Why are we called “Reformed Finance”?

After graduating from college in 2005, I joined the military and got married in 2006. While in training I followed the conventional financial advice – get out of debt, put money in my TSP (401(k) run by BlackRock for federal employees and military members) and start a Roth IRA.

I got to my first assignment in December 2006 and was advised to buy a house by my parents, in-laws, and all the officers above me (due to my career field, they said it was likely my whole career would be at that base). If I did move or separate, then the advice was to keep the house and rent it. My wife was working, we were going to have kids in the future, so we bought just above our budget so we wouldn’t have to move for our growing family. So of course I got orders to move in 2011; a base across the country had re-opened and some of my career field was moved there.

 We had used the VA loan with no down payment to purchase that first home (because that’s the conventional advice and is apparently a “good deal”), and we stretched our budget to not have to buy twice, so the mortgage was relatively high. Additionally, we hadn’t had the time in the home to build the savings as a safety net if the house didn’t have a renter. And after consulting with a property manager, we learned market rent would just barely cover the mortgage. On top of that, we were losing my wife’s income for at least a period. We had to short sell our house.

Going back to the conventional investment accounts – I’d started a Roth IRA through a big company. I was contributing a small amount regularly at first with the intent of maxing it out as debt cleared. I didn’t look at my annual reports much because I was only putting much and it was early so I wouldn’t see much change in the beginning anyway. I also didn’t want to be stressing about it and instead putting my trust in God for his provision.

After 5 years I began to look at my statements. The performance was lower than I’d expected – despite telling the agent I was comfortable with a moderately aggressive profile. I was young and I had time, right? I had time for compounding interest and the rule of 72 and all those things he told me about couldn’t fail to make me retire as a millionaire. Well, market conditions during those same years combined with an inattentive manager showed I’d not even kept up with inflation. (I later found out that my agent was no longer with the company…I was an orphan account…and nobody told me).

From this point on I felt there was something horribly wrong with our financial system. It was stacked against the common person just trying to make a living and provide for his family. Yes, I bear personal responsibility – too trusting and didn’t do enough homework of my own. Never again.

But still I kept on with the conventional wisdom.  I didn’t know there was another option so I began to max out my Roth IRA and put as much as we could in TSP. We took base housing at our 2^nd assignment. That became privatized housing while we lived there and rent was less than Basic Allowance for Housing (this is part of military pay to pay for housing that is adjusted for the market you live in.)

Fast forward to 2023 when I found IBC. As I learned more while getting my first policy in place, I read everything I could. On top of Becoming Your Own Banker I read:

• How Privatized Banking Really Works by Robert Murphy and Carlos Lara
• Pirates of Manhattan I & II by Barry Dyke
• Economics in one lesson by Henry Hazlitt
• The Pension Idea by Paul Poirot
• The Fruits of Graft by Wayne Jett
• Blind Faith: Our Misplaced Trust in the Stock Market by Edward Winslow
• Unmasking the Sacred Lies by Paul Cleveland
• The Great Utopian Delusion by Clarence B. Carson and Paul A. Cleveland

With many more on my “to read list.” This is more reading than I’d done since college – probably more than I did IN college if I’m honest. (Maybe I’ll add a store in the future – for now you can order all these, and more, from my mentor, James Neathery).

In these books, I learned how our economic system really works. I always knew fiat currency was bad, but my eyes were opened to how demand deposit banking and fractional reserve banking contribute to inflation. How when we, the consumer, take loans to buy things we need, we are directly contributing to inflation. (Lara & Murphy).

I learned that 40% of the bull market of the 2010s was due to large scale stock buy backs (a form of stock manipulation that was illegal until 1982 and adjusting for this, returns from 2007-2021 were only 3% annually!) (Dyke).  I learned about the causes of the Great Depression (Jett), the Tech Bubble, the Dot Com Bubble, and the Housing Bubble (Dyke).  The stories of Enron, and WorldCom, and Michael Milken were unfolded for me, along with many other deliberate mercantilist manipulations designed to transfer wealth from you and I to the elite (Winslow) (Cleveland).

While captivating, that reading was also angering and frustrating.  But, after the darkness comes light.  In Nelson Nash’s book I knew I had found the answer. I had found another way! An older way, a more traditional way, to save for emergencies, large expenses, and provide passive income when I can’t work anymore.  We could reform our family’s personal finances to a purer system. We could secede from and not contribute or participate in these mainstream corrupt systems. I knew our family needed to return to this more traditional way, and that we needed to reform our to a solid foundation, not the shifting sand of Keynesian economics.  

I believe in this so much, I began sharing IBC with friends, family, church members, coworkers – anyone who would listen and was willing to Rethink Their Thinking. Like a new Christian in the “cage stage”, I had so much passion and energy for sharing this, it seemed natural to consider this for my post-military career.  With that idea planted in my mind, I continued studying and training, leading me the NNI Practitioner program, being mentored by James Neathery, and Reformed Finance was born.

Semper Reformanda