I am a contract reader. What I’m looking at right now is packaging, which is actually not a contract, but the packaging reads, “Glucose syrup, sugar, sodium ascorbate, citric acid, ascorbic acid, natural flavor, red 40, beta carotene, soy lecithin.” It also says it contains that a bio-engineered food ingredient. What am I actually ingesting? Who would guess that I would be talking about a Halls cough drop? It’s amazing because you can say that the packaging is like a contract with guarantees. It also has some really, really small print down here at the bottom that also says that “the statement that the cough drops help to support the immune system has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”
What does Halls Defense, which by the way I am using right now because I am on the backside of a cold and it does help to soften my throat so that I don’t cough as much as I have been, have to do with Life Insurance contracts? Life Insurance is a product that I am a big believer in because of the way that I know it can impact families in a very positive light and because I am a contract reader. The amazing thing about contracts with life insurance policies, specifically a whole life insurance policy, is that there are guarantees in the contract that have already been scrutinized by your own individual state insurance commissioner and the state’s insurance department. Whenever a life insurance company wishes to issue a new type of contract or life insurance policy, they have to put forth the documentation on how it works, what the guarantees are, what the reserves are, what the premium levels will be, what the guaranteed values will be in the future, what dividends might be payable in the future, and what those dividends will be based upon. So, you can actually look into the future in the documentation and see how the policy would work out.
Yesterday, I spent some time with one of my state’s representatives looking at options to solidify the strength of permanent cash value whole life insurance policies in the state that I reside. I discussed some of the contractual agreements inside of a permanent whole life insurance policy with him because any state representative, regardless of what their political affiliation or their political office is, cannot know everything about everything. That’s why specialists are sought out. That is why I am a certified insurance underwriter through the American College of *** which has been around since 1927. That means that I have gone above and beyond to understand how a life insurance contract works and how the contracts are written. In fact, one of the classes that I had to take was Law in life insurance contracts.
Why is this so important? It’s because a lot of people will purchase products without knowing how they work, and they can’t know if the product will truly do what it has advertised. It’s also a time when there is a lot of volatility in all different types of markets and there’s so much uncertainty, these are the guarantees that I look to. Again, I’m looking at these Halls cough drops and all I know is that it will soothe my throat, maybe. Hopefully, so I don’t cough as much during this cold. Even though the package might have the word “DEFENSE” on it, just because it has that word on the package does not necessarily mean that it is doing anything for me. These say that it has 150% of the DV of Vitamin C in each serving, but we don’t know if that’s a positive thing or a negative thing. The package says it supports your immune system, but that has not been tested by any regulatory authority.
With a life insurance contract, it has been tested by regulatory authorities. I know that when I go through a life insurance contract with a prospective new client or a current client, one of the things I like to do is to bring a highlighter. I provide the highlighter to the individual or couple that I am speaking with and while we are looking through the contract, they are able to highlight the guarantees that are important to them in the contract. Usually, a person will feel somewhat overwhelmed with the thought of going through a contract page by page because that’s usually the last thing that people want to do. But it’s important to do this and do it properly because a person can have their eyes opened. They can have a sense of amazement by the guarantees and security found within a whole life insurance contract. Unlike other contracts that you can go through with a highlighter and realize all of the things that are Not guaranteed and makes you wonder if you’re buying something that has not been properly evaluated for its security for you, now or in the future.
If you would like to know more about how a life insurance contract works, explore my website or connect with me and my team. We can help you go through contracts that you already might own to make certain that they are meeting the guarantees and promises they made. We can show you if they are or not. We can show you all the good, all the bad, and all the ugly no matter what product that you might have. You want those policies to be working for you, and how it’s written in the contract. You can also learn more by purchasing my book, Investments Don’t Hug: Embracing the Life Insurance Asset, go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or Audible.
