116. Master Infinite Banking and Take Control of Your Wealth with Dr. Robert Scranton

Connect with the host:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-e-jenkins/
Website: https://www.birchprosper.com/
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About the guest:
Dr. Rob Scranton is a financial strategist and serial entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in accounting and finance. As a former chief financial architect of a cutting-edge firm, he now teaches the transformative power of the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC), a time-tested strategy for growing and preserving wealth. Unlike traditional methods of scrimping and saving, Dr. Rob’s approach allows individuals to build wealth without sacrificing their lifestyle. Passionate about sharing these financial truths, Dr. Rob draws inspiration from his own family’s history of financial resilience during the Great Depression. Today, he empowers others to achieve true wealth using the same powerful strategies.

Connect with Dr. Robert Scranton:
Website: yourfinancialiq.org

Episode Highlights:
✔️ The banking bail-in concept
✔️ Infinite banking benefits
✔️ Risks of conventional banking
✔️ Misconceptions about retirement accounts
✔️ Your Financial IQ
✔️401k plans and government risk

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

But the really interesting thing to what you had mentioned earlier is even while you have that money borrowed out, uh, you still continue to earn and uh the money starts to continues to accumulate cash and compound inside the policy the full$100,000, even while you had it borrowed out doing something else.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

How successful would you be if you had the blueprint for building wealth as a real estate investor or as someone who acquires small businesses? If you want to move the needle financially in your life, then you need to understand one thing the capital stack. I'm your host, Brandon Jenkins, and this is where your journey to financial freedom begins. Hello, what's up, and welcome back to the Capital Stack. Um, listen, there are many ways to build wealth. Okay, on this show we talk quite a bit about the amazing benefits of investing in multifamily syndication deals, whether as a passive investor or an active investor. But I would be remiss if I didn't bring you kind of additional topics and experts in their respective fields on ways to build wealth, preserve wealth, using strategies that are just as powerful, but that we don't um frequently discuss on this show or that are maybe less known or underutilized. And so today we have someone who is an expert on this very uh type of field, and we'll dig into um uh into the concept of infinite banking. So I'm very much looking forward to it. We have our guest today, Dr. Robert Scranton. Dr. Scranton, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on the show. Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for being here. So, Dr. Scranton is the founder of Your Financial IQ, where he helps you do more with your money using strategies like infinite banking. So we'll talk about that. He teaches people how to use their current debts and expenses to grow your wealth rather than scrimping and saving and denying yourself the lifestyle that you want. How about that? Dr. Scranton also brings over 20 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur to showcase his uh the power, excuse me, of this little known and again underutilized approach to building wealth. So, again, Dr. Scranton, um such a pleasure to have you here. And if you want, Mike, can you kind of share just a little bit of your background and maybe what got you to uh being now sort of uh deep into the infinite banking strategy?

