial institutions use to shield and grow their wealth. They tell us to choose between tax-tomorrow and tax-today accounts… but the banks don’t make that choice themselves. They utilize the tax-never system that is IBC unleashed.

Here’s why that’s critical…

I presume we’re familiar with the principle of compounding interest. This is the idea that if we can earn a rate of return (interest) on our savings, that rate of return will grow exponentially over time. That’s because we earn the rate of return on a larger and larger nest egg as it grows.

Here’s how it works… Let’s say we invest $1,000 with an annual interest rate of 5%. After the first year, we earn $50 in interest. So now we have $1,050.

The magic happens in the second year. Instead of earning 5% on the initial $1,000, we’re now earning 5% on $1,050. So, our interest for the second year is $52.50, not just $50. This process continues every year, with the interest earning its own interest. It’s like a snowball rolling downhill.

Einstein famously said that compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world. But that’s not exactly true…

Compounding interest is only a wonder when the compounding process is uninterrupted. That is to say, when nothing impedes our compounding. Let’s illustrate this using our example above.

If we invest $1,000 earning 5% a year, we’ll have $11,467.40 after fifty years. That means we’ve grown our money by over 1,000%.

Now let’s suppose we have to pay 20% in taxes on the interest we earn every year. If that’s the case, we would only have $7,106.86 after fifty years. Our gain is only 611%.

As we can see, taxes interrupt the compounding process. Over time, this eats into our rate of return substantially.

And here’s the thing – this example assumes constant 5% growth. If we were to have a negative year, that would interrupt the compounding process as well.

Using our same example from above, let’s suppose we invest $1,000 earning 5% a year, but every third year we lose 5%. If that happens, we’ll only have $7,593.42 after fifty years.

That’s assuming no taxes. If we have to pay 20% on our interest earned each year in this example, we would only have $5,228.36 after fifty years. That’s less than half of what we end up with when our compounding is uninterrupted.

That’s why it’s so important not to interrupt our growth.

But think about it… how many folks do you know who’ve retired with millions in their 401(k)s? Not many, right? That’s because typical financial advice doesn’t consider negative years in the market. They stunt your growth and interrupt your compounding.

That’s the magic of Infinite Banking. It provides us with contractually guaranteed growth, year after year. There cannot be any down years. And it ensures that our earnings are safe from taxes. The tax man can’t interrupt our system either.

The Infinite Banking Concept isn’t just a method. It’s a mindset shift. It’s about seeing the potential in your own money and letting it loose, unchained, to do the hard work for you. It’s about ensuring that you, your children, and your children’s children have a financial legacy… an impenetrable castle.

What if you could build a foolproof shield against inflation and financial downturns? What if you could structure a system that provides immediate access to your money yet creates a guaranteed pension plan and builds generational wealth? Who wouldn’t sign up for that?

Only Infinite Banking provides all of these features together. And that’s where our IBC course comes in. We’ve put together a guide that will walk you through the big picture and the small details of Infinite Banking… revealing its magic to you step-by-step.

Unlock your financial freedom. Don’t remain stuck in the same old hamster wheel of traditional banking. Learn how to implement the Infinite Banking Concept. Dive headfirst into a world where your money listens to you… where you’re the conductor of your financial symphony.

For those who are fiscally-minded, your journey towards unchained wealth begins here. Enroll in our Infinite Banking course today. You can do so right here: Infinite Banking Unleashed.

Welcome to a world where your money finally works for you!

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle… and the life of the candle will not be shortened. -Buddha

We’re going to wrap up our discussion on the philosophy of money this week. And we have to start with this – if we assess the great moral philosophers that have come to us over the years, we’ll find that many of them came to the same fundamental ideas… just from different cultures.

These ideas are like strings running throughout history. They are small and not easily seen. But they connect people, events, and philosophy across geography and across time.

One of the ideas consistent to moral philosophers across time is the “Retreat and Return” model. Both Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha followed this model.

For Jesus, he went out into the desert for forty days prior to beginning his ministry. He did this to clear away distractions and focus his mental strength on the task at hand.

