How to Read: Becoming Your Own Banker by Nelson Nash

He wrote this book so that you. It was meant to be read multiple times. Even says it right in the book. One reading just won't do the job.

And Nelson's book is a key component of that process. Now, we start at page 85, then we flip to the beginning of the book, and we read page three and page four twice. They're not very long. It'll only take you a minute or two. And this is the introduction to the 5th edition of this book. There's several editions to this book. And this introduction, again, it goes to summarize some of the core principles around banking, around how money is flowing through the world. Money is flowing through the world. This book, Nelson says, is not about investments of any kind. It's about how one finances the things of life.

Canada. You've heard about the process of becoming your own banker. You're here because you want to learn more. And you've heard that this is the absolute best resource to learn more about how this process actually came to be and how you can start implementing it into your own life. But maybe you're not sure where to get started. There's a lot of information in the book. So my colleague Richard and I are going to break down the best way that you can actually take in the content so you can really grasp what's actually happening and to benefit more from how this process can affect you and your life.

Now, the cool thing about that, Vern, I'm so glad that you went there, because the cool thing about that is, in my opinion, it's not what you'd think. It's not just start on the first page and read your way through the book.

Through my own efforts in doing this and reading the book many times and talking with a lot of our colleagues, people that teach this, Nelson's principles, they spent time mentoring and coaching with Nelson.

I've kind of dialed in on what I think is a really good path to get people set on the right foundation as they go through the book and actually simplifies how we read it, even though it's a little counterintuitive. And so the first step that I actually recommend people do is go right to the very back of the book and you start at page 85. Now, page 85 of Nelson's book, we have some other videos that reference, that is points to consider. And. And in there, there's five core points, and those points are very specific. And they ask you some good questions. And those questions actually help set the stage for what you're about to learn as you go through the book. So if you start there, you're already, you're kind of like at a summary point and you may not know all the pieces that are being identified in that points to consider. But now your brain is already looking for those answers as you go through the reading of the book the first time. So I think page 85 is actually the first place that you should start when you order this book. And if you look down below, there will be a link in the description to order a copy of the book. You order the book, go ahead, flip yourself right to page 85. Points to consider. And yeah, there's several points on there that are just really kind of eye opening and they're really good questions. Like example, there are only two sources of income, people at work and money at work. And then he expands on that a little bit. So I really think that this is the correct starting point for you to begin your learning journey as you're already discovering this process.

Yeah, Rich, that's so good. Because one of the things that I run into a lot with people is obviously we know that we're using this tool called permanent participating dividend paying whole life insurance, these contracts that make us a co owner in the mutual insurance company. But we're using that tool to implement this process called becoming your own banker, the infinite banking concept in Canada. And what happens often is people take this process and this tool and they collapse them together like they're the same thing and they're just not. They're not the same thing. And what we're asking people to do, get ready for this, is to think we're actually asking. That's what Nelson did. He wrote this book so. So that it was meant to be read multiple times. Even says it right in the book. One reading just won't do the job because you've learned how to do things in life. I'm 38 years young, even though I look super youthful, 30 years young. And I think Richard and I are around the same age. But my brain's been programmed to do things however long it's been programmed to do it for these 38 years. So if you're 25, 35, 45, 55, 65, you've been thinking about money and probably not thinking about banking at all, but you've been thinking about money and banking and investing and all these ideas a certain way for a very, very long time. And it requires some energy and some focus and some commitment to rethink your thinking. And so that's what this process is all about people jump into a meeting with me, Rich, and they go, vern, I want to get started. I'm ready to go. And then, you know, I start asking them a few questions. And just by the way that they ask those questions, there's nothing wrong. It just means, oh, I can tell the mindset, you're just not quite there yet. It takes a little bit more time to think about what's actually happening. So that's one of the things that I just wanted to position before we go a little bit further. That's why Richard did such a great job of breaking down the book. And hey, here's how you should consider reading it, because he's setting it up to get your mind right, to actually take in what you're reading, versus kind of, for lack of better terms, getting caught up in other nonsense that might not actually benefit you as you're reading through the book linearly.

