Posts from the ‘Investments’ Category

Jan 21

Doing the Perm / Term Squirm – Part 3 Participating Whole Life Policies

Introduction

In some ways, life insurance is like fashion: today’s trend is next year’s embarrassment and next decade’s craze. Participating whole life (“par”) policies are a great example of this phenomenon. They have been around a long, long time but fell out of favour when universal life (a.k.a. “UL”) policies came into vogue. In fact, many of the larger companies even stopped issuing new Par Policies for several years until low interest rates, high investment management fees and rocky stock market returns made UL Policies a touchy subject in some circles and Par Policies an exciting “new” way to leave behind more for your heirs or to supplement your own retirement.

In order to spare you from having to endure 8 pages of info on this subject simultaneously, I'm going to break down my original article into small chunks so I can parcel it out to you in smaller doses. Here's the first installment.

Jan 8

Doing the Perm / Term Squirm Part 2: An Introduction to Permanent Life Insurance

If you’ve read my first article in this series, you probably know more than you really want to know about term life insurance. It’s now time to talk about the other side of the equation: permanent coverage. To recap, while term insurance is a simple tool with a few add-on features, permanent life insurance is like a swiss army knife that can do pretty much everything except make your bed and laugh at your jokes. Of course, whether this is worth the extra costs that can go along with these features and whether it is the best tool for your situation is an entirely different question. Sometimes, permanent life insurance can be a game changer. Sometimes, it can do a pretty good job but there might be other products or solutions that do an even better one. Sometimes, the wrong permanent policy can even leave you worse off than when you started. This article (and my ensuing) articles are designed to help you make informed insurance choices.

Nov 19

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Maximizing Your Charitable Donations: Give Like Santa, Save Like Scrooge

Most of us that donate don’t do it for the tax savings. Although there are some tax benefits to funding cancer research or donating to a charity for disadvantaged youth, it’s seldom about the money; we give because we want to make a difference. On the other hand, if our government offers tax relief to reward our charitable intention, it seems to me a little churlish to not take them up on their offer. The rest of this article explains how to do just that.

Sep 16

What To Do When You Do It Yourself

One of the great questions in life (other than why someone first decided to taste coffee beans sourced from monkey excrement) is deciding what we can do ourselves and when it is time to ask for a helping hand. In most areas, it depends on the issue and the person. Financial planning is no different; some of us have the time, knowledge and experience to handle many of our own financial affairs while others are probably better off bringing in hired help, especially if it’s not something we enjoy in the first place. In reality, I suspect that most of us are somewhere in the middle; we can carry part of the load ourselves but like to bring in help for some of the heavy lifting.

On the other hand, even if you have a cadre of crackerjack trained professionals on your team keeping you on the straight and narrow, I still a strong advocate of self-empowerment. In my view, taking the time to learn at least some of the ropes is almost always a good idea. My reasons are as follows: