When most people think about debt, they focus on the interest rate.
- “I got a great deal at 3.9%!”
- “At least my mortgage is under 6%.”
- “The credit card rate is brutal at 19%.”
But the real problem isn’t the rate. It’s the volume of interest — the total amount transferred to banks and lenders over a lifetime.
And for the average American family, the numbers are staggering.
The All-American Family: A Case Study
In his book Becoming Your Own Banker, Nelson Nash lays out a sobering example. He calls it the All-American Family.
Picture a family earning $100,000 a year. Over their lifetime, how much of every dollar do they actually get to keep?
Here’s the shocking truth:
- Roughly 34.5 cents of every dollar is lost to interest.
- That means over a third of lifetime income flows directly to banks, finance companies, and credit card companies.
- And that doesn’t even account for taxes or fees.
In other words, the typical family spends more of its lifetime wealth financing cars, homes, education, and consumer purchases than it ever saves.
This is the silent wealth killer. Not the interest rate — but the volume of interest lost.
Four Ways to Finance — And the One Families Miss
Nash also reminds us that there are only four ways to finance the major purchases of life:
- Pay Cash.
- Use Conventional Financing.
- Lease.
- Become Your Own Banker.
The first three methods enrich banks and keep families dependent. Only the fourth — Infinite Banking — allows families to recapture the volume of interest and redirect it toward their own household and legacy.
Why Interest Volume Matters More Than Interest Rates
Let’s take a common example: a $30,000 car.
- With a loan, you might pay 6% interest — sending thousands to the bank.
- With cash, you avoid interest — but you lose the future growth that $30,000 could have earned.
- With Infinite Banking, you borrow against your policy, your capital continues to grow, and the repayments go back into your system.
It’s not about beating the rate. It’s about recapturing the volume.
And when you add up every car, every mortgage, every education expense, every financed purchase over a lifetime — the difference is millions.
A Better Way Forward
Most American families have accepted debt as a way of life. But that acceptance comes at a steep cost: 34.5 cents of every dollar surrendered to outsiders.
Here’s the alternative:
- Keep your capital in a place that grows predictably.
- Finance life’s purchases on your own terms.
- Redirect every repayment back into your household system.
- Transform interest from an expense into a wealth-building tool.
This is the heart of Infinite Banking. Not a product, but a process — one that shifts your family from dependency to stewardship.
Final Word
The banks aren’t villains. They’re simply doing what they were designed to do: profit from dependency.
But stewardship calls you to something higher. To break the cycle. To stop surrendering a third of your lifetime wealth in interest payments. To control your capital, so you can build a legacy that blesses your children’s children.
Control Your Capital. Build Your Legacy.
