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When it comes to Gen X and Retirement all is not well with the MTV Generation. But this despair doesn’t seem to be rooted in a systemic lack of effort—one of the core flaws often noted by its preceding generation—rather it originates from a demoralizing late-in-life shift in world view coupled with a struggle to gain attention among the institutions that most likely hold the answers to Gen X’s path to retirement prosperity.

Or perhaps it’s just a hold over of that 90’s Curt Cobain and Fiona Apple everything sucks and everyone is awful mentality with which a lot of them entered into adult hood augmented by their having to witness the breakdown of the US economy right before most of them truly got to ride the gravy train.

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“We want to let everyone know that life insurance is like that guy on the TV selling his little oven thingy…you just set it and forget it!”

That was the utterance of a Friday morning sales meeting I once labored through when I was a relatively new agent at one of the big mutuals. The attempt was to equip the newest agents with the confidence to convince their family and friends (i.e. their project 200) that this life insurance stuff was pretty cool.

I’m the only one who was in the room who still happens to be in the business, and I’ve never channeled Ron Popeil when it came to explaining life insurance, so I’m not all that sure it was a successful tactic, but I digress.

Sadly, this also wasn’t only time I’ve witnessed this allusion in an attempt to persuade an unwitting prospect to buy life insurance.

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Recent announcements have surfaced saying that both Amazon and Google are kicking around the idea to sell life insurance. Are we worried that this going to bring some stiff competition to the life insurance market? Do agents (like us) have to worry?

We think not.

They both will focus on selling term life insurance policies and previous online ventures to the life insurance market has shown that people spending small amounts of money on a policy are just fine purchasing this way.

And perhaps this is how that particular segment of the market can be best served?

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In this episode of the Financial Procast we're discussing the tendency that some people have to obsess over details of a financial product purchase that don't really matter. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how much benefit you derive from the product that you purchase.

All the stuff that happens in between is semantics and a whole lotta fluff meant to confuse and distract you from focusing on the end result.

This is a problem that plagues consumers and agents in our business. In other words, it's not just a consumer problem.

Sometimes agents get overly obsessed with details that just don't matter and lose sight of the big picture which should always be to deliver the best end result to their client.

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We bet you didn’t know that June is annuity awareness month.  In fact, we didn’t realize it until yesterday. And since we did an episode in May to honor Disability Awareness month, we figured we should give equal time to Annuity Awareness month.

Of course we assume that you are all aware that annuities exist and probably have some basic framework of understanding, so we're not going to get into that sort of thing. What we've decided to do in episode 118 of the Financial Procast to bring the discussion of annuities into a more truthful light.

We are well aware that annuities have received a fair amount of bad press in recent years. Perhaps you remember when NBC's, Chris Hansen, caught some unscrupulous annuity agents in the act back in 2008. When something like that happens, the unfortunate and unintended consequence is that way too many people are now conditioned to have negative thoughts when they hear the word annuity.

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Diversification is everyone's favorite topic in the world of personal finance. Too bad it's so often misunderstood and watered down. Today's episode is all about why you, as an individual, cannot replicate what an institutional money manager does. And this discussion goes far beyond just selecting investments.

Why not just go out on your own? You don't really need to pay all those fees to “professionals”. All the information you would ever need is at your disposal for you to be a great do-it-yourself investor.

But this is a huge fallacy. Why doesn't it work?

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Today we are here to cast a few stones at the so-called financial experts and financial bloggers that spring up all over ye olde interwebs. if you're wondering we do have a hate mail folder.

What stones are we casting?

Well, we're going to talk about the dispensing of advice and information as it relates to the world of financial blogging and financial media. The reason we're talking about this is because honestly there is a lot of garbage out there.

And because it's our show and we can do what we want.

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Today we've come to talk about two things as it relates to the housing market:

1.  The Burgeoning and exciting growth of the housing market after the precipitous fall in 2007-2009

and

2.  The envious Americans that can't afford to buy the house they want and feel the need to complain about it.

In fact, the census tells us that new homes in America are bigger than ever–they seem to be increasing with our waist lines. The data tells us that in 1983 the average new home size was 1,725 square feet.  In 2013, thirty years later, the average has increased to 2,598 square feet.

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Unfortunately this week we don't have a Tommy Boy clip to weave in to the Financial Procast, so you'll have to be entertained or at least mildly amuse by our “normal” sense of humor. Today instead we figured we talk about pensions.

Less so pensions in particular and more so that the AARP recently published a hack piece on pensions and scaring retirees who have pensions that are being sold to private insurance companies. Should we really be that shocked?

In there June/July 2014 issue, includes an article (actually cover article) that's titled “How safe is your pension”. So, you'd think with that sort of title they'd be discussing various funding issues that pension funds are having or some other issues of significant substance

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I'm sure there are some of you who will pick up our little easter egg in the title of today's financial procast. For those who remember that great scene from the movie, Tommy Boy, I give you permission to skip down to the bottom of this page to watch a little clip.

And for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and skip down to the bottom of the page and watch the clip. Most likely you'll enjoy that much more than reading anything in between.

You're welcome by the way, we aim to please here at the insurance pro blog. 

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