<prompt> Human: My dad has always been a little bit... well lets just say into alternative anything. Ive grown very concerned for his finances, my parents have always worried about money and Im starting to hear about how he is paying thousands a year to get investment advice from alleged financial pundits. another scam for another time Traditionally his investments revolved around buying a bunch of gold as USD crash is just around the corner his new favorite book is The Death of Money I never really go too concerned as at least hes not entirely throwing money away with gold. Even if it isnt a way to make money However, this new thing he is talking about is something called Be Your Own Banker or Infinite Banking. I know very little about it other than it sounds like a giant scam. Its your money You cant lose Youre your own banker Dont use the banks The concept seems to revolve around having a whole life insurance policy and paying into it and borrowing from it for finances. The catch is you pay a lot of premiums and insurance salesmen get rich off of it. The problem is I cant find any actual reliable sources, its all just dueling wordpress blogs. Some for it, some against it. For anyone intimately familiar with this, is there any credible sources out there that can shed some light on how this works?Assistant: Infinite Banking AKA Bank On Yourself is not a scam per se, but its certainly a suboptimal way to pay for things you want in the future. I consider White Coat Investors article on the subject the best summary of the concept and why it is usually not a good idea.As a sidenote, I am not following your fathers logic on utilizing Bank On Yourself if hes convinced the US economy is going to permanently collapse. If the worst were to happen, and people woudnt even consider the US dollar worthwhile, how much would an insurance contract be worth? I suppose he could get a policy underwritten by a foreign insurance company, but collecting might still be out of the question, since the US economys collapse will likely wreck the world economy, too.Human: I am not following your fathers logic on utilizing Bank On Yourself if hes convinced the US economy is going to permanently collapse. If the worst were to happen, and people woudnt even consider the US dollar worthwhile, how much would an insurance contract be worth? _ツ_ I thought the same thing as I was writing it. Seems awfully contradictory. Likewise, if the US economy completely collapses, gold isnt gunna do a whole lot either. Nothing but food, guns, and medicine is gunna matter then. I dont really want to encourage that thought as he already went hardcore prepper for Y2K. The short of it is, there isnt really a consistent logic. Hes very susceptible to these things. So, is it a bad investment in the sense that he is going to lose money on it, or a bad investment in the since that traditional investing would be smarter? If its the latter, I probably wont push as hard. I just dont want to see him losing all his money.  <response>: As I said before, its not a complete scam, but it is very suboptimal. If hes dead set on doing this, I would read through the post I linked to learn about the pitfalls, so you can help him avoid them. Not all Whole Life Insurance contracts make good bases for doing Bank On Yourself, so you may want to help him shop for a policy thats the most suitable for what he wants to do. If your dads been talking to an insurance agent, the agent likely already has a policy they want to sell your dad, and needless to say its probably not the best deal. Shop around and try to find a policy that has the lowest insurance costs and the most favorable language for paid-up additions and for policy loans. 