Ben & Kim have a regular American family. The have two kids – Jack and Rick – who they love with all their hearts (and probably spoil just a little too much!). They’ve done okay financially, following a lot of financial advice that they’ve heard over the years. They’re no experts, but Ben tries to pay attention and feels that he’s been doing most of the things he’s heard along the way that people should do.
But they’ve started to feel like they’re at a crossroads lately. They’re in their mid 30’s and everything they’ve been doing is starting to feel a little hollow. They want desperately to honor the work Christ has done for them and in their lives by really being Christ’s love to others. But life seems so full, and after years of plugging away, they don’t really feel like they’re getting any closer to being able to make a real difference with their lives. They decide to make some real changes. Although they make their financial decisions together, Ben tends to be more interested and he tends to do most of the research and in the end direct most of the decisions that they make in financial matters.
Ben begins to ask himself, “If we’ve been doing what the “experts” have said we should be doing and after ten years we haven’t really gotten anywhere, could it be that the “experts” don’t really know what they’re talking about?” He thinks a bit more about it and realizes that, “Come to think of it, it seems like if this plan that most people are using for financial success really worked, then most people would be financially successful. But I hardly know anyone who is really financially successful and the ones that I do know that are, didn’t get there by doing the things I’ve been told to do!”
Ben begins to think over the things that they’d been doing. Ben and Kim both worked and both contributed the maximum to their 401k’s. These decisions supposedly meant great tax savings to him and he did get to deduct them from his taxes, but it also meant that the money wasn’t really his and he couldn’t do with it what he wanted to. How was he supposed to steward this money for God’s benefit if he couldn’t even touch it and could only do with it what the government told him he could?
Another decision Ben and Kim had made was that they were trying to pay off their home mortgage so they were paying extra towards that each month. They also had some money in the bank for emergencies, but they didn’t really have anything in the way of real assets.
One day, Ben begins to take the Kingdom Calling course and decides that along with many of the other things we’ve discussed, he would buy a whole life policy on himself. He understands the versatility, safety, strong growth, and multitude of advantages in a theoretical way since he’s taken it upon himself to learn these things. The thing that really stands out to him was that he can have tax advantages without giving up access to his money and so he really begins to consider that whole life insurance might be a lot better than term insurance or the 401k’s and IRA’s they’d been funding.
So Ben does have a theoretical understanding of how whole life might work, but we’re going to walk along with him in his journey of really understanding how this policy works in action.
We hope you’ll join us!
Please remember that as we go through Ben’s Story, every person’s situation and needs are different. So while there is a lot that can be learned from the way Ben uses his policy, yours would most likely be used in very different ways including the amount of the premium paid in and where that money came from, the face amount bought, the ways in which the cash values were used, and everything that happens to them in their lives. Every client we work with has a story that is very different from these in most every way, but again, there is much that can be learned from this fictitious story where so much happens in one couple’s life.
This is Part 1 in the story of Ben’s life using Whole Life Insurance in a variety of ways. You might want to read the introduction to this series which will link to each post in the series explaining how whole life works as well as linking to each post in this series on Ben’s story.
Photo credit: cuba jones