America the Benevolent and the Infinite Banking Concept

In 1938, when China’s Yellow River flooded, it was America that came to the rescue—with money, supplies, and manpower. The same story played out when the Nile, Amazon, Ganges, and Niger rivers overflowed their banks, devastating communities. Time and time again, America shows up to help the world.

But who comes to our aid when wildfires sweep our forests, when hurricanes ravage our coastlines, or when floods destroy American farms and families?

This is America’s story: benevolence—even to our own detriment.

In our desire to spread freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity across the globe, we often neglect our own well-being. We forget that a nation in debt—$28.6 trillion and counting—can’t continue to give endlessly without consequence.

Like families, nations must be financially strong before they can help others long term. That strength starts with individuals who know how to build and protect wealth—people like you. Don’t wait for someone else to rescue you. Build a solid foundation for yourself and your family. Call us at 702-660-7000. Let’s protect what you’re building.

The Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) is about taking care of the log in our own eye so that we can freely create the resources and the money to truly help others without wrecking ourselves.  R. Nelson Nash frequently referenced Shawn Tully’s 1993 article, The Real Key to Creating Wealth, in the September issue of Fortune Magazine. Tully outlined in that article what he called, Economic Value Added, (EVA) which is simply the idea of considering the cost of using our own resources.

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Today, financial advisors and planners, ignore or even ridicule the value of having participating whole life insurance in a portfolio because they purport it doesn’t produce a high enough return.  This is the log in the financial advisors’ and planners’ eye which is keeping them from creating the wealth Shawn Tully clearly demonstrated in his EVA model. However, careful consideration of the cost of using your own resources will eliminate this log and provide you with the perfect vision you need to build the sustainable wealth necessary for your future.

Consider for a moment what it would look like to run a lemonade stand. You invest your time and money—buy lemons, sugar, cups, maybe even a small table to set up outside. But then, before a single customer arrives, you and your friends and family drink all the lemonade. Every last drop.

What kind of wealth would that stand generate? None. It wouldn’t be a business at all. It would simply be a gathering—a party. Something enjoyable in the short term, perhaps, but entirely unproductive in terms of creating value. It didn’t serve the community, it didn’t create profit, and it certainly didn’t help you grow anything sustainable.

We are taught, “All hard work brings a profit, while mere talk leads only to poverty.” But when we consume what was meant to be stewarded—whether through waste, poor planning, or even well-intended generosity—we end up with nothing to show for our labor. The stand becomes symbolic not of enterprise and productivity, but of short-sightedness and mismanagement.

Even benevolence, when done without wisdom, can lead to consequences. Generosity is noble, but it must be rooted in responsibility. If we want to throw a party, that’s fine—just know that it comes at a cost. But if we give away or consume the very resources meant to help us build long-term value, we undermine our own financial independence. We set ourselves up to rely on others for our daily needs—something no truly free person should aspire to.

In the financial world, it’s easy to get swept up by advisors talking about market-beating returns, big gains, and portfolio performance. But none of that matters without actual results. What really counts is actual yield—how much your money truly produces for you when all is said and done. And here’s the truth: no financial planner, advisor, or guru can guarantee you what that yield will be ahead of time. There is no such thing as a guaranteed actual yield before the investment is cashed out and counted.

If you’re serious about building lasting wealth, you must prioritize stewardship over consumption. Long-term thinking over short-term thrills. Because no matter how good the lemonade tastes today, it’s the customers you serve—and the value you manage well—that will build your future.

Participating whole life insurance offers a level of financial transparency and reliability that is hard to find elsewhere. Unlike many other financial products that fluctuate with market conditions and carry uncertain outcomes, participating whole life insurance provides a clear and consistent valuation of the policy at any given moment—throughout the entire lifetime of the contract. This built-in predictability is one of the main reasons why the Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) relies on participating whole life insurance as its foundation.

IBC leverages these policies because they offer guarantees that help individuals better manage, control, and optimize their financial resources. These guarantees include a steady, contractual return on premiums paid, coupled with the potential for non-guaranteed dividends, which have historically been paid by reputable mutual life insurance companies for well over a century. When structured properly, this combination provides policyholders with a higher internal rate of return on their capital, especially when compared to traditional investment strategies that don’t preserve or grow capital simultaneously.

One of the greatest benefits of using participating whole life insurance in this way is its alignment with Tully’s Economic Value Added (EVA) model. This model emphasizes recovering the cost of capital in any investment decision. By utilizing policy loans rather than withdrawing or using their own cash, participating whole life policyholders allow their money to remain in the policy where it continues to earn compound interest and dividends. This creates a dual-growth scenario: the investment outside the policy earns a return, and the money inside the policy never stops working.

Individuals who invest without the support of participating whole life insurance give up this opportunity. They use their own money, which halts its growth the moment it’s removed from any compounding environment. So even when they earn the same investment returns as a policyholder, they lose out on the additional compounding that participating whole life continues to deliver in the background.

Participating whole life insurance enables you to make your money more productive, more secure, and more efficient, all while maintaining liquidity, use, and control. That’s the advantage of guarantees, dividends, and sound financial principles working together in one powerful strategy.

As Americans we need to realize that giving money away is not always the best we can do.  In the late 1800’s, British author Anne Isabella Ritchie wrote in her book Mrs. Dymond saying, “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; If you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”  Giving away the money we could have had, by not owing participating whole life insurance, has cost Americans trillions of dollars over the years.  In 2019 alone, $122 billion dollars was spent on credit card interest.  With a good participating whole life insurance policy and a basic understanding of the IBC, this interest could have remained in the pockets of those who spent that $122 billion, instead of this money ending up in the hands of the bankers and credit card companies.

The Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) is ultimately about teaching people how to fish—how to become self-reliant and financially independent. It’s a system designed to help individuals take control of their financial future by learning how money truly works. In contrast, many traditional financial advisors and planners are in the business of giving away other people’s money—your money—in pursuit of the highest returns they can manage. But those returns don’t always benefit the actual investor. Too often, they benefit the institution or advisor first.

That’s why it’s essential to learn the difference between fishing and gifting. Gifting your money to a system you don’t control—hoping it comes back with interest—is not the same as managing your own financial ecosystem where your capital continues working for you.

You have a choice: you can continue relying on others and remain financially vulnerable, or you can step up, take responsibility, and build a system that works for your life—not theirs. The unfortunate truth is that around 90% of today’s American seniors depend on government programs, taxed income, or the goodwill of others just to meet their daily needs. That’s not freedom. That’s dependency.

Take action today. Call 702-660-700 and discover how IBC can help you take charge of the money in your life. Learn to fish—so you never have to rely on someone else to feed you.

Tomas P. McFie DC PhD

Tom McFie is the founder of McFie Insurance and co-host of the WealthTalks podcast which helps people keep more of the money they make, so they can have financial peace of mind. He has reviewed 1000s of whole life insurance policies and has practiced the Infinite Banking Concept for nearly 20 years, making him one of the foremost experts on achieving financial peace of mind. His latest book, A Biblical Guide to Personal Finance, can be purchased here.