038 Meow
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In the 38th episode of the Financial Procast:
Coaching Clients on Retirement Income Planning a Problem for Advisors
It seems that 40% of financial advisors surveyed are having difficulty with talking to their clients about retirement income planning. We wondered…why is it so hard.
Well, for one thing the financial services industry is engineered to help people accumulate wealth not distribute it.
The other thing that really holds up financial advisors from having these conversations…it’s really hard to talk to their clients and tell them that they don’t like to hear. Especially when you have to tell them they haven’t saved enough money and need to readjust their plans on retiring. Read More…
An Introduction to Impaired Risk/Substandard Life Insurance Underwriting
Impaired risk life insurance is a trickier realm of the life insurance industry. It involves securing life insurance for people who have health impairments or whom have had health events in their life, which place them at a greater likelihood of a shorter life expectancy, and make insuring their lives riskier for life insurers.
The difference between an approved life insurance application and a declined life insurance application can be incredibly and surprisingly minor. However, a decline from one company, can greatly increase the odds of a decline with another, so it pays to do a lot of work upfront and meticulously pick out the appropriate insurer for an individual.
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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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…
