Ex15:26

My Take on This Very Risky Market

Larry,
I'm not sure if you shared anything new here. I would caution you though that your assumption that all life policies should be scrapped is poorly reasoned. I would agree with anyone that there are a tremendous amount of bad insurance companies that sell permanent insurance, however if the policy is a whole life policy it is the one investment that is build to survive your 8% failure scenario (assuming your insurance company has excellent financial strength).
I personally own 2 whole life policies, one with Northwestern Mutual and one with Guardian. Both continue to perform and neither possess anything but less thatn 1/2% of their surplus in either MBS or asset-backed securities. Of all the companies out ther these policies are the last assets that I would sell. In fact my agents and I constructed our plan with these types of scenarios in mind.
Would I suggest have more than 10% or 15% of my networth in permanent insurance? No way! Do you and my financial advisor wish that you would have had a significant amount of your cash in a policy like Northwestern that has actually returned a 5.8% return (net of all expenses - this is not the dividend rate, but the actual Cash RoR over the last 20 years with AAA credit risk)? The answer is "YES! you wish you owned it!"
If you plan on making blanket comments, at least make a concession in your generalization that two companies have outperformed and continue to do so.
While I've latched on to something very specific at the end of your document I take these comments very personally, because quite frankly the permanent insurance policies I own have outperformed most of the indicies for the 1, 3, & 5 years periods easily! By the way, did I mentioned that they are paid up policies now and therefore I own the death benefit and my cash value continues to grow without any premium payments. In other-words, my cash value continues to increase year after year and I pay nothing. My "investment will get better and better with little uncertainty. Perhaps you should mention these two great companies to your advisors so they might actually help their clients rather than guide them to destroy the one asset they may have in their portfolio that might be working. Again, I concede that most companies don't produce - that is why I am blessed that I listened to my Northwestern and Guardian agents!

Cheers.
Ex15:26