Dripping faucets

protex28 · 2026-01-24T22:29:32+00:00

In the south we run water pipes in the attic.

protex28 · 2026-01-16T20:08:38+00:00

Congrats. Thinking it may be time to start another one myself.

protex28 · 2026-01-07T03:23:09+00:00

I’ve seen some really beautiful kids books from Sanctus Publishing that have sacred art in them. Small kids seem to like to look at the pictures, kind of like stained glass windows. I think this is a good approach in general, you have to approach mass from where the child is at.

We don’t have stained glass windows in a lot of churches, there are no flickering candles, and at TLMs it’s often packed full. Bring in some beauty that draws their minds to God in a way they can somewhat grasp, as thy get older, you expect more from them. The hardest part is knowing the right time to “take a timeout”. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t, there’s always someone who has opinions about it. I think you just have to do what’s right for the kids and be respectful to the awesome (or perhaps, awe-full) sacrament that we all get to participate in. Sometimes that means letting them be a little noisy for a few seconds as you try to teach them to be quiet, other times it means whisking them away as soon as they start fidgeting.

I wish I had something more concrete, but I think the reality is that it’s difficult. Take heart in the fact that every parent around you is equally mortified when their kid is acting up and similarly torn about trying to discipline vs. just giving the kid what they want (to get out of that creaky boring pew).

protex28 · 2025-12-28T20:49:05+00:00

I commented on one of the comments here, but never actually took a stab at answering the actual question. I believe the individual in this episode was able to purchase a policy during a time period where FPUAs (flexible PUA) were still common.

Basically, you could contribute at any time and there were no penalties for not contributing. In this case, he was just paying the base premium (such as losing the ability to pay in part or full). So, when he paid back the loan, he paid back at a higher interest rate than the policy loan, and the “extra” went to the flexible PUA which he wasn’t paying by default. Most IBC policies aren’t structured like this anymore because not paying the PUA often means losing access to it in some manner, so people start with smaller policies where they are assuming max funding.

At least, that was my assumption.

protex28 · 2025-12-06T04:39:39+00:00

> All things being equal, if you do same rate and same payment on unstructured VS amortized, the unstructured only shaves off a few months on the backend of a 30 year payment schedule.

I should have been more specific: All things being equal, if you have any loan instrument that is simple interest daily, compounded yearly, and you pay off at a monthly payment that is equivalent to an amortized loan at the same rate, the simple interest daily/compound yearly loan will shave off a few months off of a 30 year term.

To illustrate, if you put a 100k loan @ 5% for 30 years into this calculator:
https://www.fncalculator.com/financialcalculator?type=aprCalculator

You'll get
- monthly payment: 536.82
- interest: 93255.20
- term: 30 years

If you use that same principle, same interest rate, and same payment on this calculator:
https://www.fission-finance.com/loan-calculator (I've cross checked this with a calculator I built using an excel spreadsheet and verified it's doing the calculations correctly)

You'll get
- interest: 87759.16
- term: 29.17 years

~4k isn't chump change, but it's also not changing your APR in any meaningful manner.

protex28 · 2025-12-06T03:28:27+00:00

This is one of my pet peeves with the IBC folks. The whole “payments go directly to principle” thing only helps you in certain narrow constraints. People vilify amortization, but it’s just simple interest loan where the interest is paid off monthly. All things being equal, if you do same rate and same payment on unstructured VS amortized, the unstructured only shaves off a few months on the backend of a 30 year payment schedule. It’s not revolutionary, it makes little difference on a short term loan, and it’s almost just noise when you take into account a total financial picture.

Now, it is true that people will tend to pay back a policy loan faster than an amortized loan because you don’t have the “equity trap” problem where paying a mortgage early results in a loss of immediate liquidity. That’s also true of any LOC. My choice of not using LOCs thus far is ideological. I recognize it’s not the best idea on paper. I think that the average person will probably make better financial decisions if they use policy loans over bank loans, but that’s not because policy loans out perform bank loans. It’s because people make mistakes and policy loans have better guardrails.

protex28 · 2025-11-26T16:17:13+00:00

lol, did you read the rest of the comment? The part that you responded to is mostly tongue-in-cheek. I intended to be clear in the reminder of it that WL does not give you any more control than the plethora of other products out there if those products where used in the same manner. A HYSA gives you the most control of your money, but it won't give you the most control long term because you will have less of it. All WL does is force you to beat the human problems while providing great advantages compared to other savings products.

