Brantley Whitley 
Rethinking Retirement: Why “Just Take More Risk” Might Be Bad Advice Let’s talk about something that’s been bugging me lately. If you’ve ever sat down with a financial advisor after realizing you’re behind on retirement savings, you’ve probably heard some version of these three pieces of advice: “You need to save more money” “You might …
Building a substantial wealth portfolio involves strategic planning and understanding of various financial instruments. Tax-free wealth strategies are essential to this planning, offering avenues to grow your investments while legally reducing taxes. By employing tactics focusing on tax-exempt securities such as municipal bonds and considering life insurance policies with cash value components, you can enhance …
When it comes to life insurance, there are several options available for those seeking coverage. Two popular choices are whole life insurance and indexed universal life insurance. However, there is another option that you may have come across: variable universal life insurance. While it may appear appealing due to its flexibility and potential for cash …
The world of life insurance is an ever-evolving landscape, and as a result, new products and strategies continue to emerge. Among them, indexed universal life insurance (IUL) has been garnering attention for its unique approach to cash value accumulation and premium flexibility. In this article, we’ll delve into the reasons why IUL is outpacing whole …
In today’s fast-paced and unpredictable financial landscape, managing risk and achieving consistent returns is more important than ever. Life insurance companies have emerged as experts in this field, utilizing their vast resources and expertise to create well-diversified investment portfolios that deliver long-term value to policyholders. In this article, we will explore the factors that contribute …
Main Takeaways Yield to maturity (YTM) is a way to determine how much money you can make from a bond if you hold it until it matures. YTM considers the bond’s price, coupon rate, and time to maturity. YTM is important for investors because it allows them to compare the true yields of different bonds, …
I’ll be honest with you—writing this post makes me feel a bit like Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie “A Few Good Men”. Remember when Nicholson is being questioned by Tom Cruise in the most memorable scene from the movie and Cruise is demanding the truth? Nicholson replies, “You can’t handle the truth!” So, what …
When you read or hear the words tax shelter it probably doesn’t conjure images of using whole life insurance. But whether or not whole life is actually a tax shelter depends on how you define it more than anything. It’s not a tax shelter in any sort of the more shady ways that people discuss …
Diversification is a term so deeply intertwined with traditional financial/investment advice that we often think of it as infallible. If you want to sound intelligent, or at least appear reasonably knowledgeable, make the recommendation that one carefully work to diversify his/her portfolio and there’s a good chance your advice is impervious to criticism. For the …
Continuing our series of reviewing real-life results from whole life insurance policies, we look this week at MassMutual. Similar to other policies reviewed, we took data from a MassMutual whole life policy purchased around 10 years ago. We have the original illustration and used that to compare against current policy values. We also used this …