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PODCAST

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast

TheInsuranceProBlog.com

The Insurance Pro Blog Podcast releases new episodes each week that support professional life insurance agents and financial planners who seek to better understand how cash value life insurance, in particular, might work for the benefit of their clients.

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All Episodes

35:06

Whole Life Insurance Is Guaranteed to Lose Money

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/03/12

Despite the strengths of whole life guaranteed cash value, many people attack the guaranteed ledger of a whole life insurance illustration because they believe they can do better. Do better is a highly subjective and relative notion, but one major argument notes that with whole life insurance, you are guaranteed to lose money if you buy it. Seems like a reasonable claim. The ledger reflects a cash value less than your premiums in the first few years--a guaranteed negative return. If you look at a

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32:01

Lowered Index Expectations

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/03/06

We have discussed indexed universal life insurance (IUL) at great length in previous podcast episodes, but we know the big question remains: does it work? So, to further investigate that question, we decided to update a bit of an experiment we ran about ten years ago. We will use a hypothetical IUL contract (a real contract from which we have borrowed heavily, but we won't name names) with a minimum interest rate of 0% per year and a maximum of 10%. We're viewing this from two different approaches,

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46:18

The More Common Way to Go Broke that We Never Discuss

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/02/26

We don't often talk about the risks of running out of money related to needing some long-term care as you age. But it's a real risk nonetheless. In today's episode, we discuss some personal experiences with this very thing and watch as the need quickly consumed several hundred thousand dollars. Exhausting substantial resources doesn't take long when the need for care exceeds $10,000/month. This could be a real threat to your wealth, but it's a risk you can insure if you plan ahead.

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33:10

Proof that Rate of Return Doesn't Matter

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/02/19

While most financial advice is heavily focused on maximizing return while minimizing fees (and this perhaps is one of the reasons so many people fail long-term in their financial plan), today we're going to introduce a concept that is by no means new but one of those golden little nuggets that could dramatically change the way you look at financial matters through the lens of your personal self-worth. Since you'll never have control over the rate of return, it makes little sense to spend significant

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45:54

Maybe We Were Wrong; You Really CAN Get 8%

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/02/12

We've spent a lot of time trying to locate the source that validates this assumption (8% average return on investments). And back in 2018, we recorded an upside reporting our findings. At the time, we couldn't find evidence supporting 8% as a reasonable return assumption. But we decided it's been nearly five years since that original study, so we need to revisit it. How did the extreme market increase over the last five years change things, or did it? Listen to the full episode to find out what we

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43:53

The Big Market Disappointment We Never Thought Of

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/02/05

After spending a considerable effort attempting to corroborate an 8% compound annual growth rate for stock market investments, we’re about to unveil the latest and greatest research on achieving such returns - five years in the making. But this attempt at updating our data set with recent performance yielded something remarkable – prompting us to dedicate an entire episode exploring it further. What was the discovery...? It seems almost unbelievable, but a staggering 20-year compound annual growth

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37:19

How Annuities Might Tank the Stock Market

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/01/22

Annuities have experienced a cold dark winter over the last decade or so. It's not to say that annuities stopped existing and that the benefits they offered fell short. The product serves a vital role in providing guaranteed income in multiple combinations. However, the prolonged period of depressingly low-interest rates that we had from the financial crisis until the earlier part of 2022 saw the popularity of annuities fall. Again, they always fulfilled their promises as an income-focused product,

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37:04

Why You Might Have the Wrong Idea About Infinite Banking

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/01/15

What's old is new again, it seems, in the world, of talking about the myriad ways to use life insurance as a wealth-storing tool that is highly leverageable. As introduced by Nelson Nash, the infinite banking concept goes back several decades. He was the first person we're aware of to clearly articulate the benefits of using whole life insurance to create your bank. In recent years, with the popularity of Youtube and the internet, self-proclaimed "eggspurts" have spread the idea to the world

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48:14

Do You Still Think Bonds Are a Flight to Safety?

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/01/08

For years, we've all been taught that bonds are the "safety" valve to the otherwise stock-heavy allocation of our retirement/investment portfolios. And for years, we've argued that this was largely unproven as all of us have been living through extraordinary times where bond ETFs and mutual funds haven't faced the pressure of rising interest rates. But the tables have turned over the last year to 18 months. Interest rate policy has shifted, and bond funds (ETFs and mutual funds) are reaping the

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33:34

Should You Really Seek the Advice of Your Tax Advisor?

