With big banks, like Silicon Valley Bank, going out of business, where can you keep your money that’s safe and easy to use? Could it even give you a higher and safer return than the bank?
In this episode, Chris Miles shares where he’s keeping his own money safe, and gives some stern warnings about the economy that you need to hear.
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How To Protect Yourself Against Bank Failures
Welcome to our show. It’s for you, those who work so hard for your money and want your money to start working harder for you right now. You want that freedom of cashflow now, not 30 or 40 years from now, but right now, so you can live that life that you love with those you love. Most importantly, it’s not about getting rich. It’s about living a rich life because as you are blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you.
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Many people have been talking about bank failures. We have the big one, Silicon Valley Bank, which is the second-largest bank failure in history. This is about as big of news as Lehman Brothers and all those things. It’s not just them. We had Signature Bank close down. We even had Silvergate. All this has come out within about a week’s period of time. It makes you wonder how many more banks have started to fail. As a result, I have seen the banks emailing me saying, “We are safe. We are not them. Don’t worry.” One of the banks I bank with was mentioned because they are in the Western part of the United States. They are a regional bank and people are worried.
The thing is that there are some different factors here. The number one thing that people always ask me is, “If not in the bank, where?” I know many of you guys have been sitting on cash lately, and this shouldn’t make you nervous rightfully. I’m not saying there’s going to be a massive bank failure everywhere, left and right. I don’t say that’s going to be the case, but I do think it gives you good cause to be concerned.
Even with Silicon Valley Bank, they seemed great on their balance sheet for a while, but their bonds and their treasuries started losing money. They didn’t have enough cash to be able to offset that because they weren’t doing enough risk management. You can’t control what the bank does. You don’t know how they are doing things. You don’t know where they are investing money.
I’m telling you, even on the loan side, you are going to start to see more and more delinquencies happening over these coming years. I already talked about the credit card debacle that’s coming up. I’m telling you, there’s going to be more and more of this happening with banks. More banks are going to be in trouble. Where do you save it?
I’m not going to try to make it seem like I’m a broken record here, but here’s what I’m doing with my money. Here’s how I’m keeping myself safe from bank failures. I still use banks for money. I still have it for quick liquidity and cash, but I’m not keeping more than a couple hundred thousand in any particular bank. I do want to make sure I’m below the FDIC requirements.
Where I am putting the lion’s share of my money is not there. I’m investing my money. Yes, I’m doing that too. However, the money I have in cash and reserves for my emergency fund and for the money I’m holding onto to make better investments as time goes on, I’m keeping most mine in my life insurance policy. It’s because I know that there are some better opportunities coming quickly down the road here in 2023.
I know I have said that before and I know we keep hitting on this again and again. There are many points I have said on this show I have hit on again and again. For example, the stock market sucks and it’s not done going down. I can assure you that there are several of you that might be the minority. There are probably several of you there still have money in the stock market now thinking, “It might come back up.”
This is not a newsflash here. I have been saying it for a while. This is not a good time to be in the stock market. The stock market is about the same valuation as it was before Y2K and in 1929 before The Great Depression, yet people keep their money in the stock market. Banks are no different. Banks have been known to fail, but life insurance companies have not. In the rare situations that the insurance companies do happen to become insolvent, they have what’s called reinsurance to back them up, which is better than FDIC.
Understand the FDIC is cash reserves. You do understand that there’s barely enough in there to cover what was at Silicon Valley Bank. There was not much more in reserves in the FDIC. This means that there are more bank failures. Even though they said it’s not coming out of our pockets as taxpayers, it will be. This is the cream of the crop. The canary has died in the coal mine.
The question is, “Will you get out?” I’m keeping my money and I have been preparing for this for years, keeping it more in the life insurance. I’m not doing that because it is 100% pre-protected from lawsuits and creditors where my bank money is not. Lawsuits and creditors can get to my bank money anytime they want.
My life insurance is protected 100%. Reason number one. Number two, reinsurance companies. All insurance companies are required to buy insurance for themselves. They put their money into that fund and what they are doing is that they put in these reinsurance companies that are global insurance companies protecting in case they go under.
Here’s what happens. Even in the rare case that insurance companies do go under, what happens is that the reinsurance company steps in to make sure that people’s cash value is safe and their death benefits are safe. On top of that, they step in long enough for another insurance company to come in and buy them up, which has happened in 100% of the cases. Reinsurance companies usually don’t have to take them over. Some other insurance company gobbles them up and says, “I will take that book of business. Thank you very much.”
Insurance companies have got each other’s backs. They are very tightly knit that way. The banking industry, although they are not horrible, they have done a good job overall, but still, there are some weaknesses. Here’s the third point. the three big reasons why it’s safer to put this money in here. 1) I’m protected from lawsuits and creditors. My money is safe. Not to mention I’m earning a better return than the bank will pay me anyways. 2) Reinsurance companies back them up and other insurance companies in the industry back them up. 3) They cannot over-leverage their money. They cannot lend out more money than what they have. They are not doing that. They are investing exactly the money that’s under their control. This makes them a safer bet in all conditions.