I think what's cool about that, Vern, is you identified something really important and that time frame, the experiences in life that build us into who we are, including in our. In our habits. A lot of it has to do with our habits around money. In our financial life, those things tend to skew us a little bit in our, in our learning path. And so if you know, a comment that we often mention is, if you knew, if what you knew to be true turned out not to be true, when would you want to know about it? In my opinion, what Nelson's got in his book is truth. And when you get a chance to be exposed to it, your brain automatically will start maybe challenging some of the things you've learned in the past. It'll say, okay, well, is what's in this book actually true? Is it accurate? I need to investigate further. And it'll start giving you and taking you down the path of discovery. It's actually in that path of discovery, and the desire for discovery, where you're learning really takes place. That's where things get amplified. That's why we have these videos. That's why we have this banker's vault channel. That's why we have the amazing webinar that you can go access watchibc.com Canadians all over the country are flocking to go and access that material. So it's these resources that are helping to amplify your ability to take yourself down that path of discovery. And Nelson's book is a key component of that process. Now we start at page 85, then we flip to the beginning of the book, and we read page three and page four. Twice. They're not very long. It'll only take you a minute or two. And this is the introduction to the 5th edition of this book. There's several editions to this book. And this introduction, again, it goes to summarize some of the core principles around banking, around how money is flowing through the world. Money is flowing through the world. This book, Nelson says, is not about investments of any kind. It's about how one finances the things of life. The things of life which can include investments. And in fact, for everybody, it does include those things. It's not about a rate of return. As time goes up, interest rates are up and interest rates are down. As we're recording this, Verne, we just had the largest prime rate increase in 20 years in Canada as of the date of this recording. And so interest rates now finally are making that push to move back forward. How long will they do that? We don't know. But again, according to Nelson, these are things that just happen. And it's really quite irrelevant to the process of banking. If you understand what's going on. If you understand what's going on, you'll know what to do. And so this process of banking goes on no matter what is happening. It's well known fact that banks make money more money during times of low interest rates than when rates are high. So again, he covers some really important things in here that really level up that foundation. One of my favorite statements comes from page three. There is no such thing as having too much money in the bank. Wealth must reside somewhere. You know, I don't imagine you've been at a dinner party or having cocktails with someone like, oh, geez, I just got too much money in the bank. No one's ever said that, ever. Right. Now, if you owned your own bank, where would you want to store that money? It has to reside there. Needs to. You know, I always reference this to the garage. You know, in Canada, especially in, like, Alberta, the winter's pretty long and, you know, everyone wants, you know, you move through these stages of life trying to get to, like, the heated underground parking or get to the garage. Then you want the attached garage, and then you want the heated attached garage. So you make these moves throughout time, you know, to. To raise up to that level where you have this, you know, heated. You know, the pristine garage, and you can park your warm car in there and drive out warm without having to scrape ice off. Everyone, I'm sure watching this has had to scrape some ice off a windshield before. Well, that garage is simply a warehouse for your Car. You go and you get in the car, you drive and you go to work, you go to the grocery store, you go to the ball game, you go to the hockey game, you come back and you park the vehicle because you're done with it. You park it back in your garage. It's a warehouse where you store your car, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, you need to do that with your money. Your money is going to go out and go to work and do something and it's going to go to the grocery store and go pay for the hockey tickets and pay for the rock concert and pay for the night out with the, you know, with the, with the, with your friends and pay for the family vacation and whatever. And then you're going to earn new money and that money has to come back and it's got to sit in a warehouse. Well, this is the best warehouse for your money. Becoming your own banker. That's it. Now when you start to really think that through as you go through this book, the way that we're going to teach you today, Vernon and I, on how to read this book, you're really going to start to see things pop off the page in a new way. And if you've already read the book, if you already have a copy and you've read it, I would challenge you to go back using this mechan, this, this method and reread it this way. Starting at page 85, go to page 3 and 4 and read them twice. Take the time to read it twice because sometimes when we reread something immediately, it just elevates things off the page that we, that, you know, it really lets it sink in. So that's the reason to read those two pages twice. Only takes you a minute. Yeah. Then you're going to skip over to page 11. That's really where the book gets started. That's part one of becoming your own banker. And you go through all the way to page 50. Now, at page 50, we get past an example Nelson does of the twin sisters. He talks a lot about the problem, the problem with the, the average North American person. Now, again, we're speaking to Canadians here, but we have a lot of our American colleagues who also listen to our show, our channel and what have you. And Nelson's taking it from a, you know, a USA perspective. But everything that's happening there happens here in Canada too. And right now if we actually, you know, if you've been watching any of the news or whatever, the debt to income ratios in Canada are ludicrous. They're crazy. They're actually worse than it was in the States leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. So we're at a point where we're actually worse off as far as the debt levels that we're carrying relative to household income in Canada at present. You know, we're recording this in Canada Q2 of 2022 than it was leading up to the financial crisis. So, you know, maybe, maybe a reason to understand what the problem is that Nelson talks about in his book. I think there's a definitive reason you're going to want to read that. And once you get through that part, you know, the next section in Nelson's book is actually equipment financing. Now for my purpose in recommending reading the book, I actually want people to leave that last. You're going to skip right over that, jump right over equipment financing because there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of meat and potatoes and you got to flip back and forth in the book. And so it's not a natural way of reading material, if that makes sense. And because of that, it often can become a stumbling block for people because first of all, there's a lot of information and to try to interpret as you're reading it yourself versus having a coach sit with you and walk you through it, versus sitting in Nelson's 10 hour seminar where he would walk you through each of the examples in equipment financing. There's some pieces that you might kind of overlook or miss. And so just blow right past that. Take yourself all the way to page 65. 65 is a really important page in my opinion. Remember when we were talking about this before we hit the record button and I think this is one of your favorite pages of the book as I recall. Now I have my own reasons, but I'd like to maybe hear from you. What, what are some of the reasons that you really resonate with this particular page?