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Sure, Brandon. Uh thank you. Uh thank you very much. So yeah, I've I've got kind of a multi-uh-tiered career path and how I got into doing what I'm doing now. Actually, my first degree was in uh accounting and finance. I went to the University of Illinois, and uh the business school was the hardest degree program to get into. So I figured if I got in under that, then I wouldn't have to worry about if I wanted to transfer into that, would I be able to? Because I was it's kind of like once you're already in, you're already in as long as you keep the minimal grades up in there. And I just uh, you know, so I I I I love my time there and doing that. And I I graduated from school and and I went to work for an accounting firm in Chicago, and I was preparing tax returns for large corporations and wealthy uh individuals. So one of the highlights of that was I I worked on the tax return for Jay Burwanger, the first Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Chicago. Most people never know the University of Chicago had a football team, but they used to. And uh doing audits to these companies and um and uh you know, I was kind of following the model that uh I saw my parents and most of my co-workers, and they sit you down in a big meeting and say, This is how you're going to be able to retire. And you know, everybody enroll in their the qualified plan that they were you know presenting to the employees, and they even incentivized us with this carrot and offered us a match. So we just felt like you couldn't help but be compelled to participate in the program. And you look to your left and right, and it looked like everybody else was filling out their paperwork. And I think there's some comfort in uh doing what everybody else is doing, even if everybody's walking off a cliff, you feel like, well, they can't really get hurt. Why would all these people be doing this? But uh so I was doing that, and uh around 2009, uh, we'll all remember, especially in the real estate business, so people have been doing it that long. There was uh you know a housing crisis and uh uh uh economic downturn that was you know pretty shocking and quick and severe. And and uh you know, I didn't really pay that much attention to my uh retirement accounts, but from one quarter to the next, I think that company used to send quarterly statements. I noticed that my account had nosedived like 45% in those three months. And I'm like, well, this uh you know, in investment uh professional, why didn't he warn me about this? If he's you know supposed to be so good at managing money, why didn't he tell me to pull my money out before it all dipped down? I didn't do this to save and work and uh set all this money aside. That's where I got to scrimp and save and delay gratification to deny myself all these things because I thought about all the trips I could have taken or the nicer car I could have bought the money that disappeared when it you know dropped suddenly and precipitously. And uh, man, I just that was just the most sickening feeling I think I'd ever had financially in my life up to that point. And I observed my my uh parents and their friends were retiring right around that time. I just thought to myself, what if this had happened right when I was retiring and I no longer had an income and really didn't have the the the time or the period of working life left to recover from that? Yeah, holy cow, what would you do? I mean, I saw my parents' friends going back to work at Home Depot and Lowe's, and so I recognize what you what you end up doing. Yeah, you go back to work nearly full time for uh you know a third of your former salary is what you do basically. Um, that's hard to make that up that way, too. And uh so I just was uh really searching out other you know options and things, and I came across this thing called infinite banking. And as I studied it, I was like, wow, this is unbelievable. I mean, uh why isn't everybody doing this? And this, I mean, almost sounds too good to be true, and that's where my skepticism kicked in and my you know uh very analytical accountant brain. And I was almost, you know, like this sounds so good and makes so much sense. And everything about it like makes me think, why does not everybody do it? Why didn't my parents teach me this? Why didn't school teach me this? So then I got really skeptical because I was like, yeah, why is it with my degrees and my work experience, why have I never heard of this before? So I almost kind of went about for the next year and a half trying to pick it apart and prove it wasn't true and you know, prove it was a scam or whatever, and uh and ultimately came out the other side of that, realizing like, shoot, I just wasted a year and a half. I should have started this a year and a half ago because absolutely everything they're teaching me is uh completely true, a hundred percent uh accurate. And uh so I kind of went from like if you're familiar with you know Bible-wise about Saul, the persecutor of Christians, to Paul, the evangelist, telling everybody about independent banking uh that would that would listen. And um so I uh you know I started I started doing this myself. Uh I just got my statement. Uh February 8th, 2009, I got my first policy with what I had and what I could afford and started building my banking system and started growing that. And over that period of time, it's helped me buy, you know, two houses, a cabin, a commercial property. So every piece of real estate I've ever purchased, um, I've been able to utilize my own banking system to do that rather than having to go like I did in the past and plead and beg and ask permission from the traditional banks and you know, uh fill out all their forms and then hope that they would deem me worthy enough uh to uh allow me to have a loan. And so that's uh yeah, that's kind of my story is I don't know if that was brief or long, but it I try to keep it precise.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

