Proverbs 13:22 — Building an Inheritance

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.” — Proverbs 13:22

Most Christians can quote this verse. Few have a plan to fulfill it.

Walk into any church in America and you’ll hear this verse referenced in stewardship sermons. It gets printed on bulletin covers. It gets engraved on memorial benches. But if you asked that same congregation how they’re actually building an inheritance for their grandchildren, you’d get blank stares.

The Christian world has turned Proverbs 13:22 into a nice sentiment instead of a mandate.

Meanwhile, those grandchildren will inherit whatever’s left after taxes, after estate settlement, after the lawyers and the government take their cut. If there’s anything left at all.

There’s a better way. But first, we need to understand what an “inheritance” actually means.

What Is an Inheritance?

Most people think inheritance means money. A check that gets written after the funeral. A brokerage account that gets transferred to the kids.

That’s not inheritance. That’s liquidation.

Money gets spent. Houses get sold. Investment accounts get divided among siblings and consumed within a generation. Studies show that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation. Ninety percent lose it by the third.

Real inheritance isn’t money. It’s a system.

Consider the wealthy families who have maintained their wealth for centuries. The Rockefellers. The Rothschilds. The old European nobility. They didn’t pass down cash. They passed down structures. Institutions. Operating systems that could generate income and preserve capital across generations.

They understood something most Americans missed: you don’t inherit money. You inherit a method.

The Stewardship Principle

Scripture is clear about our relationship to wealth. We don’t truly own anything. We’re stewards. Managers. Links in a chain, not endpoints.

“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” — Psalm 24:1

This means your money isn’t really your money. It’s capital that’s been entrusted to you for a season. Your job isn’t to accumulate the biggest pile before you die. Your job is to be a faithful steward and pass that capital forward in better condition than you received it.

Think about it differently. You’re not the CEO of your financial life. You’re the COO. You’re managing assets for the next generation. Every financial decision you make should be evaluated through that lens: will this decision benefit the system long-term, or just provide short-term gratification for me?

This reframes everything. Suddenly, your policy premium isn’t an expense. It’s an investment in the family banking system. Your debt payoff isn’t just about freeing up cash flow. It’s about transferring productive capacity to your descendants instead of to creditors.

Proverbs 13:22 isn’t suggesting you should have money left over when you die. It’s mandating that you should build something durable enough to serve multiple generations.

Why Conventional Planning Fails the Proverbs 13:22 Test

Let’s examine how traditional financial planning stacks up against the biblical mandate.

401(k) and retirement accounts: These were never designed for generational wealth transfer. They’re consumption vehicles. You put money in, it gets taxed when you take it out, and the goal is to spend it down before you die. When you pass away, whatever’s left becomes taxable income to your heirs. Not exactly the “inheritance” Solomon had in mind.

Real estate: Property can transfer wealth, but it’s also divisible. When you die with a family home worth $500,000 and three children, what happens? Typically, the house gets sold and the proceeds get split three ways. Each child inherits $166,000 minus estate costs. One generation, and the asset is liquidated.

Brokerage accounts: These face the same division problem, plus additional tax complications. Heirs receive a “stepped-up basis,” which helps, but they still face capital gains taxes on future appreciation. And again, nothing prevents the siblings from cashing out and consuming the inheritance.

Life insurance (improperly structured): Term life insurance expires. Even whole life insurance, if it’s designed to minimize cash value and maximize death benefit, simply provides a lump sum payout. Still a liquidation event, not a system transfer.

None of these vehicles create what Proverbs 13:22 describes. They transfer wealth once, then that wealth gets consumed. They don’t create a system that can serve the children’s children.

How IBC Provides the Vehicle

Nelson Nash understood this biblical principle intimately. He referenced Proverbs 13:22 repeatedly throughout Becoming Your Own Banker. His forest management background taught him to think in terms of “even distribution of age classes” — creating systems that produce income across multiple generations.

Nash wrote: “An even distribution of age classes provides the most efficient wealth transfer from generation to generation.” He wasn’t just talking about trees. He was describing a financial system that could serve multiple generations simultaneously.

Here’s how properly structured whole life insurance fulfills the Proverbs 13:22 mandate:

Death benefit as wealth transfer: When you die, the death benefit passes income-tax-free to your beneficiaries. No 1099 forms. No capital gains taxes. No probate delays. Clean transfer of capital to the next generation.

Cash value as living benefit: While you’re alive, you maintain access to the capital through policy loans. You’re not “tying up” your money for your heirs. You’re creating a system that serves you during your lifetime and transfers efficiently when you’re gone.

The system as education: This might be the most important component. When your children inherit your policy, they’re not just receiving money. They’re receiving a financial education. They’re learning how to be their own banker. They’re inheriting a methodology, not just an account balance.

Consider this example from Nash’s work: A grandparent buys a policy on a grandchild from age zero to twenty-two, paying $2,000 per year. By age twenty-two, the grandchild has approximately $100,000 in cash value — their college education fund, business startup capital, or first home down payment. But they also have something more valuable: a fully capitalized banking system.

If that young person never adds another dollar in premium, by age seventy they’ll have roughly $4 million in cash value. They can withdraw $225,000 per year in tax-advantaged distributions and still leave over $6 million in death benefit to their children.

The grandparent invested $44,000 over twenty-two years. The system produced millions in value over the grandchild’s lifetime and passed intact to the great-grandchildren.

The System That Persists

The most powerful aspect of IBC as an inheritance strategy isn’t the money. It’s the system thinking it instills.

When you teach your children to be their own banker, you’re not just transferring wealth. You’re transferring a philosophy. A way of thinking about money. A method for controlling the financing function in their lives.

Your children learn to see cash flow differently. Instead of making car payments to strangers, they make car payments to themselves. Instead of saving money in accounts that pay them nothing while the bank profits from their deposits, they build capital in vehicles they control.

This creates what Nash called “the family banking system.” Multiple policies across multiple generations, each feeding the next, each generating its own income stream, each passing wealth forward without triggering the tax events that destroy most estate plans.

The children don’t just inherit money. They inherit a business model. And they can implement that same business model for their children.

The Challenge

So let me ask you directly: what are you actually building?

Are you accumulating assets so you can liquidate them later? Are you building a retirement account that will be consumed within your lifetime? Are you hoping there’s something left over for the kids to fight about?

Or are you building something durable? Something that can serve multiple generations? Something that fulfills the biblical mandate to leave an inheritance to your children’s children?

Proverbs 13:22 isn’t just a nice verse for funeral services. It’s a blueprint for financial stewardship. It’s a mandate to think beyond your own lifetime and build systems that can compound across generations.

Most Americans will live their entire financial lives as consumers. They’ll accumulate and liquidate. They’ll chase rates of return and pay taxes on phantom gains. They’ll transfer whatever’s left to their children, who will do the same thing.

But you have an opportunity to break that cycle. To be what Nash called “an honest banker” for your family. To build something that honors the biblical principle of stewardship and creates lasting benefit for generations you’ll never meet.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to implement IBC. The question is whether you can afford not to. Whether you can face the next generation knowing you had the knowledge to build something permanent but chose instead to follow the crowd toward consumption and liquidation.

Proverbs 13:22 is a mandate, not a suggestion. The only question is whether you’re ready to take it seriously.

Your children’s children are counting on it.