That task was to demonstrate the hypocrisy of those who preached a rigid rules-based approach to morality. Jesus pointed out that the religious authorities of the day might follow their arbitrary rules, but they did not live a life of compassion and service towards their fellow man.

The Nazarene knew this would earn him some powerful enemies. But his mission was to show people a better way. Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. This is the North Star of morality. And as Jesus demonstrated, any rule that conflicts with this one is neither valid nor just.

If we think about it – it’s amazing that we’re still talking about a guy that died over 2,000 years ago. That speaks to just how successful Jesus was with his mission. But again, it required him to go out into the desert for forty days to get fully prepared first.

The Buddha’s story follows the same model.

Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – was born a prince. He lived a luxurious life surrounded by relative material abundance… but he found that life hollow. Thus, Gautama renounced his life of luxury and retreated to the wilderness.

At first Gautama subjected himself to a life of extreme asceticism. He forced himself to endure severe physical hardships thinking that doing so would unlock a sense of purpose. But it didn’t.

As the story goes, Gautama sat under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India to reflect on his experiences. He proceeded to meditate for several days until he reached a higher state of awareness. Gautama called this enlightenment. Only then did he return to society to teach others about what he had learned.

The pattern is clear. Both Jesus and the Buddha pulled away from society to delve deep into their inner selves. This allowed them to find clarity, wisdom, and strength that they didn’t know was there. Then they returned to society ready to pursue their true calling.

To me, the path to financial independence follows this same “Retreat and Return” pattern.

Remember, financial independence refers to a situation where we don’t have to trade our time for money anymore. To get to that point, we must first build a robust asset reserve. Then we need to build passive income sources capable of covering our expenses.

This is a dynamic we all want. But not many of us are willing to do what’s required to get there.

As we discussed yesterday, the path to financial independence is a lonely one. It requires us to pull away from certain social norms and focus intently on our goal.

This takes discipline, courage, and, at times, thick skin. But if we can pull it off, we’ll be free to spend our time and energy on our true calling. We can return to society as a positive force. And we can have a tremendous impact on our little corner of the world.

This strikes me as the path to Maslow’s “self-actualization”. That’s because if we can gain financial wisdom and independence, we can focus our time and energy on being pure creators.

And make no mistake about it – humans are creators in this world. We alone among all the other species on Earth have the ability to think and create at will. That means we are the architects of our own destiny.

It’s a simple thing… but this may be the most profound insight in the world.

As best I can tell, all living creatures serve a function. Think about it…

Bees pollinate flowers which leads to continual plant growth. As part of this process, bees transform plant nectar into honey – a highly concentrated energy source for insects, birds, bears, and us humans.

For their part, plants produce the oxygen and food that animals need to live. And some plants serve medicinal purposes as well.

Then cows and goats ingest grass and turn it into milk. Earthworms break down organic matter and fertilize the soil. Bacteria aids the decomposition process and recycles nutrients back into the ecosystem. The list goes on and on.

But here’s the thing – those species are limited just to a few tasks.

Meanwhile, we humans have no such limits. We can pursue any task we desire. And then we can create new inventions and new tasks should we choose to. We are creators in this world.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at when he talked about moving mountains. Here’s the Nazarene:

Amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove. Nothing shall be impossible to you.

Food for thought.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. Building a strategic asset portfolio is the first step on this journey of financial independence. If you would like help in building a customized asset portfolio, our flagship Finance for Freedom course is for you.

More information right here: Finance for Freedom

The overman represents the highest potential for human creativity, strength, and achievement – a sort of ultimate affirmation and embracement of life.

This quotes describes 19^th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the “Übermensch”. That word means “overman” in English.

There are different interpretations and misconceptions around Nietzsche’s overman philosophy. But on the surface it’s a simple idea.

Nietzsche suggested that life is individual in nature. That is to say, we each experience life as an individual. And the highest purpose for each of us is to become the best version of ourselves possible.

To do this, we must let go of ego, petty conceits, and external expectations. And we must focus our energy only on thoughts and acts that make us smarter, stronger, and more virtuous.