Yeah, I appreciate that, Rich. You're right. I refer to this book or this page. Well, the book, but this page in particular. A lot. Now, before I share my reasons for that, you might be watching this video and thinking, hey, I want to become my own banker in Canada. Maybe you like to. Maybe you don't have the book yet and maybe you like to take more YouTube content in or videos. So there's going to be a link in the post description below or you could just go to your URL, go to watchibc.com that's watchibc.com and you'll be given instant access to a 90 minute webinar that you can get at least the beginning stages of understanding how this process works and how you might get started in your life. But again, the next best step is Nelson's book for some of the reasons I'm about to share right now. Rich One of the things I love most about this process in general, Nelson Nash and how he wrote this book is everybody wants to talk about numbers. Everybody wants to talk about how this all works and all that kind of stuff. And here's the thing. I talked to a client today and I said, hey, Mr. Client, we capitalize this policy for X amount of years now. We've established the lives theme, we've achieved lives theme. And if you want to know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to page 15, bottom right hand corner in Nelson's book, the grocery store example. He talks about live steam. And maybe I can read that here before we go. But my point is we've put enough energy into our banking system, into our policy system, such that, you know, it's given us a far, you know, larger spending power than what we've deposited. I'm putting $10,000 or 20, I don't care what the number is, I'm putting that into the policy system because if I'm not putting it into my policy system, I'm putting it in someone else's bank and it's working for that bank. I want it working at a company that I co own and growing inside of my policy. But the point is, is if I'm doing this for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, which I'm going to be banking and using money that entire time anyway, I get to the point where I'm putting all this capital into policy. Now we build these things called illustrations. It's a projection of what's possible and they look really pretty and it shows all kinds of numbers and I don't give a crap about the numbers. But the point is, I said to the client, I said, look at this. If you see we're taking it all the way out to age 75, this guy's like. Or 70 years old. This guy's like 30. I said, look, I took your premium and I dropped it down from the 35k that we're planning to put into the policy. I dropped it all the way down to what we refer to as the base or the required premium. And you're Putting in approximately $10,000 per year now because again, I said, is it conceivable that you're going to have at least $10,000 of income at that time. He goes, gosh, I hope so. Isn't it true that that $10,000 has to get deposited somewhere? And he goes, yeah. I said, okay, well, if you deposit it in someone else's bank, you get to spend $10,000. And in this example, if you deposit it into your banking system, you get to spend 100,000. Which one's better for you? He goes, I think you can make $100,000. I said, yeah, because $10,000 in 40 years is going to buy what 10,000 do. We don't know what that'll be, but it's a heck of a lot less than what it's going to buy today Canada. So how important is it to build a system that's actually going to help increase your purchasing power from those deposits? And I said to him, rich, I said, okay, look, this is showing $100,000. You deposited 10. If you deposited 10 and it was 50 instead of 100, would you be really upset? And he goes, not at all. I said, precisely. If you're going to come out ahead by becoming your own banker, who the heck cares about the numbers? It's all about the process. You're depositing the money anyway. You're already paying the premium. You just don't know it yet. And so anyway, that long rant was to set this up. Assuming the beginning of page 65, Nelson says, assuming that you are now sufficiently convinced that this is the course of action that you would like to take, the question becomes, not how much premium do I want to put in? How do I set up my policy? None of that nonsense that we get caught up in. He says this, how do I get started? The most important word that comes to my mind is desire. That has nothing to do with banking, nothing to do with insurance, nothing to do with money. It's what are you committed to? What is important to you? What can you do? That's what this process is all about. What can you do to enhance your situation? Because you are your best advantage. He says, without it, desire, you probably couldn't do it.

