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  • A Quick Look at Whole Life Insurance

    Posted on October 30th, 2009 jane No comments

    Author: Dennis Jarvis
    Source: isnare.com

    The name of this site is etermlifeinsurancequote.com for a reason…term is the most affordable way to insure against the risks that accompany someone passing away early. This begs the question…what about the main alternative, whole life insurance? That’s a good question and it’s really the first question to answer in order to make an informed decision. Let’s look a little closer at how whole life insurance works (and doesn’t).

    Whole life is exactly what it says. The protection of whole life will continue as long as the premium is paid (whether by you or by the policies cash value/dividend). You are protecting the insured for his/her entire lifetime. Suffice it to say, whole life policies always pay out. There will always be a benefit paid regardless of whether a person passes away tomorrow or at age 90. To many people, this a reassuring thought and addresses the most common misunderstanding of insurance…”What if don’t pass away during the period of term life I purchased and I paid all that money?”. This is akin to the “What if I never get sick” argument with health insurance and it shows a critical misunderstanding of how insurance works and our views of risk and probability. Read that last sentence over and the let’s look at how the life insurance companies came up with a way to satisfy this basic fear much to their financial benefit…whole life insurance.

    So you’re now a life insurance executive in charge of new plans for the company. There’s plenty of jokes I can enter here but it’s too easy so we’ll move on. People in marketing are telling you about this strange fact that people like to get something for money they pay and a lot of the population doesn’t purchase life insurance because they very well may not get anything. Even though those people know the risk of going without, they can’t get past paying money now for some possible benefit in the future. There’s a disconnect. Voila…whole life insurance. You pitch it to the company and they think you’re crazy. “We can’t insure against a risk that has a 100% chance of happening…we’ll either have to charge the full amount (plus profit, overhead, inflation, etc) or go broke!” Well, let’s just say the carrier didn’t go broke by selling whole life insurance. In fact, it’s one of their most profitable types of insurance and life insurance brokers are pretty excited to show you whole life as well. Perhaps they just all feel it’s a better product or maybe they understand that some people will go without life insurance all together if there isn’t something more tangible for the money they pay. You may agree with this but understand that you are paying significantly to do so.

    How does the company 1) offer whole life considering the fact they will have to pay out and 2) attract people to purchase whole life due to the cost resulting from item 1? To answer question #1, the carrier has to charge considerably more money to offer whole life. You can think of it this way. Let’s look at $100K benefit. One way to think of it is that they will charge you $100K plus a certain percentage to cover profit, overhead, inflation, cash value (we’ll discuss later) over your statistically expected remaining years. That’s a lot of money you have to pay and this is the reason whole life is so much more expensive than term. To some extent, you’re paying a dollar to get a dollar (actually less than).

    As to question 2, how does the carrier attract people to buy this much more expensive life insurance policy? The first way goes to the disconnect that caused the company to create whole life in the beginning. The guarantee of a benefit. “Why would you pay money and get nothing in return with term” is likely the pitch. But they need more to “sweeten” the deal. What if your policy builds up a cash value that you own. We’ll take some of the extra premium and give it back to you over the course of the policy. At some point, the cash value and/or dividends can even pay the premium of the policy. Now, people are satisfied. Yes, they are paying a lot more but they will get some of back. The problem is that they will get a lot less of it back than they pay relative to the cost of term life.

    If you’re absolutely adamant about the “whole life” length of protection for whole life, then by all means. We can help you in this regard. We just think it’s important to get an impartial understanding of what you are paying for. Insurance, at it’s core, is about insuring the probability of a risk. Anything that strays from this framework quickly approaches something else and usually at your expense.

    Dennis Jarvis is a licensed insurance agent concentrating on term life insurance. Shop, compare, and instantly quote multiple carriers with professional guidance and resources.

  • Cultivate A Positive Attitude To Life Through Meditation

    Posted on October 20th, 2009 jane No comments

    Author: Mark Syme
    Source: articlesbase.com

    Having a positive attitude towards life is the best way to enjoy your life and meditation is a great way to develop that outlook. We have the choice about whether or not to let a certain event affect us in a negative way or a positive. We are the only one who can determine this.Your mind is a blank canvas when you?re born, and straightaway you begin to absorb messages from the world around you. The cultural values from your parents, TV, peers, are all accepted, usually without analysis. All of these influences combine to make up the internal personality that makes you different from anyone else.Rainy days may upset you, because of a childhood experience when you fell in a puddle. This is probably not at a conscious level, but you still end up being in a bad mood every time it rains. On the other hand maybe you fell head over heels in love in the pouring rain of a monsoon. And had an incredible affair. Then you?re most likely going to have a different perspective on rain aren?t you?Most messages will penetrate to the subconscious level if they?re repeated enough and we often find ourselves saying something simply because we heard it, not that we even agree but it?s hovering in our mind, waiting for a chance to express itself. This can be good thing if it?s a positive message, but all too often it?s a negative attitude that we express. This saps our own energy and that of everyone we come into contact with. That which you sow, you shall reap ? especially within your own mind!By having a positive attitude you’ll experience fewer negative events in your life. So as time goes on, there are more helpful and uplifting experiences and fewer negative ones, al because you changed the way that you look at the world. So what is the best way to start this process?You can select what information and influences you have in your life. What books do you read? Do you religiously watch the news every night to support your view the world is going down the drain? Why not watch an uplifting movie that fills you with joy instead? How about a book or magazine that focused on the positive aspects of life? This isn?t to say that you want to sick your head in the sand, but it?s about choosing where you want to spend most of your time, in a world where wars are rife and we?re powerless to do anything to help, or where there?s a beautiful flower at every corner and a smile on the lips of people you pass on the street. It?s up to you.But this is only a part of the story, you want to find out what is inside you, find your unconscious triggers and make them conscious and then you can make a choice about whether or not they serve you. If not, let them go and replace them with something that helps you to live your life with joy. Meditation in whatever specific form it takes will unlock hidden parts of your personality and help you to get in touch with the true source of joy in your life.Meditation has been described as a stilling of the mind, or focusing on one thing, letting all other thoughts subside from your awareness. We all have more thoughts than we need, every day we tend to cover the same ground in our minds, over and over. This is how we can blink and wonder where that last year went because we are too caught up in the incessant, often negative internal dialogue. As you become aware of your thoughts and each moment, you begin to truly live your life as it was meant to be livedThrough meditation, we can tame this beast of negativity and replace the self doubt and judgment with acceptance of ourselves and all those around us. Problems seem to shrink, aggravating people in our lives either leave or seem to change and thus it becomes easier still to stay positive, as there is less negativity in our everyday lives. How we view and experience life, truly is up to us. Nobody else has control over how we react, only we have that power. If you take control of that power, you can control your life, take everything with a smile whatever happens.Meditation has helped to cultivate a positive attitude for thousands of people across the world. Simply by detaching a bit from the day to day bustle of the world around us gives clarity and insight into life. There’s not really any such thing as a negative experience only the negative perception of events.

    If you want a great tool to develop a positive attitude, then you can’t go past meditation. You can get all the benefits of deep meditation at the click of button thanks to modern recording technology. For all the details, click here http://www.howtomeditate.biz