Notice how this is very much in alignment with the more popular work of Abraham Maslow. Maslow explained man’s “hierarchy of needs” in a 1943 paper titled A Theory of Human Motivation.

According to Maslow, humans are motivated by five basic categories of needs.

Continue reading “The Lonely Path to Financial Freedom”

“The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.” – Andrew Carnegie

We left off yesterday with a serious question: What’s the point?

We’re talking the philosophy of money this week. And I suggested yesterday that the true purpose of money is to acquire assets. Only then will we have the financial security we need to take care of ourselves and our families should our active income go away.

But the goal isn’t simply security. The ultimate goal is financial independence. We want to create a financial situation that allows us to walk away from our job or our active business at any time, should we choose to do so.

Still, even this falls short of answering our big question.

Do we seek financial success just because we want to quit our job and pursue entertainment every day? No – that path is hollow and unfulfilling. Anyone who has retired without productive hobbies can attest to this.

To me, financial success is about becoming a fully autonomous actor in this world. I believe that’s what Carnegie hinted at in his quote above. Taking full possession of one’s mind requires us to be financially independent. Our time and energy must be 100% our own.

If we can create such a situation, that’s when we’ll be completely free to pursue our calling… whatever that may be.

The late Gary North used to talk about this a lot. He often referenced the difference between a job and a calling.

Your job puts food on the table and pays the bills. Your calling is that one productive thing in life that you can do better than everybody else. Or at least almost everybody else.

At the end of the day, it’s all about living a purpose-driven life. And that’s how we steward our civilization another generation forward.

Those of us in developed countries today are blessed to live in a world of abundance. Most of us probably take this for granted, but we shouldn’t. We owe those who came before us an immense debt of gratitude for the foundation they left us with.

I had the chance to sit down and talk with my 96-year old grandmother over the weekend. She grew up on a self-sufficient farm in rural Oklahoma from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. That means she lived on the farm through the Great Depression and World War II.

What stuck out to me though is that her parents maintained an optimistic outlook through it all. They looked out and could see the technological advancements that were coming. They knew their children wouldn’t need to be self-sufficient farmers themselves.

As such, they encouraged their children to go out into the world and walk their own path. And that’s exactly what my grandmother did.

So here she sits in our modern world full of gizmos, gadgets, and conveniences galore. But she remembers growing up in a house without electricity or refrigeration.

She told me she can close her eyes and still see the old root cellar to this day. That’s where they kept all their canned goods. It’s also where they would go if it looked like a tornado was coming through. Grandma said she would love nothing more than to slide down that old cellar door one more time.

My point is this – we’re not very far removed from a world that didn’t enjoy all the convenience and luxuries we have today.

It’s thanks to the hard work and perseverance of our ancestors that all of us in the developed world enjoy a life of incredible abundance. Even those of lesser means today live far more comfortable lives than everyone alive one hundred years ago.

At the same time, I think we have a responsibility to our kids, our grandkids, and those who will come after them. What can we do to leave them with the same strong foundation that we received from those who came before us?

That answer of course is different for each of us. But what I do know is that it’s a whole lot easier to take on productive projects when we have created a strong financial position for ourselves and our families. That’s where it all starts.

We’ll leave it there for today. Tomorrow we’ll talk about the lonely path to financial independence.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. We just put together a new program we’re calling the Passive Income Bundle. It’s a bundle of courses that walk investors through three different approaches to building passive income. 

If you’re looking for new ideas for letting your money work for you, the Passive Income Bundle won’t let you down. You can find it right here: Passive Income Bundle Page 

Is there a more snakier subject in the world of finance than money itself?

Sure, we all use money daily. Many of us spend most of our waking hours working for it. We know it’s important. We need it to buy the things we need to live.

But how many of us think deeply about our money? How many take the time to analyze it? To consider just what money is… and why it is?

I spent twelve years going through the public school system. Then I spent another five years at a large public university.

First I studied chemistry – but it didn’t take me long to realize that wasn’t for me. So I switched gears and spent my time studying finance and economics. I read their textbooks and memorized their principles and their equations. But guess what? They didn’t commit even a single drop of ink to the subject of money.

