A while back I was pitched for a "be your own bank" MLM. After looking into it, it was the essential definition of a ponzi scheme - the entire company would eventually fold when it stopped enrolling new representatives.
Many years ago I looked at the Infinite Banking Concept which also promotes itself as "be your own bank". The problem is that "your" money isn't your money, it's never immediately available because it's held with a mutual life insurance company, and unless you're funding it faster than inflation, you're losing value regardless of the made up projections.
Unless you actually own a bank, THE ONLY WAY to be your own bank is to hold your own assets like precious metals and Bitcoin in self custody, and validate your own transactions.
Anything else is quite simply a scam.
Yesterday I met Chef Dan. It turns out that Dan is quite knowledgeable in macro and micro economics, and no surprise here - Bitcoin.
Which got me thinking: When it comes to financial advice, why should someone listen to Dan? I mean, he's a chef, so he doesn't have any professional or academic qualifications to be offering such advice, right?
The key is to look at his incentives. He doesn't earn a commission from the education he shares, there aren't any consulting fees or hourly charges; there aren't even any kickbacks or bonuses for him. In fact, one could say he has no skin in your financial success game.
That's exactly why you SHOULD listen to him. We Bitcoiners are a different breed of people. We recognize that the government's money system is broken. The government prints out of thin air the same money we have to work for, which steals the value from our time, and forces us to keep working more hours or climbing the corporate ladder for more pay, just to maintain the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed, and that time steals from our family too. And the government taxes is as a form of spending control against us, not as an income source for them. Our incentive is to share what we know so you can have hope in a solid financial future again.
So the next time you're hearing what sounds like financial advice, consider the incentives - the greater the incentives, maybe the less you should listen.