Yeah, I no, I I appreciate the the complete story because it really it really sort of tells the the tale of a transformation, right? Both in in many ways, sort of a transformation uh in terms of uh mindset, right? And the term transformation, even just uh in your financial life and and how you apply it, you know, take it often takes us to kind of go through something that sort of jars us awake and says, Well, wait a minute, the conventional route isn't the way to go. Because the same thing happened to me, um, just obviously in a different uh way, but uh you know, I worked in oil and gas and and um enjoyed my my time there and got laid off, and then it kind of really jarred me to say, Well, wait a minute, something's going on here. Um, but that journey is, I believe, very, very important. Uh, and and so one one question that I have that's that uh, and I'll kind of dig into your background a little bit in a minute here, but what were some of the resources that you were able to dig into to help that that you know you're very skeptical at first and you dug in and said, wait a minute, this this stuff is real. What were some of the resources that you were able to look through to find out uh to find to come to that conclusion?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Well, first of all, I started doing a lot of studying, you know, I don't remember when like YouTube started, but 15 years ago, I don't recall having that kind of availability of information at your you know, key uh at your fingertips. So it took a lot more research. But one of the the key factors for me was uh uh I've got these two books up here. Um one of one book was a book by Robert Kiyosaki called uh Second Chance, where he talks about this strategy building wealth. And another one was uh Tony Robbins Money Master the Game. And I remember reading that, and he didn't really go into the details of what he was talking about. But then I when I went back and reread it after I read this book by uh a gentleman called R. Nelson Nash called Becoming Your Own Banker. Yeah, and it's a fairly brief read, but it's very powerful and packed full of information. I believe honestly, most uh business books could be that brief if they were just full of the critical information. It's just that most uh most authors have about 45 pages worth of information, but their publishers tell them, well, if you want it to be a New York Times bestseller, you got to make it 150 pages, 200 pages, or or it's not gonna people won't buy uh you know a 45-page book. Uh, but I don't think anybody told this gentleman that he was just trying to relay the information and wasn't planning on being a published author and a bestseller, a selling author and so forth. He didn't have a great publicist, but he had a book that's super back full of information. And when I went back and reread that, I realized that's what Tony Robbins is talking about. That's what Robert Kayosaki um are talking about here. So I uh absolutely recommend that for anybody. If you don't have that book in your financial library, you you really ought to get it. They even have it, I think, on audio, you can buy if you're like consuming information on CD, uh, but it's called Becoming Your Own Banker by R. Nelson Nash. And I think that's really coalesced all these ideas around this to me. And I think he's kind of considered uh the godfather or the um birther of the whole infinite banking concept and mindset and way of thinking because these uh the the product that we use, or the engine or the driver of this infinite banking concept and banking system, uh, just happens to be uh the you know, the product that we use to to drive that has been around for 200 years, but about 40 or 50 years ago, he's the first person that really put all these ideas together and kind of explained how to use this and how all the the big banks and and wealthy people out there have been using this for a really long time. They don't necessarily want you and I to know about it, but uh I remember my mentor telling me about infinite banking. And when I first told my um uh my investment advisor, I told you about that, lost 45% of all my money. He was uh amazing. Um I think I probably referred to him as uh uh certified failure planner after that instead of a certified CFCFP.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

That's right, certified failure.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

And uh uh um when I when I I told him like, well, you know, hey, I think I'm gonna go in a different direction. I've been really investigating this thing called the infinite banking concept and reading these books, you know. What do you think? And man, you should have just saw it was like somebody went like you know, went from this to this almost instantaneously, it's all the blood dry drain out of his face. I'm like, whoa, he got so aggressive with me. I'm like, that's just weird. I was just asking questions, like he's the financial guy, and I'm trying to see if he had you know any wisdom or knowledge on it. And uh it was just really strange to me. So I went back to my mentor and asked him, like, hey, you know, I talked to my financial advisor and he just reacted really strange. He's like, Oh, I know why, Rob. He says, he says, that's what he's just repeating back to you like a parrot what he's been trained by his company to say. But he says, I know the company that owns uh the uh the investment or financial firm he's with is owned by Citibank. He said, Why don't you do this? There's a website, uh Brandon, you can go to or any of your listeners can go to uh called Boley, B-O-L-I. It stands for bank owned life insurance, and you can actually find out how much life insurance uh any bank in the country uh owns, whether that's Bank of America, Wells Fargo, your local bank of wherever your uh audience member lives, and look that up. And I and I did that. So I looked up Citibank and I found that 35% of all of their assets were tied up in whole life insurance contracts. More than their real estate, more than their stocks and bonds combined. Uh, the same thing that they were training their agents to tell me was really bad for me, but yet they were doing it to the tune of tens and tens and tens of billions and billions of dollars of their own assets. And I thought, huh, is Citibank just that stupid? Or they know something that I don't know. And I concluded it was the latter.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah, yeah. How about that? It's you know, one thing that's that really for me kind of stands out in this is exposure, right? Because this is one of those whole you don't know what you know, what you don't know type of things, right? And um, here is this entire new kind of world of building wealth that the ultra-wealthy have been using for many, many years. And um what's interesting is you're right, whenever we hear about it kind of just in the in the open sector, it's always from a fearful standpoint. And it's usually told from people who have no concept of how it actually works. Um, but they've been told, hey, just repeat this message because you don't want the because the other reason why you're uh your financial planner probably told you that is because they didn't want you to sort of break free and then go do it for yourself, right? They need your capital to be tied up in what they're doing. And so that's right.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Every dollar I put into my own bank was a dollar I wasn't putting into their system and locking up for the next 30 years or whatever until I'm 59 and a half, which seems like forever when you're 30, right?