You probably couldn't do it. Why do I need so much desire? Well, because it takes some rethinking. It takes you reading books, it takes you working with a coach. It takes you being coachable, takes you diving into content. It takes you being actively responsible for your own wealth creation, and most Canadians just are. Not because we've been taught, hey, give it to somebody else. Don't worry, the stock guy will take care for you. The bank will take care of it for you. The government will take care of it for you. How's that working out for you so far? Not so good, I'm guessing.

Okay, so without it, you probably couldn't do it. Remember Parkinson's Law from part two? So he expands on what Parkinson's Law is, but simply put, Rich.

What?

Work expands to meet the time allotted.

Yep. And expenses rise to equal income.

It applies to everything he says. Everyone is already spending all financial resources on what he or she thinks is best. There has got to be some honest introspection at this point. And a commitment to get out of financial prison must be a burning passion. That's why I love this page, and that's why I love this process. Because, man, it's all about what you can do. It's all about what you're committed to. It's all about the way that you think about things. What is that quote? And I think it's a Nelson quote. But the problem isn't the problem. The problem is the way that you think about the problem. None of this. Look, I love the policies. I love numbers. I love accessing policy loans. I love achieving objectives. I love all of that stuff. But none of it matters as it relates to becoming your own banker. It's all about the way that you think.

So. Well put, Vern. And that's why this page matters a great deal, because this is where we start to take the content that you have read, and you start to really be able to say, okay, let's do some self assessment. So, again, this is one of the hidden magics in Nelson's work, is it's not about just him telling you what to do. It's about him showing you a path to discover what you might be able to do, what you can do if you choose that path. So Nelson was really big at amplifying the power of choice, and he believed in the power of the individual, as do I. And I believe, Vern, as do you. And so we take that into our coaching and into our conversations with clients. We want to amplify your power as an individual to be able to be empowered and educated, to be in the driver's seat of your financial life, of your own monetary decisions, being in a control position. The more, you know, I don't know a lot of people who get ridiculously upset when they have more control over their money. I have. I haven't bumped in anyone who's just like, ah, Richard, I'm just so upset you've given me more control over my Money?

