Brandon Roberts 
Some questions came up following last week’s discussion about Ernst & Young’s analysis on various retirement strategies. The gist of a handful or so of these questions focused on the buy term and invest the difference scenario, basically did the hypothetical couple continue to pay term insurance premiums into retirement? We don’t know the answer …
Ernst & Young published a study this year that speaks very favorably about permanent life insurance and annuities. The TL:DR version of the 18-page reports is that when they incorporated whole life insurance and annuities into a retirement plan, they increased both retirement income and “legacy value” for the hypothetical retirees. So should we rush to …
Over the course of the past several weeks, we looked at real whole life policies and evaluated their real policy performance. We specifically looked at cash value accumulation comparing original projections of non-guaranteed values to the actual performance of the policies. Every policy spans a timeline of around 10 years. we used internal rate of …
Next up in our series of reviewing real-life results from whole life insurance policies, we look this week at Northwestern Mutual. Like other policies reviewed, we took data from a Northwestern Mutual whole life policy purchased around 10 years ago. We have the original illustration and used that to compare against current policy values. We also …
The rate of return on a whole life insurance policy will vary from company to company. The rate of return is also heavily influenced by the policy type selected and the design used by the insurance agent/broker who sells it. Despite the variables that affect the rate of return, there is of course an average …
If you are looking to buy whole life insurance, you’ve likely spent more hours than you’d care to admit tootling around the internet looking for tips on what makes for a good whole life policy. And thanks to the modern wonders of easy website development and content creation, your appetite for information has likely been …
The SECURE Act of 2019 rewrote the rules on inherited IRAs. The biggest change eliminated a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) schedule for younger non-spousal heirs that allowed them to “stretch” the distribution period out for their lifetimes. The new rules require these individuals to instead distribute all of the money in the IRA within a …
The Insurance Pro Blog is now 10 years old. It was July 2011 when I sat down and officially launched the site, which was an idea I had rolling around in my head for a couple of years. While I do find the practice of celebrating certain anniversaries most likely tied to the basis of …
Since its inception, agents, marketing organizations, and even some general consumers have obsessed over the “average” interest credit assumed when projection indexed universal life insurance values. At one time, insurers used various “look back” periods–typically the one that showed their products in the best light–and regulators allowed these insurers to use whatever the average index …
In the interest of building newer and sexier ways to lure you into buying life insurance, agents and marketing organizations think it would be super nifty if you harnessed the extra buying power of a bank’s money to make the policy you can buy even bigger! The idea looks something like this, buying more life …