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And so, um, so so it's yeah, it's so once you had kind of that exposure, and let's and let's even do this. Like, so from a from a uh mechanics standpoint, you know, so if someone's listening and they are unfamiliar with the whole concept, you know, whole life, like how how does it work? Like, what is what's the the mechanics of how this actually works for a client?

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Well, yeah, it's really kind of uh we use something before your uh you know listeners uh turn off the podcast or go running for the hills. We we we talked about that engine or the driver of uh this infinite banking system. Um, you know, I tell people like, hey, if we could use a lawn chair to make this infinite banking system, because that's really the process of what we're doing. You know, we're just reusing, recapturing, and recycling the same dollars over and over and over again in our life with everything that we're doing, with every dollar or as many dollars as we possibly can that are going through our life before they leave our life. Because once they leave our life and leave our bank account and end up in somebody else's bank account, they're gone forever. We'd like to take uh advantage of every one of those dollars and make sure they're working for us, even if they're working for somebody else. And so the uh the product is uh, like I said, if we could use a lawn chair, we would use a lawn chair for this banking system. It just so happens that the product that has the features and benefits necessary to make this infinite banking system work happens to be an overfunded uh whole life insurance policy with a mutual company that pays dividends. And so that's it's kind of the product that's going to allow us to recapture and recycle and reuse those same dollars over and over again by taking back control of the banking function of our life. So we're not losing all these dollars uh to interest, you know, in uh you know, to other people. In Nelson Nash's book, he talks about where the typical uh, you know, income of uh the average American goes to. And he talks about that over our lifetime, 35% of all the income we ever make will disappear from our family in the form of interest. So if we can, maybe sometimes it's not even a matter of changing our spending habits or um saving more or scrimping or delaying gratification or denying ourselves things we want to do. Sometimes it's just reallocation of you know, moving where we're spending that interest and losing it forever and spending that interest in our bank, in our system, and it can have a tremendous impact, you know, on our finances, you know, uh, over a course of our lifetime. And uh, you know, plus, I mean, all the other features and benefits of that, that you have a lot more control and dominion over your life. You don't have to go uh to a bank and beg for a loan. Uh, because uh I'm sure a lot of your real estate investors have experienced this. The hardest time to get a loan is when you really need one. When you need one, that's right. It's when you don't need one. Yeah, and so but if you've got your own banking system, uh you're not gonna have to worry about getting other people's permission or begging the banks or keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that you're in a uh a time period um in the world where they're more free with their lending and you know, uh credit and and so forth, as opposed to a time that they're not. Because uh some of the best opportunities, you know, the time to make money, you've probably heard that before, is when there's blood in the street, uh you know, and things are on sale, but those are also the times that uh you know banks tighten up their you know credit uh and and lending um uh guidelines and so forth and you know limit who they're going to give it to and how much they're going to give away.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And and and one thing, so so the my limited understanding of how it works is you have to first of all go with the right um, it's it's not it's not as if you could set this kind of this kind of structure up with any you know insurance firm, right, or broker. You have to go to the right uh uh um firm. And then also there's a bit of a time element to this, but you you put as much into your cash value um as possible, into your policy as possible, maximize your cash value, and then once you are you can utilize some of that to for other things, say to buy property for the real estate um uh listeners here. But your equity in your policy still grows, right? Whereas in other in other types of vehicles, you take that out, that equity is not there. So can can you keep it is that uh accurate?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah, that's a really key thing. And a lot of people have no idea about this because and would never even conceive of this. And I think that's why it sounds like why I talked about earlier, like a little bit uh too good to be true or hard to believe, because this to me, those features and benefits you described, they just don't exist in any other financial tool or product on the face of the planet. And if you know of something, Brandon, please let me know about it because I've been for the last 14 or 15 years and I haven't found it yet. You're exactly right. So when we start putting money into our own banking system, uh when we go to pull that, so I'll use an example for your real estate people. Um, say you get in a community like our our community, we have a lot of real estate investors, and we even have uh people that are working at matching themselves up, people that are needing capital, people are willing to loan capital and uh you know make those connections. And so they're using their banking systems uh this way because they're gonna be far more effective. You know, if you've got$100,000 in cash values you built up in your banking system, and you know, you're you borrow that out from the policy and you loan that to a guy that's flipping or turning a property, and he needs your capital for 60 days to turn this property around and sell it, and he's gonna pay you 6% to use your money for uh for two months. And what's interesting is so you're earning that for those two months, and at the end of the two months, he returns your$100,000, and you just put that back and replenish the cash that you had borrowed from inside your policy, and you made$6,000 profit on it. But the really interesting thing to what you had mentioned earlier is even while you had that money borrowed out, uh, you still continue to earn and uh the money starts to continues to accumulate cash and compound inside the policy the full$100,000, even while you had it borrowed out doing something else. So a lot of people are familiar with compound interest. And a lot of people talk about compound interest, but very few people ever uh you know ever uh you know, put uh compound interest into practice. Because, like you mentioned, if that$100,000 was sitting in Wells Fargo. Even though you're earning 0.06%, nothing or whatever, and you're getting taxed on it, and it's all subject to uh attack by outside forces through lawsuits, IRS uh decisions, judgments, liens, uh garnishments, whatever else, um, as soon as you take it out of Wells Fargo, you stop earning that interest immediately. Yeah, right. Whereas with this, with your own banking system, you're borrowing money out, making loans, earning on that, on a hard money loan, putting it back in the policy, loaning it back out. And the whole time you're doing that, you never stop uh the growth and uh cash growth and accumulation compounding inside the policy. So you're literally able to earn on that same dollar in two different places at the same time. And I think that's just what is mind-blowing, yeah, uh boggling to people because they've never experienced that or come across that in your life. Because there's, you know, there's either the interest you're earning, the interest you're saving, or the opportunity cost, the interest that you lost when you went and did something else with that money. Here, we never lose the opportunity cost, and we're able to go and deploy those little green men and send them out into the world so that they bring more of their friends, uh, you know, back with them when they return back to us.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, that that it's just I mean, it's like this supercharged effect because you're getting the double benefit, right? You're you're earning interest on whatever you pulled out if you're investing that, and then whatever was in the policy continues to earn. So, just I mean, to me, it's just um an incredibly, incredibly powerful tool. And it's and so the then that begs the question. So, who who how do we know who to uh turn to to help us set these policies up so that we don't go to the wrong uh uh you know group to say, hey, can you set up a whole life policy?