Yeah.

Why did you do that? You must be a scoundrel. Like that doesn't happen.

Rich, I said to my client yesterday, I said, I think I stole this from Jason. I said, look, yeah, no, every day I wake up, my cash value just increases, and there's a darn thing I can do about it right now. You just reminded you triggered a thought for me. Of course. There's this great playlist somewhere beside me where you can learn more. There's a great example of that debt recapture example that we share about the chiropractor who recaptured $420,000 worth of debt in a short period of time just by changing the process. But when that chiropractor, when he determined what was the premium that he wanted to deposit into his policy system, what did he do? Well, he had some introspection. He was like, okay, well, hey, two patients a day, that's $200 a day times 200 days of work. Oh, 20 grand. Great. This is so good. My client watched that example. I get on a call with him yesterday, start chatting. He goes, vern, I took my premium. I broke it down day by day, and I realized it's 17 bucks a day. And I just take. He literally takes 17 bucks a day out of an account, and he switches it to another account, because I just pile it up there. So I'm ready to pay next year's premium. That's an action, a behavior that he can control. That's something that he decided. Introspection people go, vern, I don't have enough money to get started. Oh, well, let's take a look. You don't have to start with a lot. You just got to get started.

Just got to start.

I promise. Canada, you're watching this right now. You do not want to start adding up your Tim Hortons bills, I promise you. Or maybe you're a Starbucks guy. Not the show to too many names. But think about the money, Rich. It just flows through our hands. We spend it all the time on all kinds of stuff that we don't really need. And we don't recognize the energy, the power that those dollars actually have, the growth potential that we could harness and implement this process. And those are some places where you get started. 10 bucks a day, set it aside, let's get it.

Not only that, it's the energy that you had to go that went into the having that money first arrive in your household as an income.

Absolutely.

