Richard Canfield explains why the Infinite Banking Concept, which uses dividend-paying whole life insurance to build personal capital, hasn't gone mainstream. People reject it partly because they're conditioned to trust banks and advisors, partly because the word "insurance" triggers skepticism, and partly because it requires discipline that modern culture doesn't reward. Once people understand how it works, they wonder why nobody taught them sooner.
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Modern culture wants microwavable success. This is not a TikTok strategy. People giving away control of their money their entire lives and never stopping long enough to question it. And then they wonder why they always feel financially tight despite the fact that they're making good income. Why did nobody explain this to me earlier? Like, we hear that all the time because explaining money properly is much harder than selling debt. Why isn't everyone doing this?
Knowledge, aptitude, decision fatigue, and I would say, uh, 60 years of boiled frog theory in the typical financial system. So let me quantify what that means. So boiled frog theory is you put a, put a boiled frog, put a frog in lukewarm water and he's fine, he's comfortable, and you just slowly turn the heat up. And supposedly you can boil a frog that way. And I don't believe that that's actually true, but over time you become acclimatized to certain things. Well, over time, for the last 50 years in North America and US and Canada, the entire financial machine and world has been built around go see an advisor and give them your money to be invested. And that's the whole marketing machine and the banks and You know, you, you have until this day to come and get your contribution for a tax deduction. Like all of this stuff around the whole world has people accustomed to that world, like kind of like a boiled frog. And so frustration, maybe a little bit of anger, maybe a little bit of disappointment with how that's turned out for the last 50-some-odd years. Take a 2008 financial crisis, throw in some pretty chaotic elements around COVID and all these kind of things, and people maybe start to lose a little trust in the system. They start looking for what has been consistent all the time. They're like, oh geez, you're right. There's this thing called whole life insurance here. Everyone thought that that was kind of crappy, but apparently it's just been kicking butt for the last 200 years. Maybe we should take another look at it. So I think we're seeing a pendulum swing effect there. So why isn't everyone doing it? That's part of it. Not everyone can qualify for insurance. Not everyone is willing to read a book. Like this one called Becoming Your Own Banker, because that's work. And so they're lazy and they don't want to take the work. Not everyone wants to have the opportunity to control money. In fact, they would rather blame someone else for their failures by not taking responsibility. So there's a lack of, there's an abdication of responsibility aspect. So I think these are, you know, I could keep going on, but those are several of the reasons I think why not everyone is doing this.
Okay.
Yeah.
I would say my perspective, I think this is probably the most important question of this entire episode because when someone asks inevitably, why isn't everyone doing this? Those who understand it are doing it. And traditional financial education, I can even speak for myself personally, I began a dividend reinvestment program when I was 19 years young. I'm turning 52 this year. And traditional financial education, what did it teach me? It taught me to save money. That's smart. Taught me to transfer interest away permanently, something I didn't know. It taught me to, when I needed access to money, rather than deplete my savings, go to a bank, borrow the capital, Develop credit history and become a qualified borrower and access capital from the books of someone else's bank. And you're taught to do that and repeat it. And I didn't begin implementing the Infinite Banking Concept until 2008. I knew nothing about the process. I knew nothing about dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts. But when I attended that very first educational event, I left the event thinking I need to— and I didn't realize it at the time that I was a very high fact-finder as measured by Kolbe Index— I need to interview every life insurance company that'll talk to me and trust but verify everything that I learned. And very few people are taught the advantages of, of creating capital, controlling capital, and the infinite banking concept. It requires discipline. It requires developing, um, habit-based transformation. And modern culture, modern culture wants microwavable success. How long can I stick this thing in the microwave? And when it pings, I pull the success out. This is not a TikTok strategy. It's a, it's a long-range process. And many advisors, many home office personnel themselves do, do not understand the tool that's used to implement the process— properly designed dividend-paying whole life insurance contracts— beyond a rudimentary level. Others dismiss it without even studying it. And some critics will analyze illustrations while simultaneously ignoring real-world decades-long experience. It just boggles the mind. If something requires patience, discipline, long-range thinking, and delayed gratification, Automatically, most people won't do it. Yeah, that's what I've been explaining to people, that it's just the truth. Most people are trying to look wealthy.
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And very few are focused on actually becoming financially unshakable. And so the question isn't why every— why isn't everyone doing it? It's why so few people are taught to think this way to begin with. That's the right question. Why are so few people taught to think this way to begin with?
They want the Ferrari, but they've got a Honda Civic budget. Well, You can apply that to like their mindset to a larger degree. And here's another thing I think I would add to that too, Jason. I totally agree with everything you indicated. The word insurance sets people's minds into a deep freeze. And that is not always the case, but it is often the case because we've been trained to think that the insurance salesperson is a bad person or Or someone has an experience with travel insurance and it doesn't go well, or they have an experience with some other area of insurance, or they have a buddy or a friend that they had a car accident and, you know, the insurance didn't pay out. And so that aligns their thinking around the general category. And so then when the word insurance comes out, like they've, they kind of got their back up against the wall already. Like there's a preconceived feeling, and that feeling outweighs good sense. It stops rational thought from entering their brain because of what comes up for them. I've experienced that with a number of people, and there's probably a point in time in my life where I had that thought process, and I'm sure there's maybe other areas of our life, my life, where that occurs. And so the arrival syndrome that Nelson talks about is real. There's no point in teaching me anything new. I've already arrived in knowledge. Well, I would go one step further in that there's the arrival syndrome around how you feel about certain topics. And if you've got an emotional charge to it and it's not a positive charge, well, then it will dull your mental capacity to take in new information, right? So there's a physiological response to being able, willing, and open and interested in learning something. And if some feeling tells you not to do that, I mean, you're just going to back away from it. I think that that has a role because how often do we have questions of people, you know, they're very guarded around just the idea of insurance or life. Oh, what? Well, this is just life insurance, you know, like, but they say it with almost like a degree of contemptiveness. It's really strange. And I, now that I've been doing this for so long, I just don't understand because I literally believe this is one of the most valuable and most important jobs and careers on the planet based on what we do. I mean, we make real drastic and dramatic change in people's lives in a way that I didn't even truly understand and realize was possible. I only got licensed in this industry to do this. And then now having done it for so long, I mean, what we're doing for people is so much bigger than just this. Like, It's really, really valuable. Yeah.
I would say we'll leave the viewers and listeners with this. So I think the older Richard and I get, the more I think we realize that financial frustration for the overwhelming majority of people that we are blessed to speak with, or that all of our Ascendant Financial teammates, both sides of the border, are blessed to speak with, it comes from one thing. People giving away control of their money their entire lives and never stopping long enough to question it. They finance everything. They transfer interest away permanently. They, they keep money in places they can't access efficiently, and then they wonder why they always feel financially tight despite the fact that they're making good income. And this process is like Nelson describes in his book. It's not a get-rich-quick It's not some secret loophole discovered by a guy on YouTube wearing sunglasses indoors. It's a disciplined financial behavior paired with a very efficient, reliable financial tool. That's it. And honestly, I think that once people understand the mechanics, the reaction is usually the same. Why did nobody explain this to me earlier? Like, we hear that all the time. Well, probably because explaining money—
I wish I'd met you 20 years ago.
No, it's, it's simple. Why did nobody explain this to me earlier? Because explaining money properly is much harder than selling debt. Debt sells itself. It, it just does.
Go ahead, check out the next video down below. And if you want to make sure you get a copy of Don't Spread the Wealth so you can have family banking meetings that actually matter, Go to dontspreadwealth.com, dontspreadwealth.com.