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, that's a really good point, Brandon. I've been doing this, had my own banking policies for uh 15 years, and I've been teaching other people and setting up their policies for them based off of Nelson Nash's principles he set forth in that book, Becoming Your Own Banker, uh, 50 years ago. Now, that there is unfortunately there's temptation out there uh to hijack this language infinite banking, because in order to set these policies up properly for people uh for their benefit, you know, uh we uh uh myself as an agent, I have to take about a two-thirds cut in my commission that I typically would make on a whole life insurance policy to do that and what's in the best interest uh of the client. So they have this really powerful, really well-functioning uh infinite banking policy. So you're right, you know, if somebody was just like listen to this podcast and say, wow, that sounds really great. I'm gonna go to my neighbor. I think he sells life insurance for whatever agent and get a whole life insurance policy. And it could be just naivete that that agent has never heard of the infinite banking concept, doesn't know anything about it, and just puts that person into a straight whole life insurance uh policy. It will never perform like a banking policy. It will still grow cash over over uh you know, over a period of time, but without that specialized knowledge and how to set it up properly in the very beginning, that's the key and which companies do use, because there's over a thousand insurance companies out there that sell life insurance, but we can only really do this with mutualized, you know, uh insurance company. Nelson Nash states that in his book. And so that whittles that down to a much smaller group of companies. And even at those companies, there's some companies that uh make people type their cash value for a year, to two or three years, some cases. And you know, here I'm telling people like, hey, we're gonna get this policy in place and we want you to start using the cash values for that banking aspect and paying off debts or expenses or investing in other things within the first 30 days of setting that policy up. And if they unfortunately set that up with a company that they didn't realize, or maybe their agent didn't even realize, uh, won't allow you to do that for 12 months or two to three years in some cases, that's not gonna be near as uh effective and functional from a banking standpoint as well. So, yeah, that's you're you're absolutely right. And you know, finding somebody that's well versed in this, that's done this a lot for other people and knows how to set that up from the very beginning, that's the key, uh most important part of uh because I mean, literally any person with a life insurance license can write your life insurance policy.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Yeah, and this is actually a good, a good kind of time to talk um about the uh work that you do for uh for your clients and through your group, right? So through your financial IQ, you that this is kind of why you have this robust educational platform and um a kind of a service to help people get stuff set up. So can you would you mind talking quickly about you know what what what your financial IQ is and who it's for and the type of uh services that you that you provide?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Well, and that's a and that's another really good point, uh, Brandon, because there's people out there that teach about infinite banking, and I'd run across this in the you know in the past, and they are well versed and they will set up a policy correctly, but then unfortunately, I run into clients all the time. They're like, Yeah, I've had this policy for three or four years, Rob. And and I don't know, I the guys sold me the policy and and uh and that was it. I kind of never heard from them again. There was no like mentorship or guidance, you know, beyond that. And from my own experience, starting up my own banking policy, I know I probably would have not used it for the banking aspects or gotten near the value out of it if I hadn't had a mentor, somebody showing me how to use it for the banking and and uh making sure that I uh I knew what I was doing, because I think most of us would you know kind of freeze, you know, uh out of fear of making a mistake or doing something wrong, because it is money after all, and we don't want to make mistakes with money. So would tend to freeze into inaction and do nothing. So I meet these people several years later, even if they've had a properly structured and designed policy that's exactly the way we would have done it, but they haven't used it or done anything with it because there's nobody there on the back end to support them and help them. So we have a masterclass training on your financialiq.org or dot org, uh, where we teach, you know, these subjects you and I are kind of touching on briefly here in in great depth that people want to learn more about that, uh, about everything infinite banking. And then when people put a policy in place and set that up, we don't end the relationship there. To us, that's when our relationship just begins. Because we're gonna help them put uh a spreadsheet together with their banking system and their debts or expenses or things they're looking at investing in and start talking to them about the best way to uh utilize their banking system so it's the most effective and efficient, and we see optimization of the cash growth, accumulation, and compounding that happens inside the policy. And uh, you know, we'll update that uh spreadsheet for them two, three, four times a year as they buy things or sell things, especially in the real estate world, uh, to make sure it's always accurate and up to date. And they feel confident and they have that level of hand holding, even to be like, well, Rob, how do I take a loan out? Okay, well, let's let's call the insurance company and let's walk you through doing that. Well, when it's time to start paying those loans back, you know, how do I get the money back into my policy? And we walk them, you know, through that. Um, I think the result of that is people really uh really like their policies, they see the benefits of what they're doing, they're super excited about this infinite banking concept and how it's helped them. And so they start telling their friends, family, and neighbors, and aunts and uncles and cousins. And so we end up getting to help a lot of those people as well, you know, as a result of that. When people feel supported and like there's somebody there at the end of the phone uh that they can call and ask questions to, and then they really are using this and seeing the benefits of it. I think it's just natural they get very excited because um nothing they've ever had in their financial life, like we said, has those kind of features and benefits uh like this infinite banking concept does.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Yeah, yeah. I would imagine they they do get excited and kind of spread the word a bit. I mean, and that's and that's important, you know, for the listeners that um, you know, we talk about community a lot in this. And it almost sounds like Dr. Scranton, what you what you have in addition to being a guide for so many people and kind of navigating this, um, is that you it also maybe sounds like it's it's turned into a bit of a community of other people who are doing the same thing and um and kind of you know bounce information off one another. Um, and and then you have a roadmap, which is a bit of a living document almost to where it's just it's a spreadsheet, but you kind of looked in it and say, you know, hey, what do you want to do next? And let's take a look and let's make sure that we're doing things properly. So um, you know, for the listeners, we'll make sure that that you have the links and stuff, but I just think that's a very powerful tool. And so before we started to um uh record, we were we were talking quickly about some of the the risks right involved and really in the convention conventional banking sector. And you shared something pretty fascinating um with me. And I and if you if it started, I could kind of share that with the listeners here, which you talked about a bail-in. I mean, a uh what was it? A uh uh um yeah, bail-in, right, for banking. Can you share what that concept is and what what the risk is for uh the masses?