Instead, the finance and economics books presented their material as though money was a static entity. A cosmic fixture. Something that never changes.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

We live in a world where central banks and national Treasury departments can create money from thin air any time they want. There are no restrictions. Our money is “fiat” money. Fiat is Latin for “let it be done”.

You know what that reminds me of? In the book of Genesis it’s written that one day God said “let there be light”. Then there was light.

Well, our central bankers and Treasury Secretaries take the same approach to money. They say “let it be done”, and trillions of new dollars appear from nothing. And when they do, the new money steals value from the money that got here before.

In other words, the act of creating money from nothing destroys the purchasing power of the money. This is why we see costs of living rise sharply over time. Houses, rent, cars, groceries – you name it and it’s probably risen dramatically in price over the last several decades.

But this isn’t a situation where those items got more expensive. It’s just that our money isn’t as valuable as it was before. Like a geriatric retiree, it can’t buy as much as it once did.

Yet, we are led to believe that money is money is money. And we are taught that “having money” makes us wealthy. What a scam.

That’s why I see the subject of money as “snaky”. I’m not sure if that’s a word, but it seems appropriate.

If we don’t understand the true nature of our money – fiat money, then we become easy to deceive. That is to say, we are more apt to make bad financial decisions. Then we are doomed to remain stuck on the hamster wheel – constantly having to trade our time for money. Money whose value constantly dissipates.

To me, the true purpose of money is to acquire assets. That’s the key lesson in the classic board game Monopoly. If we acquire the right assets, then we will always have the financial means to take care of ourselves and our families, even if our active income were to go away.

And isn’t that really what we all want? To get rid of our active income? To not have to work so hard for money anymore?

This is why I’ve always rejected consumerism. If you come to my house, it’s like walking back in time. Everything is dated. It’s like you’re walking back into the early 1990s.

That’s because I don’t upgrade anything. And I don’t buy new stuff. Instead, I spend all my money acquiring real assets. Gold… Bitcoin… real estate… blue-chip stocks trading at incredible valuations – these are the items I spend my money on.

I see it this way… I’m working around sixty hours a week right now. If I were to spend the fruit of my labor on consumer goods, it’s like I never worked in the first place. The money is gone… and I have to get back on the hamster wheel to earn more.

But if I spend my money acquiring top-tier assets, those assets will produce even more money for me. This creates a virtuous cycle. The money I worked for now goes out and works for me. Then at some point I’ll step back and let the money do all the hard work. I won’t need to work as hard anymore.

That’s what I want. That’s my philosophy on money.

But this raises an important question. Why? What’s the point?

We’ll answer that one tomorrow.

-Joe Withrow

P.S. We just put together a new financial package we’re calling the Passive Income Bundle. It’s a new program that walks investors through three different approaches to building truly passive income.

If you’re looking for new ideas for letting your money work for you, the Passive Income Bundle won’t let you down. You can find it right here: Passive Income Bundle Page

Yesterday we took a deep dive into the world’s monetary history with a focus on the US dollar.

Today we will walk through what’s happening with the monetary system right now… and where it all leads. I’ll turn it over to my AI assistant once again to paint the picture.

Here’s Sir Arthur (just click to play):

Yesterday we talked about the weekend’s big news – the BRICS bloc may establish a gold-backed currency.

Remember, BRICS refers to the economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other nations outside of the West’s power structure. Their hope is that a gold-backed currency would instill trust in the new trade network they are building. 

A major development like this is inevitable. To understand why, we must understand monetary history. 

You see, money is not the static functionary that it’s presented to us as. Instead, money is constantly in flux. In fact, we’ve used four different international monetary systems just since 1900.

So to see where we’re likely going next, we have to know where we’ve been. 

And with that introduction, I’m going to turn it over to my AI assistant to walk us through a brief monetary history. 