Especially with insurance companies that I look at, we want to make sure you have insurance companies that are 1) They are mutual. Not stock companies because you get paid a little bit better that way. 2) The big reason is if you look at any type of depression, recession, war, or anything else, companies that have been paying straight dividends for at least 100 years, have never stopped paying dividends, are the ones they tend to trust.
There are not that many out there. You got the big ones like Northwestern and New York Life. They have been pretty good. Although sometimes they have been a little bit off, but you also have Guardian, MassMutual, Penn Mutual, and all companies that we leverage and use ourselves to. Penn Mutual, this one that we have used a lot, they have paid for 176 years straight. They have always paid a dividend ever since they started in 1847.
That’s nearly two centuries’ worth of paying out dividends. Banks can’t claim that. During the last Great Depression, the real big Great Depression, about 50% of banks failed. That hasn’t happened in the insurance industry. It hasn’t been that rampant because banks often will go through their own waves. If they don’t manage risk well, they go and gamble their money in a place they shouldn’t be.
They are going and buying those mortgage-backed securities that maybe were a little bit too risky at the time. Subprime Lending, for example. They go and leverage things like treasury bills or bonds and things that can still lose money. Even though they usually don’t, they can still lose money. If they are, of course, overleveraging the money that they have, this puts them in a big crisis. You are not going to see that with the insurance company.
Strategy-wise, what I have done is keep maybe tens of thousands of dollars in different bank accounts. That’s it, but then I’m keeping hundreds of thousands of dollars inside my life insurance policy. That’s where I store my money. We have other episodes coming out here, too, where we talk about how banks have been doing this for years. Banks have been doing that to weather their storms by buying life insurance for themselves. They are investing in these infinite banking types of concepts in their banks. It’s called BOLI, Bank Ownec Life Insurance.
They buy it for themselves. If even the banks have known how to weather the storm over the years, putting a significant amount of their cash into life insurance, why shouldn’t we as well? This is why, yes, I still go to invest my money. The majority of my money still goes to investing and creating passive income.
A lot of my money goes into this business too. When I’m keeping reserves, when I’m keeping money, and even for generational wealth, I’m keeping it more inside these life insurance policies. I will tell you right now, I’m not leveraging my life insurance policies to go and borrow from them. I’m leveraging that money and letting value grow in there as I’m storing up more and more cash. Not just for emergencies but also for opportunities that are coming as we have this impending crash and crisis that’s going to start unfolding as this year and the future years go along.
I don’t want to sound like doom and gloom, but I have been saying this for years. It’s going to be happening. It happens in cycles. We have boom years and we have bust years. We have gone beyond the boom years. Just like what you hear some people say that generally, the bigger the party, the bigger the hangover.
We had a big, huge party for several years. The stock market from 2009, that calendar year, through the calendar year of 2021, that’s thirteen years when you count them, we were up in the market other than one year, which was about flat. Otherwise, it’s been straight up. That party is over. The hangover is overdue. It’s time to wake up and it’s time to get your morning coffee or whatever you need to do to be able to get over that hangover because it’s happening right now.
We are seeing the signs that this is the perfect time to have your money in stable and secure places. This doesn’t mean you stop investing. I want to repeat this. Just because things are going crazy right now doesn’t mean that you should stop investing. This means that it’s a good time to keep investing. What I am saying is it’s probably more important to store more cash.
Traditionally in financial planning, they have always said 3 to 6 months of cash reserves. I’m going to tell you to need at least a minimum of 6 to 12 months of reserves right now. I would even aim for at least a year’s worth. Just to be safe, I would keep that in reserves. You would say, “I don’t want to keep that in the bank. It doesn’t make me any money.” That’s true. This is why we have the infinite banking type of policy. We are using a whole life insurance policy to store that money, grow it tax-free, and have still liquid access to it when you need it. That’s what I’m seeing right now.
I don’t want to beat this dead drum and yes, we offer insurance. We have a self-interest in telling you this. I’m telling you what I’m doing myself and it would be a disservice if I didn’t tell you what I’m doing to help get myself safe because I learned from the last few recessions. I learned from Y2K. I learned a little bit from there. I learned that the market can be crazy. I learned from the last recession what happens when you are not liquid. When you don’t have cash available, even when you think you have got enough in savings, it may not be enough based on optimistic viewpoints.
The market can be crazy. We learned from the last recession what happens when you are not liquid, when you don't have cash available. Even when you think you have enough in savings, it may not be enough. Click To TweetI like to look at it more from a pessimistic viewpoint to say, “Maybe I will want to have more cash sitting around and available just in case.” This is the time. Now is the time to prepare. You need to do this. I don’t care if you do it with us or somebody else. I guarantee if you do it with us, you are going to get lower-cost insurance coming out, allowing your money to grow faster to have more of that cash available.
That is what’s necessary right now. Feel free to reach out to us at MoneyRipples.com for that. I’m here to say that you can protect yourself from bank failures by not having all your money in the bank. Keep it more in your infinite banking, personal banking type policies. Control and create your banking system and that is where you will create safety. That’s where you will create some much better confidence. When you have more confidence, then you are allowed to go and invest more confidently as well. I hope you make it a wonderful and prosperous week. I will see you later.
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