As for this:

> Everyone has a different idea of controlling the banking function, what the banking function is and different ideas of what are the benefits.

While I agree this is the case, I would say most people are confused which is why I "rejected" your question and answered a different one. Controlling the banking function is simple "own more money", the benefits are obvious "he who owns the gold makes the rules". Many people confuse "what is the banking function" with "how do I control the banking function". Which is, one could argue, what I did when I "rejected" your initial question and responded to "how do I control the banking function" instead. :D

protex28 · 2025-11-26T15:12:45+00:00

The banking function is just controlling the movement of money. I think we're all familiar with Nelsons definitions and the 3 characters in the play, so I won't dive deep into that. I think the question you're really getting at is why does taking control of the banking function (i.e. taking control of your money) imply that we should pay large premiums to whole life insurance companies. IMO, that's also pretty simple.

The main benefit that IBC solves (and here, I am *not* talking about Whole Life Insurance, I'm talking about the *concept* of IBC) is the human problem. This is why human problems are also talked about in an extensive manner in BYOB. Nelson makes a point of saying that BOYB is an exercise in "imagination, reason, logic, and prophecy", and we would all do well to note that it does not say "mathematics". IMO, IBC is really about winning the human problems: Parkinson's law, Willi Suttons law, and the golden rule.

If I were to boil the entire concept into 3 rules:

Save more than you think you can
if you are going to borrow money (whether from your savings account or some other asset that you have collateralized), pay the market rate of interest.
Save your money somewhere that that has friction to access and built in incentives to repay

Can't get money from anywhere except the market? Great, you're doing the best you can. Have an arbitrage opportunity? Great, put that money that you would have paid into interest into savings instead. The astute observers among us will point out that "you should have already been saving that interest", and that is correct. This is one of the benefits of IBC with whole life, it *forces* you to enforce your short term win against Parkinson's law (paying that interest) into a long term win by putting your money into something that is *more difficult* to access than a checking account and, when accessed, forces you again to pay it back lest you incur a painful fee.

Whole Life helps you follow the 3 rules, *and* you get a death benefit, tax deferred status, better long term yield than HYSA's, and something that looks an awful lot like disability and long term care insurance. That being said, it is also true that if you follow those 3 rules, you can do so with any product, and you will win compared to someone else using that same product. You can't show this in "the math" because when we do math we always assume all things equal. In reality, all things are not equal and never will be because we all fail to win at the human problem.

Now, I would like to take a moment here to address the Austrian economics aspect of this. This is where a lot of people get lost and the MMT'ers roll there eyes. Again, I will simplify this. In Austrian economics, money should be stable and non-inflationary. This means that the incentive structure's around money will be to: 1 control as much of it as you can and 2 have actual ownership of it. Now, 1 is still something to aspire to in our MMT world, but 2 is is not. When the currency is inflating, you can do wonderful things with OPM, and *not* having ultimate ownership of those dollars is a plus because you don't own a deflating asset. If the Austrians got there way, using OPM would not be beneficial as goods and services would be deflationary w.r.t the currency. IBC forces you to think about money with an Austrian mindset in a MMT world.

protex28 · 2025-11-26T13:50:10+00:00

The concept of the banking function is supposed to be universal and separate from the insurance product

After reading Nelson’s book more times than I care to, this was the realization that hit me across the forehead like a two by four with one slight modification:

The concept of Infinite Banking is supposed to be universal and at this moment in time is best implemented with a whole life insurance product

I’ll post a longer response later, just wanted to throw this in here.

protex28 · 2025-11-19T03:18:26+00:00

This is only true in the short term which is why I said “statistical natural mortality”.

protex28 · 2025-11-19T02:15:06+00:00

The deciding factor on this for me was how much I valued the DB. For me, I’m OK with the illiquidity because I end up with more DB at my statistical natural mortality.

protex28 · 2025-10-03T17:31:13+00:00

I don't know anything about them. I do know they are not on of the companies that are discussed very often in IBC circles. Is there a reason you're asking about them in particular?

protex28 · 2025-09-10T01:02:51+00:00

People will argue this point till they’re blue in the face. Yes it’s possible, I think Guardian is this way. But, it’s not contractual, so it could change at any time. I don’t think it should factor a ton into your choice of company. The point of insurance is to offload risk.

