Most of us have seen the marketing brochures distributed by mutual fund companies and investment products salespeople as an inducement to place our money in a fund. At the very least, we’ve encountered historical returns posted within a 401k plan that some people use to help select where they place their money. But have you …
Blended whole life is a concept we really like. We maintain that it’s the way to purchase whole life insurance if cash accumulation is your primary goal. Anyone who has learned that you can use whole life insurance as an asset and income tool should probably also take a look at a blended policy. If …
Alternative Investments? You say…hear us out. I’ll admit it, I have a certain penchant for the unusual and I have a huge tendency to buck the trend. According to certain personality tests circulating the internet, I share personality traits with only roughly 5% of the U.S. population. Bad for social gatherings, great for dissecting conventional …
Ever flip on over the CNBC and watch their stock picking experts talk about chartology? It’s the process of looking at a graphical depiction of a stock or market performance and making “educated” guesses about where the market (or a particular equity) is going based on the statistical data that represents the chart’s graphical display. …
We’ve long argued that many of the scare tactics used to dissuade people from universal life insurance products are very heavy-handed. The “evidence” exists mostly as anecdotes concerning “I know someone who knows someone who” once owned one of those products and bad things happened. For the most part, bad things involve a requirement to contribute additional …
Dividend recognition dictates the policy a life insurance company has regarding what it does in the event a policyholder takes a loan out against his/her whole life policy. If the company practices non-direct recognition then it does not adjust the dividend in the event there is a loan against the policy. The company pays the …
There are life insurance agents, motivated by various marketing organizations, telling people that their taxes are going up. Way up. Mostly because Social Security is bankrupt. They even have a super assertive and amazingly authoritative person to reference. David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General…he’s been complaining about SSA for years. In fact, he predicted …
The rate of return one achieves on a cash value life insurance policy is sometimes hotly debated. This is especially true when opining on the adequacy of the rate of return. On the one hand, we have a crowd of people who think it’s paltry and represents a foolish financial move because–allegedly–you can do so …
Universal life insurance is in no short supply of anecdotes and claims that rising fees will destroy the product. Much of this discussion is skewed “data” used for self-interest pushing some alternative agenda. And while these stories exist in the 10’s of incidences–which should cause any reasonable person to question the validity of any claim …
Following up on the Ernst & Young piece about incorporating whole life insurance and annuities into a retirement plan, we noted that we generally agreed with the observation EY made about whole life insurance and annuities being good substitutes for bonds. We’ve held this belief for a long time. But we should quantify what makes …
