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When reading Consumer Reports magazine back in 1979, I ran across its shocking article about life-insurance policies. I sent for their two-dollar paperback book that covered the subject in greater detail.
It explained how, in promoting investment type "cash-value" policies, companies load with overcharges the age-based statistical risk (natural premium) of actual insurance. The accumulated overcharges (that they refer to as "savings") increasingly comprise the policy's death claim ("face value") and are managed according to the industry's "funny banking rules".
Discovering an opportunity to begin a worthwhile personal business involved in helping others, I got an Ohio life-insurance license and began a little personal research. Applying for sales jobs locally with managers of huge well known insurance companies it didn't take me long to conclude that those men were well aware of the deceit being perpetrated by the industry and that they promoted, for personal gain, in their own agency's hiring and trainng activities.
In response to his interesting trade magazine advertisement, I phoned Mr. George Diachok, co-founder of Multi-Financial Corporation in Denver, Colorado. Following our conversation he flew to Columbus, Ohio. We met for dinner near the airport. He recruited me to work with him and his partner, Gorgon Eddolls. as one of their Marketing Directors.
Through personal sales I was able to generate sufficient premium volume to qualify for Managing General Agent (MGA) contracts with several companies, enabling me to hire, train, and appoint licensed agents, as well as to help unlicensed persons obtain a license to sell life insurance.
Within a year my business expanded to three offices in the Columbus Ohio area, each managed by an appointed general agent. It grew to more than thirty licensed agents that I interviewed and recruited through "help wanted" ads in Sunday's Columbus Dispatch newspaper.
I decided that the best way to inform working persons about the companies' misleading scheme was by having my agents give them a publisher's reprint (which I bought in bulk) of Chapter #13 from Venita Van Caspel's popular book, Money Dynamics. The title of that chapter in her book's first edition (1975) contained the word fraud, a word that was changed for unknown reasons in subsequent editions to "dilemma".
I wrote Financial Recovery after creating software programs for Texas Instruments' TI-59 programmable calculator and its attached thermal printer, inserting term life-insurance rates for a number of life insurance companies.
Financial Recovery was sold through a full-page advertisement in Life Insurance Selling magazine. Hundreds of copies were bought and read by life-insurance agents throughout the nation including many who were brilliantly motivated by a former high-school football coach, Arthur L. Williams.
As a result of my book I helped Multi-Financial to recruit and to make millions of dollars while earning excellent income for my own family. Of course, it was a full decade before the massive introduction of personal computers.
Today's internet and social media resources make this consumer friendly venture a "no brainer" for creative marketing. The time has returned for a nationally licensed brokerage business, through today's personal computers and the internet, to manage a team to replace TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in overcharges that have been pitched and sold as an investment (particularly as UL), using Wisebird licensed agents.
Appropriately designed and marketed online by qualified entrepreneurs (such as existed forty years ago) the business will again generate BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN COMMISSIONS for a creative national marketer of competitively priced term life insurance. I offer my personal help along with exclusive use, purchase, and/or the editing and marketing of several internet domains. If interested, call me: (941) 545-3600.
To understand why I dedicated Financial Recovery to the late Senator Philip Hart, read its Introduction. My book was directed to licensed agents for their information and enlightenment, not to the general public as has been done for years by dozens of authors (see its bibliography)
I received a phone call from Bob Turley (formerly a pitcher for the N.Y. Yankees) of A. L. Williams & Associates. He offered me a regional V.P. position. I was already making as much money as I needed and had a responsibility to persons I had recruited and trained since getting my own license. I thanked Bob for the offer but declined the job. However, I referred to him one of my trained agents, a particularly ambitious fellow, who accepted the position.
It would be nice to think that the industry's actions with the public improved with the change from the companies' agency marketing structure to today's independent agents. Quite the contrary. It is not only agents for the life insurance companies who continue to push the sale of cash-value policies. Many "fiduciaries" and registered advisers sell trillions of dollars of Universal Life Insurance, a high-commission cash-value product, as well as traditional "whole life savings plans".
Why use a Wisebird agent or become one yourself? Review #92, #93, #94, #95, #96, and #97, in my book's updated bibliography Don't be surprised, given the history of the industry that designs hybrid "investments" for persons seeking protection against the financial risk posed by an untimely death.
I gave public seminars twice a week (Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings) that persons interested in their own family's finances and/or in a worthwhile personal career were welcome to attend. Those who decided to join us were given help in the licensing procedure and assigned to one of my general agents when completing seminar attendance. We became one of the largest personal lines insurance agencies in the country.
More information about that hugely successful business, from which I retired to Florida in 1986, can be found online at www.WiseBird.com.
I love living in Sarasota despite its tremendous growth since I arrived in 1986. In 2010 I was a founding member of our local exceptional classical music station, WSMR.ORG that can be listened to, streaming online, anywhere in the world. If you love classical music, enjoy our station online.
I have been on the Faculty Advisory Committee of Manatee Technical College, a member of the Sarasota Sailing Squadron, a member of Sarasota's Senior Friendship Center, and have been a member at HealthFit, a facility owned by Sarasota Memorial Hospital, since it opened. I value acquaintances met when visiting these facilities. In excellent health, I was a competitive swimmer in high-school and college and love to swim strenuously several times a week.
I have posted online a huge problem for families, in addition to life-insurance scams, that I have studied over the years and even experienced myself. It involves lawyers (surprised?). Billions of dollars in family assets are siphoned off by tricky lawyers in a process called "probate" instead of being passed on to surviving spouses, children, and charities, as intended by the deceased person who had a "Will" prepared, or who paid for a trust that (oddly?) turns out to be legally defective.
In an online search one will find hundreds of pages about living trusts, most of which are quite accurate. That does not mean the legal profession does the job properly, as I learned through personal experience. Honest lawyers with whom I deal tell me that a huge percentage of trusts that they review will wind up in probate, having been prepared improperly. Many are never even properly funded!
Probate is a system that is supposed to ensure that a dead person's debts and taxes are paid, that his Will is valid, and that his estate will go to those named in a Will. Ralph Nader (himself a lawyer) described probate as "the screwing of the average corpse." I freely refer persons to selected attorneys in Florida, or in their own state when available, to handle their estate planning needs.
Should a non-lawyer elaborate on this subject the profession defends itself by threatening to levy a charge of illegally practicing law (UPL - the unlicensed practice of law). This feature of the estate-planning (Wills and trusts) legal profession has been referred to by honorable lawyers as a multi-billion dollar racket.
You can buy a small (70 page) book at Amazon titled "Estate Planning Basics" by Jeffrey Marsocci, Esq. Written by a guy who calls himself "The Plain English Attorney". It is a simple, plain English guide to estate planning concepts. I keep copies in my office because, in my view, Jeff's book does the very best job of explaining complex legal matters simply, steering its readers away from lawyer minefields. The website I have written on this subject is ReplaceProbate.com.
Many persons are grateful to learn that having an appropriate revocable living trust economically prepared does more than merely address the potential probate matter. It also provides families with important solutions for specific living situations.
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Comments/Questions (No legal advice given)
stewartogilby@yahoo.com
(941) 545-3600 |