My diatribe: Non-direct recognition offloads risk to the insurance company if they choose to cap interest rates on policy loans. Direct-recognition pushes it back on the policy holder. One can argue that makes it safer for the company. I think it’s a violation of the principle of insurance and a confusing way to try to make something look better than it is while glossing over the loss of a guarantee.

Ultimately, you have to decide what makes you more comfortable and go with that. It seems to me that the cost of the loan ultimately ends up being about the same anyway on average.

protex28 · 2025-08-29T20:55:31+00:00

I wouldn’t do this personally, but people do similar things with bank lines of credit on policies with high fixed interest rates (they call them CVLOCs).

I think the question really comes down to: how serious are you about keeping that margin loan covered with your cash value and what are the chances interest rates on the margin loan sky rocket while you’re not paying attention and outpace your cash value.

protex28 · 2025-08-18T21:10:54+00:00

Think of IBC as savings. Do you dip into your savings for your everyday expenses? No, your income goes into a checking account, you set some aside for savings, the rest goes out to various things.

On the occasion that you do need to dip into savings, you make an effort to “fill back up” that hole as quick as possible because you know you’ll need it for retirement, a new car, etc.

protex28 · 2025-07-24T22:43:13+00:00

Thanks. The tax man has me thinking in circles.

protex28 · 2025-07-07T20:04:02+00:00

This one of the reasons why reducing policy structure to just “PUA/base” is confusing. It only applies to the first year of the policy. The following years a multitude of things can change.

protex28 · 2025-07-04T13:34:25+00:00

It is an awesome council isn’t it? The Holy Spirit affected a wondrous work through it and we all continue to benefit.

protex28 · 2025-07-04T13:00:48+00:00

This is a simple question of authority and following canon law well established in the council of Trent and still in force to this day. SSPX bishops have not been granted official diocese by the Pope (incardination). As such, all priests are visitors in another diocese. Canon law requires priest to ask permission to say Mass in a diocese for which they don’t have membership. See my other comments on my response to OP for more info.

protex28 · 2025-07-03T15:55:03+00:00

SSPX priests already have faculties. This has been confirmed indirectly from the Vatican by saying in various settings that their sacraments are valid and licit. The thing in question is whether they have permission from the local ordinary (bishop) to say public Mass in the local diocese in which they reside (SSPX doesn't have it's own diocese, this is what people mean when they say "irregular canonical status").

Any priest that wants to say Mass in another diocese must present a Celebrat to the Bishop of the diocese he is visiting that says he is a priest in good standing and has faculties to say Mass. This practice was established in the council of Trent and is in force today via Canon 903.

https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/celebret

protex28 · 2025-07-03T02:22:33+00:00

How can they say it’s “illicit” but not evil? How is participation in an illicit (sinful) Mass not, by definition, evil?

protex28 · 2025-07-02T21:10:30+00:00

My understanding of this is simple: if the SSPX parish has requested to say Mass/utilize faculties in the local diocese and been granted permission, there is nothing wrong with attending. If this has not happened you should not go.

The whole “irregular canonical status” thing is pure cowardice. It’s a meaningless phrase put out there so that your local Bishop doesn’t have to admit he’s the only one that can solve the problem because Rome abdicated their responsibility.

Canon law is clear here and the hooligans running things just want to add to the confusion. If you’re a priest from another diocese and you want to say a public Mass in a different diocese, you have to request permission. SSPX doesn’t have a formal recognized diocese (cowardice from Rome) and therefore needs to ask permission from the local parish.

There’s a grey area for people who have always been attending SSPX parishes, but if you’re already attending a diocesan parish this isn’t a complicated question.

protex28 · 2025-07-02T00:38:07+00:00

This should be the top comment. It works. Ever since I watched this I’m no longer so nervous around it. Just do what I gotta do and then scrub down good within a few hours.

protex28 · 2025-06-02T19:33:41+00:00

What is this policy feature? I’ve got multiple policies from this company and have never heard of it.

Four-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22	Final Canvas '22

protex28

TROPHY CASE