A few weeks ago a good client of mine, Debby, called me in a panic. This is the summer before her daughter, Katie’s, senior year of high school. Katie is an amazing basketball player and is working hard to get a scholarship to play basketball in college.

This is a busy time for her Katie. She is traveling all over the country for basketball tournaments. This is important because it’s a great opportunity for college coaches to see her one last time before

they offer scholarships. As you can guess this can get very expensive and that’s what she was panicking about. How is she going to be able to pay for this these tournaments, hotels and airline tickets. And of course since this is her last summer before she goes to college Deb and Greg want to join her on this exciting stage in her life.

Now to give you a little back story about them: They have created their own banking system and have financed their car and paid off their home equity line of credit through their banking system. Each month they are making payments back to their system for the car loan and for the home equity line of credit. Also, Katie financed her first car from their family banking system and is making monthly payments from her paychecks.

Debbie asked for my help. I suggested, what if we lowered your monthly payments for the summer? She asked, “can I do that?” I said, well the first thing you need to do is call up the owner of the bank and ask for permission.
(smirk) There was a long awkward pause on the phone. I asked her “who is the owner of her banking system?” She thought for a minute and said “Well, I am.” I said you’re right!

YOU are in control of YOUR bank and YOU determine how the loan payments are structured. So you have to ask yourself if you can lower your payment for the summer. That’s when the lightbulb went on and she realized that SHE was in control of the payments – not Wall Street or commercial banks. So she lowered her payments for the next few months. After the craziness of the summer subsides we will reorganize the payments so she can make sure she pays herself back all the principal and interest, so she won’t cheat herself out of any interest.

Now she is enjoying this precious time with her daughter guilt-free.

This is what happens when you own your own family banking system.

– Anthony Faso CPA

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