Here’s Sir Arthur (just click to play):

And remember, for more on how to build gold into a customized investment portfolio, just go here: Finance for Freedom

-Joe Withrow

For making the new currency as good as gold, a truly sound currency, it must be convertible into gold on demand. Using gold as money, the unit of account would be a true game changer, no doubt about it… Against this gold stock, the new bank could, say, grant financing loans to exporters, and issue the “new currency”. Or BRICS exports will be sold against the “new currency” and/or gold.

That commentary comes from an interview with Thorsten Polleit over the weekend.

Polleit is the chief economist at Degussa Goldhandel. It’s a precious metals trading company based in Germany. Polleit was commenting on big news that broke over the weekend.

Word leaked that the BRICS bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – plan to introduce a new currency backed by gold. In light of this, 41 countries have applied for BRICS membership.

Now, nothing is official yet. Sources expect the official announcement to come during the BRICS summit in August. The event will take place in South Africa.

That being the case, we shouldn’t give this news too much credibility yet. Any time there’s a leak like this, we have to wonder – who wants people to believe this and why?

So there’s a chance this is just a bluff on the world’s geopolitical chess board. After all, who will put up the gold necessary to back such a currency?

To make it work, countries like China and Russia would likely have to contribute significantly more gold than the others. That’s because they have far more gold in their possession.

Would they be willing to pledge their own gold hoard for the good of the project?

Maybe. Both China and Russia are among the world’s leading export countries. That means they stand to accumulate the gold-backed currency if the BRICS bloc were to establish such a system.

Still, there are plenty of questions unanswered here. So I’ll reserve judgment.

That said, this could be the start of gold re-monetization around the world. We talked about this possibility a few weeks ago.

For the BRICS bloc, this is all about creating a credible alternative to the US dollar-based international settlement system. They are seeking to build a trade network that’s not under the thumb of the powers that be in the US and Europe.

A gold-backed currency would generate instant trust in their new system. And they need trust if they want other countries to migrate to their trade network. That’s why a move to gold makes sense.

And if the BRICS re-monetize gold, the US may have to follow suit.

One of the major benefits to having the US dollar serve as the world’s reserve currency is that it creates a constant demand for Treasury bonds. Foreign actors who receive US dollars in exchange for international trade can recycle those dollars back into Treasury bonds to earn a yield.

This is what’s allowed the US to run massive budget deficits year after year. The Treasury finances that budget deficit through new Treasury bond sales… which means it needs willing investors.

But if a chunk of world trade moves to a gold-backed settlement system, international demand for dollars will plummet. Then demand for Treasuries will fall accordingly. That will make it much harder for the US to run $1 trillion+ deficits going forward.

For the Treasury, the answer may be to partially re-monetize gold itself.

Suppose the US government agrees to settle a specific portion of Treasury bonds in gold. That could lend itself to a tiered system of sorts. The Treasury could sell bonds with various degrees of gold backing at corresponding rates.

For example, 10% gold-backed Treasury bonds would carry a lower interest rate than 5% gold-backed bonds. And both would carry a lower rate than Treasuries with no gold backing.

This could help the US Treasury maintain international demand for its bonds. In turn, that would help the US government manage its debt service costs even as rates rise.

Of course, there are tons of wild cards and unknowns in here. We can’t be sure exactly how it would all play out.

But if we do see gold re-monetized, we can be sure that the price of gold is going to explode higher…

-Joe Withrow

P.S. If you’re interested in building gold into your personal investments, our flagship Finance for Freedom program will show you how. More information right here: Finance for Freedom

There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!

According to colonial records, this is what John Hancock said as he signed his name to America’s Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Hancock is still famous today for his big, elegant signature. We still use his name and “signature” interchangeably.

But there’s a great deal about Hancock that modern history books gloss over. Since we’re talking all things American Independence this week, let’s go over Hancock’s story today. Consider it a smuggler’s guide to the American Revolution.

In colonial New England, Hancock was well-known as a cost-competitive wholesaler. He would source hard-to-find products and offer them for sale in Boston at a reasonable price.

One of Hancock’s most popular products was tea. That made him a direct competitor to the British East India Company. And the Company did not at all like competition.

Continue reading “A Smuggler’s Guide to the American Revolution”