And then to have it disappear again. So it's trying to capture that energy in a way that's efficient and it's always working on your behalf for you and for your family. And so really good stuff for. And just that example of your client, that conversation, that's why Nelson called it the infinite banking concept. We have this thing right here called a brain and the only person that puts limits on it is us. And so when something is finite, it has limitations. So the word infinite automatically causes our brain to think in an expansive way. That's why Nelson's fifth golden rule that you are identified is rethink your thinking. You coached your client and the videos he's watching, him doing the action, him making the choice to do that got him to a place where he could now see and come up with, oh, if I just do this, this is the result of me, you know what I'm going to achieve. And so that is the empowerment, that is the thinking mechanism that Nelson's trying to teach us. And we're simply as stewards of Nelson's work, we're trying to push that out forward so that others can receive that message and embrace it if that's what they want to do. Again, it's all about that desire. You are in the driver. You make the call, you make the decision. A coach is there to help you, help guide you, add context and open the doorways so that you can see what's available. But you're always the one choosing to walk through them or not. Nelson said this was a method of peaceful secession. You got to learn how to secede from the rest of the world's way of thinking, from the financial world's way of thinking. And because you can have autonomy in that decision, everything you do, by the way, is an autonomous decision around your money. You just don't realize it. You may have automated it in some format, but you had to make a decision to turn that into an automation. Right? There was a decision that happened at all stages. You had to make a decision to invest in an ABC fund or with XYZ bank or with, you know, bcd, you know, company. These are all things that you're making decision on. Maybe it was a one time decision, but that decision still came from you. Now circling back to the book, once we pass page 65, we're on 66 and beyond. So from 66 to 85 that brings us full circle back to page 85. And when you add up all the actual pages that you know and illustrations that are in the book that you read, the book is 92 pages long, but there's only 77 pages, you actually have to read. So if you're watching this and you can't commit to reading 77 pages, I would just maybe challenge you to rethink your thinking again. Because that's not about, you know, the educator. That's about the person making the decision. You know, we have people sometimes they say, well, geez, I just don't have time to read. I'm sorry. Yeah, you probably, you probably read more than 77 pages scrolling through your Facebook feed, the Twitter feed, or, you know, news articles on your phone, or watching some YouTube video with cats playing that. You could have easily committed the time to read 77 pages. So it's not about that. You don't have the time or whatever. And, you know, even if reading isn't the issue, it's now available on Audible and we have so many videos available, in fact, we have an entire series of Nelson Nash teaching his seminar available. You can go to learnfrom nelson.com and you can watch that whole series there. And it's incredible. In fact, Nelson himself is going through components of the book that you can, you can dissect. But the cool thing about the back part of this book, the whole last section, is really to start getting you to think about the implementation steps. And it's, it's now moving from the what are we doing? What is the, what is the tool? And how can you know, what are some of the dynamics of the tool and insurance contract and why is this the right, right instrument for implementing this process? Now he gets into how, what are some ways that people are doing this? What are some ways to think about how you could find the money, how you can reallocate funds, how you can create a retirement income stream that you can control by changing some of your habits, you know, and he goes into an example, talking about kids plans and the even distribution of age classes, talking about looking at the different value of a monetary degree. In other words, how much you spend on a, on a, you know, a university degree versus what would that look like if you funded an insurance policy on the same individual and it created an retirement income stream and you had the idea to go and create a fleet of Lexi, you know, and renting Lexus to doctors, getting out of university. Just the thought process that Nelson takes us through in here, it just takes your thinking and it's like, it's like you got a brand new hard drive attached to the side of your head and you just plug the USB cable into the side. It's like, boom, you have all these new possibilities that now exist. That weren't there before simply because you read Nelson's book, whether you decided to do this process or not, you're going to get something out of this book that you couldn't even possibly fathom. And that's only going to get amplified when you read it the second time.

Yeah, well said, Rich. To your point, even if you don't decide to move forward with the process or there's two pieces, right, Maybe you don't get a policy. Nelson also taught us that we don't actually need a policy to become your own banker. It's just a tool. It's just the best tool that we've been able to find for the job to implement the process.

Right?

So that's how I use it. But maybe you choose a different route. And I know in the description below, Rich, I just want to remind people in Canada here go to watchibc.com, you mentioned that some other good resources, but watchibc.com to get access to that 90 minute webinar. You did such a great job. The reason why I think this is such an awesome piece of content is because I often tell people, sometimes they go, look, this book is meant to be read multiple times is also something to think about. So what you've kind of laid out, I often say to people, hey, go grab a section, read a few pages and then go do something. Go work on your car, go to work, or do whatever you want and let your gears turn. The brain's going to start thinking about things. So the way that you've laid this out, especially for those people who, hey, I'm really busy, we have a lot of stuff to do here in Canada. And if you're somebody who has to get back on the highways because Covid's opening up, you're probably sitting in traffic. So read a few pages before you leave the house. Read just like Richard said, hey, I'm going to read page 85. I'm going to go back and read page two and three a couple times. Ten minutes later, okay, you've absorbed that. Now you're driving to work and you'll be surprised at the thoughts that start coming into your brain. You're like, oh, you're gonna start thinking about things and then something crazy might happen. You might get inspired, you might get home and want to read, oh my gosh, I gotta take in more of this content. So those are some clear action steps that you can get, that you can take to get started on the process of becoming your own banker. Implementing the infinite banking concept in Canada.

Great stuff, Fern. I love it. Well, you'll be seeing a playlist showing up on the side. Go ahead and flip through some of those amazing, amazing next pieces of content showing up on the screen and double check, open the description up, click on that Link, go to watchibc.com and get your journey started so that you can embrace financial empowerment in a whole new way.