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Right, yeah. So you know, most of us are familiar with bailouts. I mean, that's become part of our normal verbiage and lexicon, right? Uh bailout. It's kind of a weird phenomenon, but we first saw that in 2008, 2009. I mean, our banking system was literally on the verge of complete collapse. I mean, I think they kept the severity of that really hidden from the uh American public just to prevent an all-out panic or a run on the bank or whatever, because you know, Brandon, uh, you know, the uh the conventional banking system is a is a shell game. I mean, uh, you know, with fractional reserve lending, the federal government allows banks to loan out the money they have on deposit and an eight or nine to one ratio. So that means if you put$10,000 on deposit at the bank, uh, the government allows them to make nine,$10,000 loans to other people based off of that one deposit. I mean, that's crazy when you think about it. If everybody in the United States all at once went to the bank because there was a big panic and we all went there on the same day at the same time, you know, all of us would only get about six or seven cents on the dollar of what we have on deposit or what the the numbers show in our app on our phone. Yeah. Wow. I that alone is scary to me because that's all the money that's actually there. All the rest loaned out to other people, it's not even there. And that's one of the things I tell people with this infinite banking. You know, we're in a uh a much more highly regulated industry in insurance, where it's literally true Austrian economics, where one dollar equals one dollar, whatever you've got there in cash values, um, that uh the insurance company tells you they the SEC literally requires them to have that much and liquid reserves and assets available. So it's whatever they say that you have is what they have that they can give you. It's not, it's not this giant shell game. And because these banks were collapsing, I mean, severe 2008, 2009, the government bailed them out. And then here in the pandemic, uh, you know, a lot of people, a lot of businesses were getting bailed out. And but still, with even with all those bailouts, last year, um, it's hard to believe it's only a year ago, because I think most Americans have completely forgot about it. If they ever even saw this on the news in the first place, but four of the largest 10 banks in the United States uh collapsed and folded and went out of business last year. Yep. It's insane, and people have completely forgot about it. But there's something uh, you know, there's a a law written called the uh Dodd-Frank Act, and I forget the year. I'll have to go look that up so next time I'll remember when that was written into law.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Might have been 2012, I think. Wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

