I Swore I’d Never Write Another Book
3 The Engine Behind Bank On Yourself
4 The Genius of Good Structure
5 Retirement: Fantasy Versus Reality
6 The Secret to a Financially Stress-Free Life
7 Fire Your Banker
8 The Smart Way to Pay for College
9 Bank On Yourself for Business Owners and Professionals
10 Bank On Yourself for Seniors
11 The Path to a Lifetime of Financial Freedom
12 How to Get Started
Free No-Obligation Bank On Yourself Analysis Request Form
Bank On Yourself Is Looking for a Few Good Men and Women
Acknowledgments
References
About the Author
I Swore I’d Never Write Another Book
I absolutely did not want to write this book.
First of all, writing a book is a real pain in the you-know-what. It takes months of brain-numbing work and scads of helpers to do research, verify stats, and make it all readable. By the time I finished my last book (Bank On Yourself: The Life-Changing Secret to Growing and Protecting Your Financial Future), I swore to my husband Larry that I would never, ever again set myself up for the stress of looming deadlines, the agony of the editor’s red pen, and the loss of so many weekends and so much sleep.
Nope. Never again.
Then the book hit the bestseller lists. (That was nice, and softened the pain a bit.) And we got a tremendous response from folks who were thrilled to have discovered Bank On Yourself. (That was even better.)
Then the backlash started. (Not fun at all.)
People who have a vested interest in keeping the same-old, same-old going (that would be many of your celebrity money gurus, financial advisors, stockbrokers, money managers, and bankers) went on total attack! I received vile letters and nasty e-mails that were unbelievably vitriolic and accusatory. (Honestly, who has that kind of time on their hands?)
I got attacked in blogs, in articles, and by talking heads both online and offline. Most of the attackers had not done their homework, and some were totally illogical and unreasonable in their arguments against the Bank On Yourself strategy. (Then again, I guess illogical and unreasonable is kinda the currency of the day, isn’t it?) But I still had to step up and defend myself and the Bank On Yourself concept against them.
One article that I found particularly amusing was written by an investment advisor and blogger for a major news website. He wrote an “exposé” about how he’d discovered the fatal flaw in Bank On Yourself. Really? That I had to see. Turns out the only way he could punch a hole in the concept was to compare the cost of purchasing a car and financing it through Bank On Yourself to the cost of not buying a car at all. Well, duh. Of course you’ll have more money if you don’t buy a car! (Someone once told me that blogging isn’t writing. It’s graffiti with punctuation.) To read the point-by-point rebuttal we posted to that article, go to www.BankOnYourself.com/rebuttal.
If I had a dollar for every myth and misconception published online and offline about Bank On Yourself, I’d have more money than all the fat cats on Wall Street put together.
Does it sound like I took these attacks lightly? I didn’t. The truth is that being attacked all the time—even if the attacks aren’t valid—really hurts a lot and is exhausting.
So I told Larry, “That’s it. I’m done.”
It was a very hard time for me. Not only would I never write another book, but there were more than a few moments when I thought about completely giving up my mission to educate people about this proven wealth-building strategy. I’d just go back to the quiet life I had before all of this, where most people who know me actually like and respect me. That was in 2009.
But Then …
By the end of 2010, the recession had crushed the net worth of most Americans. The median net worth of the middle class—who were hit the hardest—fell by so much, it erased eighteen years of gains.1 Savers have been “rewarded” for their diligence with near-zero yields on their hard-earned life savings for five long years because the Federal Reserve deliberately kept interest rates as low as possible.
And soon the talking heads on Wall Street—whose advice got us into this mess in the first place!—were urging us to leap right back in and take more risk, as if it makes perfect sense to make up for your gambling losses by doubling down on your bets.
People who followed all the conventional financial wisdom got clobbered in the last recession, losing homes, college savings, and retirement funds. And they want us to do it again?
It makes me absolutely furious that the financial community is bent on getting us to walk down that same rosy garden path that has nothing at the end of it but quicksand! I know there’s a way out, and I’ve seen so many people benefit from it. I know there’s a safe way to grow your wealth and have access to the cash you need while guaranteeing a comfortable retirement and setting up a legacy to be left to those you love.
I couldn’t just stand by and let people suffer when they don’t have to.
So I said to Larry, “Maybe just one more book.”
Prominently placed on my office wall is a quote from Dan Kennedy, one of my mentors:
“If you don’t offend somebody by noon each day, you’re not doing much.”
And isn’t that true? If I weren’t stirring up the waters or getting any pushback, it would be because I was parroting the same old pap that clearly doesn’t work.
But that’s not what I’m doing.
I’m inciting a revolution.