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2023/01/01

When looking at life insurance illustrations or the actual policy documents, you'll see some version of "Please seek the advice of your tax professional..." in numerous places. But why? Is it really necessary for you to go over every possible financial decision or potential purchase of a potential product with a tax professional? Well, that's up to you, but in our experience, that would be pretty costly and unrealistic. Not that seeking professional tax advice is a bad idea. Still, in many cases,

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43:45

Stocks and Bonds versus Stocks and Whole Life Insurance

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/12/18

Oftentimes people will ask us how whole life insurance compares to buying passive stock market index funds or ETFs. It's a fair question and one that we've answered privately and publicly in the past. But we'd like to propose an alternative. Rather than a straight head-to-head comparison (which should always favor a higher return for stocks over time), perhaps there's a better way to view whole life insurance and where it fits into your financial or retirement planning strategy. Why not look at

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44:44

Why Do Regulators Want You to Have Less Money?

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/12/11

When you're helping clients plan and prepare for retirement, you often are exploring various options for producing consistent income from their pool of assets. Each person's ability to produce that income and the desires they have for that income are vastly different. Something we encountered recently made us face obstacles that we haven't in recent years. With the rise of interest rates over the last few months, annuities and, more specifically, income annuities have come back to the forefront. For

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42:29

Why Does High Early Cash Value Life Insurance Exist?

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/12/04

In the 11+ years, we've actively communicated with potential clients online, we've had quite a few people approach us who were looking at High Early Cash Value products. Typically whole life insurance with that sort of identifier in the product's name. And it begs the question: why aren't we keen on offering that flavor of whole life insurance to everyone? After all, we are the guys that made blended whole life insurance popular online--a concept that seeks explicitly to maximize the acceleration

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40:09

An Episode About Infinite Banking That's Not About...

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/11/27

We realize the title is a bit confusing, please don't get hung up on that. It's a critique of a Dave Ramsey video on Youtube that's a critique of Infinite Banking...except that Dave's rant has nothing to do with Infinite Banking. It's a rant where he flails about how much he hates whole life insurance, the companies that sell it, and that anybody who suggests it as an option for their clients is lying scum. Most of the time, we ignore the bald man from middle Tennessee. But we've had a few people

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46:12

Sometimes It Really IS About the Death Benefit

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/11/20

In most of our podcast episodes, we walk through the issues or the finer points of using cash value life insurance (whole life or indexed universal life) as a wealth accumulation source and preservation refuge for a substantial portion of your wealth. And that probably leaves some of you scratching your head. After all, it is life insurance that we're discussing here...there is a death benefit isn't there? Well, yes there is and in today's episode, we're going to talk more specifically about the

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36:00

Whole Life Dividend Announcements May Be Disappointing

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/11/13

This is the season for whole life insurance companies (mutual companies in particular) to make dividend announcements for 2023. With the significant rise in interest rates we've seen this year, you'd think that would have a positive impact on returns for life insurance companies. Right? We all know that the vast majority of their reserves are invested in interest-bearing investments, mostly investment-grade bonds (just over 50% of all general account assets). So it would stand to reason that life

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38:17

How the Fees Destroy Indexed Universal Life Insurance

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/11/06

One of the oldest arguments meant to take down indexed universal life insurance (IUL) centers around the drag that fees (load charges, per 1,000 charges, and cost of insurance) have on the policy in years where the underlying index receives a 0% interest credit. On the surface, it seems like a valid argument against using IUL as a place to warehouse and access cash. But we've long taken the position that a properly designed policy--that is one that seeks to minimize costs and maximize the return on

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33:49

Annuities Are Back and Boy Are They Looking Good

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/10/30

For at least the past 10 years, maybe a little longer, pretty much everyone has ignored all types of fixed and income annuities. It's not that they were bad, they do exactly as promised and always have. But with interest rates near 0%, they just weren't attractive. But things have changed and now we're seeing outcomes that we haven't seen in well over 10 years. Fixed-rate annuities locking in 5+% for 5+ years and single premium immediate annuities (SPIAs) paying out over 7% income streams on joint

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40:21

How Life Insurance Contracts Make Your Retirement...

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/10/23

Could some combination of life insurance contracts make for a happier retirement? Yes, we believe that to be 100% true and we're more sure of it now than at any time over our career(s). Today's episode explores a couple of real-life scenarios (with names changed to protect the innocent) where we see people struggling to navigate retirement income generation in the face of significant market declines. Had these people made different choices years ago, we contend they'd be happier. If they had taken

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40:04

Save Money, Borrow From Your Whole Life Insurance

Insurance Pro Blog Podcast ·

2022/10/16

With the Fed's ongoing battle with inflation, we're now seeing interest rates that haven't existed in a few decades. Many of us can't remember a time in our adult lives when the cost of money was so high. Not surprisingly this is forcing some changed behavior when it comes to borrowing money. We started the year with mortgage rates around 3%, and now they sit around 7%. While many people will tell you this is brand new territory for Americans, older folks know we've been here before. In fact, many

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