Articles
Whole Life - A Balance between Legacy & Lifestyle
Articles: Table of Contents with Briefs
These articles can be highly technical, with industry jargon. Our videos are more basic in nature. These are great references. Click on a title to view its summary and click on [FULL VIEW] to see the complete article:
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Hale Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Financial Advisor publications interviews Michael Fliegelman for their cover story. In this article, Michael Fliegelman shows how life insurance can be helpful to preserve wealth.[FULL VIEW]
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The Resurgence of Whole Life – As markets waiver, more people turn to cash value life insurance to diversify their investment portfolios; by Russ Banham.[FULL VIEW]
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On some financial topics, people have become so conditioned to seeing things from a single perspective it makes them incapable of recognizing other – perhaps even better – ways of addressing these issues. The on-going fallout from the “meltdown/crisis/recession/ global-economic-funk” offers a striking example of an obvious solution that almost no one seems to see: For one reason or another, everyone wants whole life insurance. Don’t believe it? The disbelief just further proves the point. [FULL VIEW]
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Market turmoil is prompting more people to buy stodgy insurance products like immediate fixed-income annuities and whole-life insurance in what can sometimes be a misguided flight to safety. [FULL VIEW]
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Some experts believe permanent life insurance is here to stay because it provides solutions for complex situations term insurance cannot meet. One such circumstance involves estate planning. [FULL VIEW]
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Almost 50 years ago Halsey Josephson wrote a book titled “the Tired Tirade” as an answer to the critics of life insurance, particularly those critical of whole life insurance. It was an outstanding piece of work, but unfortunately it did not stop the tirade. Financial writers like Jane Bryant Quin and self-styled critics such as Norman Davey continued the tirade for years, and now we have Suzy Orman regurgitating the same old line. [FULL VIEW]
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Nothing beats whole life insurance for providing security and flexibility in estate planning. Perhaps that sounds like an overly broad and bold statement. But I believe it wholeheartedly, and 25 years of experience has proven it true time and again. Why does it work so well, especially in estate plans for the affluent? There are a number of reasons, not the least of which is that whole life’s permanence creates a foundation upon which estate plans can be built today and amended tomorrow due to changing circumstances. [FULL VIEW]
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Here’s the problem in a nutshell: You’ve decided to buy life insurance, and you’re exploring several policy offerings. One presents a solution with a premium of $5,160 a year, and the other suggests it can do the same thing for $7,000 a year. The choice is obvious, isn’t it? Maybe not!
[FULL VIEW]
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Mutual life insurers are stuck in the mud. If you’ve pizzazz, you work for a stockholder-owner insurer. That was the refrain from stock insurers a few decades ago. Without the shareholders’ lash to whip them into shape and stock with which to buy rivals, policyholder-owned insurers were sure to get crushed by publicly traded rivals. [FULL VIEW]
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The Resurgence of Whole Life – As markets waiver, more people turn to cash value life insurance to diversify their investment portfolios; by Russ Banham.[FULL VIEW]
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In today’s complex economic environment, financial advisors and their clients are drawn to the “names” in the industry, many of whom have acquired a celebrity status through television appearances and book-signing events. As always, there is an upside as well as a downside to this – on the upside, it helps mobilize people into taking action for their financial future. The downside is that some of the advice is misleading or simply inaccurate and particularly so with life insurance. [FULL VIEW]
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Here’s the mindset behind BTID: Life insurance companies invest in conservative, investment-grade bonds and mortgages in order to meet their long term liabilities. It’s the underlying conservative “returns” on these investments that make up a substantial portion of the gains of a whole life or universal life policy. If your risk tolerance is higher than that suggested by the bond market, then the strategy is that you should acquire cheap term insurance and “invest the difference” between the cost of term and a whole life policy. At the end of the term period (typically 30 years but never longer) the BTID concept presupposes you will have no further use for the life insurance and will have accumulated more investment value through this strategy than would have developed through the surrender value of a “permanent” plan of life insurance. [FULL VIEW]
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The simple idea behind Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) is diversification of asset classes to achieve the best risk/return ratio for your needs, lifestyle, financial situation and personal preferences. the first step is to identify asset classes. Most advisors agree that the primary classes include:
1. Equities (common stocks)
2. Fixed Income (Bonds and mortgages)
3. Money Market (Cash)
4. Guaranteed (Annuities)
5. Real Estate
[FULL VIEW]
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Whole life is an insurance policy that provides lifetime insurance protection with significant guarantees and tax benefits for the policy owner. These guarantees can be viewed as either rates or values. When actuaries design a whole life policy, they begin by determining what rates are going to be guaranteed. Once the guaranteed rates have been seen, they are used to determine policy premiums and values. Guaranteed rates and values are based upon conservative assumptions. A mutual life insurance company, such as Guardian, will then adjust these rates and values to current conditions through the mechanism of a non-guaranteed dividend. Because life insurance is seen as beneficial to the welfare of society, significant tax benefits have been given to it that are not found in any other financial instruments. [FULL VIEW]