2012, I think you're right. Yeah, that sounds sounds about the era. Um, you know, a lot of the bank reform acts that came out of what they were trying to reassess what had happened in 2008, 2009. And one of those was that law allows banks to do what's called a bail-in, where they are legally allowed to take the monies on deposit. If the bank ever needed to bail themselves out because the government was out of money or they couldn't bail them out anymore, it allows the banks themselves to bail themselves out. And that's why I came up with that term or heard that term somewhere, a bail-in to take the money on deposit. So Brandon Jenkins savings account, they could use that money in your uh account to save the bank. Wow. And most people have no idea that that law is even on the books or that that's any kind of a possibility. So to me, as much move money as I can move from that traditional bank into my own bank with uh a banking system that is true one-to-one Austrian economics, dollar for dollar, and the and the government is so heavily regulated that industry that they require them just to continue to, you know, uh function and continue doing business, they have to pass those audits and show uh you know that they have that um you know, those deposits on hand. I feel a whole lot safer with that than have it in a traditional bank. And same thing, I don't think a lot of people, you know, put all this trust, like I said, I was like the lemming and doing what everybody else is doing, the safety numbers in my 401k and IRA back before 2008, 2009, where I said, you know, I quit this system, I'm gonna create and find my own system. Um, you know, those IRAs and 401ks, those are also, I bet 95 out of 100 of your listeners probably believe that that's their money in those 401ks and IRAs. And it's not because when they filled that out, when they had everybody come in like they did at my company and explained it, and then you filled out the paperwork, they didn't give you time to read that whole thing. But they're signing a document that is an FBO document. What does that mean? Well, that means that you know, when you sign that, this 401k, this government-sponsored plan, anytime you hear that, you should be very skeptical and scared, in my opinion. This uh, this qualified 401k plan is for benefit of Brandon Jenkins. This money is being held for benefit of Brandon Jenkins. So, what does that mean? That means it's not your money. Um, if the government ever runs into trouble, and uh there was a a group around that same era as the Dodd-Frank Act said, man, the government's got themselves into all this trouble and all this problem. Well, the laws in the book with these qualified plans allows the government at any time they want, with the stroke of a pen and a simple piece of legislation to confiscate all the money and all those 501ks and IRAs and those government qualified plans. And there was somebody, uh I remember that uh introduced that on the floor of Congress. He got laughed off the floor of Congress. But his literally his concept was like, hey, we have this much in government debt because of all these bailouts and everything that happened in 2009. And that's almost exactly equals the amount that we have across the country and all these 401ks and IRAs. Why don't we just take all that money and pay off the national debt and uh you know start over from scratch, kind of reset uh our country? Uh, after all, I mean, it's for the benefit of all of us, it's for the greater good. Why wouldn't we do this? And it's he had every legal right to uh introduce that. And if he'd have got enough congressmen and senators to vote with him, they could have done that because that's the law. And most people have no idea. They're counting on that for their retirement, and it's literally that whimsically um, you know, uh on a precarious cliff. Most people have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

