Life Insurance Companies Love the Estate Tax
I bet you didn’t know how much the life insurance industry really loves having the estate tax stick around? Yes indeed…according to a recent report on the fox business channel, life insurance companies spent $60 million in the last six months lobbying for the estate tax to stick around.
Why in the world would they do a crazy thing like that?
Well, you see selling large permanent life insurance policies to people who have estate tax issues is a tried and true business model for life insurance companies. In fact, the clip from Fox points out that life insurance companies generate a significant amount of revenue as a result of the estate tax sticking around. They say in the interview that the revenue generated by life insurers is 66% of what the federal government takes in for estate taxes. Read More…
037 Beer and Cheez-its
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(Complete Show Notes Below)
In the 37th episode of the Financial Procast:
Your 401k Statement Might Soon Tell You What Sort of Income Your Balance will Produce
That’s right…a recent statement from the Department of Labor announced an advance notice of a proposed rule change that signaled they are considering a rule that might require your accumulated benefits be expressed as an estimated “lifetime income stream” in addition to the normal account balance. The announcement was made early last week and now has a comment period open for the next 60 days. Read More…
Waiting to Buy Disability Insurance…
Yup, it’s disability insurance awareness month. So why not spend a little time discussing what could be one of the most important financial decisions you’ll make in your life?
And one such crucial decision younger professionals will often find themselves tasked with is whether or not it makes sense to purchase individual disability insurance when they kick off their career.
But Whole Life Insurance Has Really High Commissions
Recently I’ve noticed that whole life insurance is generally berated by almost everyone in the known universe. Well, most insurance agents really like it but other than that it’s pretty easy to count the number of folks who really like whole life insurance.
Obviously, we consider it to be an excellent component to an overall investment strategy, and as such I thought it would be useful to elaborate on a few of the applications that whole life insurance can bring to the table. (this could also apply to other types of permanent insurance as well) And I know I’ll get beat up for just mentioning the word investment and life insurance in the same sentence. But considering a properly structured cash value life insurance policy as a portion of your retirement savings, emergency fund, or your kid(s) college fund is a solid plan. We can and continue to prove it everyday in our practice.
036 There’s a Mutual Fund for That
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In the 36th episode of the Financial Procast:
We Answer Questions from Our Listeners
Instead of the normal podcast where we’d discuss a myriad of topics from the financial world, we’ve decided to break the mold a bit and devote an entire episode to answering questions we’ve received from our listeners/readers. We get questions emailed to us all the time and from time-to-time it makes sense for us to go through and answer some of them live in our podcast so that our entire community can benefit from the discussion.
Here is a transcript of the questions: Read More…
Death During the Life Insurance Contestability Period, now what?
Life insurance brings a lot of mind comforting notions with it. It helps many people sleep soundly at night knowing that they need not worry about what happens to their family or loved ones if they should meet an untimely demise. But what happens if you recently put your coverage in place and you don’t live beyond the life insurance contestability period?
Do you need to worry about the insurance company’s not paying the claim to your beneficiary? What if you fibbed a little bit about how great your health was? Or what if you find out not long afterwards that you weren’t quite as healthy as you thought you were?
Can the insurance company use any of that against you to deny the claim?
Are Mutual Life Insurance Companies Better than Public Life Insurance Companies?
Maybe you’ve heard this one before, the claim that mutual life insurance companies are better than public life insurers. Of course, the mutual life insurers all think so. But we’re willing to bet that the so-called public life insurers would tell you differently.
So is it true that the non-mutual life insurers are just out to swindle everyone out of their money and represent all that is wrong with American capitalism? Or are the mutual just stodgy companies that have a problem embracing modernity…and the capital markets. 
035 If You Turn to Page 15,099
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In the 35th episode of the Financial Procast:
We Discuss the PBS Frontline Special “The Retirement Gamble”
If you haven’t seen this short special/documentary, here’s a short preview and a link below the preview that will take you directly to the Frontline page on the PBS website where you can watch the epidsode in its entirety–don’t worry it’s less than an hour long and it’s worth your time. Read More…
Participating Whole Life Income Comparison
Participating whole life insurance is a form of cash value life insurance that is often used with a focus on its cash accumulation capabilities and retirement income generating prospects. In fact, we’d argue quite forcefully that if one wishes to use whole life insurance as an asset, participating is a key attribute to any chosen policy. And every time we reference whole life insurance for this purpose, we assume by default that the policy is a participating policy.
What does participating mean?
No Exam Life Insurance
Could a no exam life insurance policy be right for you? As an agent, when you first hear of someone looking for this type of policy, your first inclination is to let them know that it’s not a great deal for them.
Why is that you ask?
Well, for starters you’ll typically pay a bit more for your coverage than you would if you underwent a full paramedical exam. For most people the prospect of having an examiner come into their home or office to take some blood, a urine specimen and ask a ton of invasive questions doesn’t sound like much fun. And I completely understand. Read More…