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Insurance companies are bringing whole life insurance back into the fore, this time for a customer base of thirty-something’s. In the past, whole life has lived in the shadow of term life insurance. The latter offers cheaper premiums and the attendant opportunity to invest elsewhere money that would have been spent on a costlier whole-life policy. [FULL VIEW]
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When I walked in the door with my client and his CPA, I couldn’t help but wonder, what am I doing here? so many times before, financial planners, from around the country had approached my clients, claiming wonderful strategies that would increase their net worth. I was generally “underwhelmed,” to say the least. Here we go again, I thought, another salesman trying to sell a client financial products that would only increase the financial planner’s retirement. I wanted to run, not walk, back to my office, where I was swamped with tax and estate planning cases, and messages from clients who wanted immediate legal advice. [FULL VIEW]
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Unemployment currently stands at 5%, but David Wyss, the chief economist for Standard & Peer’s sees it creeping up to 5.5% by the end of this year. That means as many as 750,000 Americans could lose their jobs in 2008. Are you prepared – Financially, if not emotionally – if you lose your job? If not, you might, with a financial adviser, consider buying more insurance. [FULL VIEW]
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Whole life insurance continues to evolve to meet the needs of clients as they deal with the many challenges and uncertainties of life. Accelerated death benefit riders exemplify how life insurance can uniquely address a broad spectrum of client needs over their lifetime. [FULL VIEW]
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They say that slow and steady wins the race. That is as true with the tortoise as it is with financial products. One of the most powerful financial tools on the market today is one that has proven already over many decades – whole life insurance. [FULL VIEW]
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In our market-driven society, people face wildly competing choices every day in deciding how to spend a dollar. New shoes? Kitchen remodel? College savings plans for the kids? A vacation in the Bahamas? [FULL VIEW]
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Things have changed dramatically in the life insurance business in the past few years, Our turbulent social and economic times have created some major shifts in the way prospects view their lives – and in the way they view their life insurance. [FULL VIEW]
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Illustration Of A $1,000,000 Guardian Whole Life Policy Issued In 1983 – Actual Historical Policy Performance Through 2008. [FULL VIEW]
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In short, whole life insurance best achieves the delicate balance between legacy and lifestyle. Whole life is one of the most common types of permanent life insurance on the market today. It provides a holistic layer of financial security because of its unique combination of asset accumulation and wealth preservation. It is the only product of its type to offer both living and death benefits — a valuable feature in today’s volatile economic climate and one exclusive to whole life.
[FULL VIEW]
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When Cyndi Martin’s 76-year old mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she knew a nursing home was an eventuality. She began to read through the Social Security Administration’s Web site and was shocked to learn that Medicare and her mother’s supplementary insurance provide only very limited coverage for nursing home care. She then started calling facilities near her home on Long Island, and was surprised to hear that the costs exceeded $150,000 per year. Based on her mother’s savings, this would deplete her resources in less than three years. But what could she do?
[FULL VIEW]
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The Mutual Company Advantage: Founded in 1860, Guardian is a mutual life insurance company, operating solely for the benefit of its participating life policyholders, who share in the company’s performance through the payment of annual dividends.
[FULL VIEW]
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It’s not news anymore, but it feels fresh in our minds. The credit crisis has heavily impacted assets invested in the market. Current economic conditions have everyone seeking financial shelter, but where is it safe?
[FULL VIEW]
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Owning life insurance means much more than paying a premium and receiving a death benefit – it’s a very flexible tool that develops significant value and usefulness over time. Because life insurance policies aren’t static, illustrations are helpful in explaining key features and benefits of a policy over many years.
[FULL VIEW]
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Compare what would happen if an investor was considering two different mutual funds. The investor might take the average return each fund achieved over the last 20-30 years, and project that rate of return (along with the funds’ current and changeable management fees) to suggest an outcome far into the future. This kind of “illustration” is specifically prohibited by securities regulations. However, let the buyer beware – life insurance illustrations are exempt from this type of regulation.
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To look at life insurance along the lines of “efficient frontier” analysis, in which diverse assets with different correlations are used in portfolios to produce expected returns with lower volatility, we can focus on four characteristics unique to life insurance:
1. Price (premium outlay)
2. Cost (net premium outlay and resulting cash value)
3. Death benefit (potential for natural increases in ultimate death benefit through inclusion of dividends/cash value or policy account value accumulations)
4. Risk (to the policyholder, associated with insurance company investments used to support the policy reserves).
[FULL VIEW]
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Hale Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Financial Advisor publications interviews Michael Fliegelman for their cover story. In this article, Michael Fliegelman shows how life insurance can be helpful to preserve wealth.[FULL VIEW]
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Whole Life is an insurance policy that provides lifetime insurance protection with significant guarantees and tax benefits for the policy owner. These guarantees can be viewed either as rates or values. When actuaries design a whole life policy, they begin by determining what rates are going to be guaranteed. Once the guaranteed rates have been set, they are used to determine policy premiums and values. [FULL VIEW]
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