Wow. Yeah, that that that's very scary. I mean, to me, and it just, you know, that that's the reason why when people talk about the infinite banking concept, we talk you we talk about being your own bank, it's because you quite literally are setting it up that way. But we're also, you know, uh, Dr. Scranton, one of the things we've that we've you know discussed here today that you clearly laid out is some of the risks associated with the conventional path. That's whether it's the conventional, you know, hey, go to school, get a job, and everything's gonna work out, or hey, you know, I'll go ahead and stuff all my my money in the 401k uh black box, you know, or hey, I'll you know, keep all my money tied up in a bank which has way more risk than the majority of us even knew was there. Um so it just, you know, that's why this to me, this strategy is one that um, you know, I had a conversation with some of a good friend of mine, and he's also uh pretty heavy in both the uh uh um the business that you're in and the real estate space. And he said that all of the wealthy people that he knows, okay, they've used this for a long time. Um, so it's something that is well it's it's well understood, but within a small group, right? And so I think I really appreciate you know kind of having this this uh dialogue here to clarify some things. But for the listeners, again, uh, you know, the conventional path, although conventional, does not mean that it is the better route at all. Um, in fact, there's a lot of risk involved in that. And I think it isn't and it's very scary, uh, you know, to hear some of the things that, hey, look, if you're in the conventional banking system, then your money's at risk. Okay. Um, and and it just is it's not built for you to thrive. I think that's kind of the gist of it. Um, you know, whereas if you have someone like yourself, Dr. Scranton, that you know, that that the listeners can kind of link up with and say, how do how do I set this up? This is a mechanism that is built for you to thrive and to do well. Um, so um, yeah, again, I just I just think it's incredible. So let me ask you a question then. How how can someone get um connected with you um and potentially get into the uh your your your group to hear more?

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah, like I I'd say that was we we touched on it briefly before, but I would say that's probably the first place to start because we've touched on a few subjects, but there's so much more uh to this infinite banking system. There's probably about 19 really, really powerful arguments and reasons for why everybody should have their own infinite banking system. And we just don't have time in a short podcast to do that. So that's why we have created uh the uh a masterclass I'm offering for for free. If people go to that link at uh yourfinancialiq.org or your financialiq.org, and they can you know register to watch that free masterclass about everything infinite banking, see if that resonates with them, if that makes sense, if that explains a lot of common misconceptions or misunderstandings about it, if they have heard about it before. And they they can also, if they want to set up a call and and talk to me or ask me about their specific uh situation or how this would uh apply to this life, uh their life, or uh if it would make sense, or just ask me any other question, uh they can go on that website and uh I've got my my scheduling calendar on there and I'd be happy to talk to them, you know, especially about anything independent banking.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

All right, all right, incredible. And then also I want to add for the uh for those of you who are in the Provestor community, Dr. Scranton is going to be um, you know, we'll kind of figure out the the particulars, but he'll have some um, you know, some some uh exposure to you guys as well to share some of the information um for you. So we're really excited to kind of uh you know go forward and make this available and this knowledge, this strategy um available for you as well. But once again, yeah, Dr. Scranton, just um incredible, incredible conversation. I really appreciate uh you know your time and adding so much value to myself. I've learned some things here today, but also to the listeners. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

Thanks for having me on, Brandon. I I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

As always, thank you so much for tuning in to the show today, brought to you by Bridge Prosper. If you enjoyed today's episode and you'd like to learn more about commercial real estate investing, please like, subscribe, and share. And we'll see you again next week. I'm Brandon Jenkins, and this is the Capital Stack, where we help you learn, apply, and prosper.