I was reading Clarifinancial’s post about whole life insurance that doesn’t last a lifetime.  That got me thinking about writing a blog post myself to get into more specifics about how permanent life insurance might not be permanent.  I then read Suburban Dollar’s request for more information. This made me make an outline for a blog post myself.  Then, Clarifinancial posted an other article in hopes of addressing parts of this question.

While I think that conceptually Clarifinancial is a very interesting concept and truly one-of-a-kind, I’m worried that this blog post doesn’t go far enough to answer some of the outstanding questions regarding his original post and permanent life insurance.  If you want people to compete for your life insurance policy (especially term insurance) Clarifinancial is a great first stop.  However, permanent life insurance policies need more design work to structure the policy for your personal situation (I’m right here).

1.  Guaranteed For A Certain Time Frame

Some life insurance policies are only designed to last for a certain period of time.  The prime example of this is term life insurance.  You pay your premiums for the duration of the term and the life insurance company guarantees that your policy will stay in force for the duration of the term you selected, usually 5, 10, 20 or 30 years (don’t forget about Annual Renewable Term and everything else in between).

With permanent life insurance things may change, more specifically Universal Life insurance policies (UL).  Traditional Whole Life insurance policies are built with internal guarantees that guarantee if you continue to pay the premium the coverage will be in force until you pass away or it endows.  Before January 1st, 1985 things were different but we’ll cover that later (#6).  Universal life insurance  policies are often marketed for their flexibility.  This is due to the structure of Universal life insurance policies and the way in which the cost of insurance, as well as other charges, are levied against the policy itself.  Whenever you purchase any type of life insurance policy the person helping you place the policy is required to show you an illustration.  With a Universal Life insurance policy illustration they will show you two types of projections:

• current assumptions – gives you how long the policy will last using the current assumptions in the illustration (i.e. cost of insurance, returns, charges, fees)
• maximum charges – this is the important number, it shows you how long your policy is guaranteed if the maximum amount was charged for cost of insurance, charges and fees AND the minimum return was earned within the policy.

It is important to note that Variable Universal Life insurance policies (VUL) may or may not have guarantees because of the varying returns within the policy.  Some VULs will have separate accounts, to allocate a portion of your excess premium to in order to have some built in guarantees.

Also Universal Life insurance policies are available with secondary guarantees which can give up the flexibility of your permanent life insurance policy.

2. Charges Go Up

With Universal Life insurance policies, insurance companies give you a bucket with holes in it.  This allows them the ability to change certain charges within your permanent life insurance policy.  Also with Universal Life insurance policies, the cost of insurance is going to increase slightly each month because you are getting older.   It is easy to account for the increases to the cost of insurance because the increases are pretty uniform.  However, you never know when the life insurance company is going to increase the administrative fees and charges associated with the policy.  If these charges eat away at the cash value more quickly than you originally thought, you’ll receive a lapse notice – more money or no policy.  To avoid this, check your guarantees with maximum charges as mentioned above.  The exception are secondary guarantees, just make sure to stay on top of those premium payments.

3. Returns Go Down

Again this doesn’t apply to all Whole Life insurance policies because they have a built in guaranteed rate of return, but it could be illustrated with a higher return than guaranteed.  Universal life insurance policies, however, may become dependent on the rate of returns within the policy to support the cash value and charges.  This was the problem with Universal Life insurance policies back in the late 1980s when there were double digit interest rates.  When interest rates started to be cut and the earnings within those policies went from 15% down to 5% it wasn’t enough to outpace the charges within the policies.  The result was that people were asked to put more money into their Universal Life insurance policies or risk losing their permanent life insurance policy.

Make sure to understand your guarantees.  Even Whole Life insurance policies sold during the 1980s had dividend protections that became unrealistic with a deflating economy.  Dividends are not guaranteed.

This is even more prevalent with Variable Universal life insurance policies because now you add the ability to have negative returns within the cash value of the policy.

4. Don’t Pay Premiums

This is a no brainer.  It doesn’t matter what type of permanent life insurance policy you have, if you stop paying planned premiums it’s just a matter of time until you lose the policy.  Remember to keep a close eye on your policy if your planned premiums rely on non-guaranteed elements of your permanent life insurance policy.  There are two ways to plan ahead so that you don’t have to continue paying premiums:

1. reduce paid up – this is when you reduce the face amount of a permanent life insurance policy to the maximum amount the cash value will guarantee for the rest of the policy.
2. policy loans – this brings us to #5

5. Policy Loans

Permanent life insurance policies today have changed; both Universal Life and Whole Life insurance policies allow you to miss premium payments.  They do have differences though.  With Universal Life policies nowadays, some policies will treat missed premiums as loans while others will just continue to take the charges out of the cash value.  Most Whole Life insurance policies, however, treat missed premiums as loans.  Watch out for those interest charges.

You are also allowed to take out policy loans from the cash value of your life insurance policies anytime.  In order to not be taxed on these distributions, loans need to have interest charges, which if not paid will add up over time and eat into the cash value of the policy.  Watch out for those interest charges.

Once loans and withdrawals begin in your life insurance policy it also now becomes extremely important to keep this policy in place for the rest of your life.  If not, there could be some adverse tax consequences.

6.  Endowment (or as Clarifinancial called it, maturity)

January 1st, 1985 marked a huge change for the life insurance industry.  This is when the Tax Reform of 1984 went into affect.  This tax reform stated than any policy that endowed before the policy owner reached the age of 95 would no longer qualify as life insurance.  This meant that the proceeds of an endowment policy became fully taxable.  Older policies were grandfathered in but it has virtually eliminated endowment policies in the life insurance industry.

An endowment policy is is an agreement that at a set period of time, usually an attained age, whether the insured has died or not the policy will pay the death benefit.  Sometimes the payouts if the person is still living could vary but it is previously agreed on and disclosed within the permanent life insurance policy.

7. Human Error

In #4, I mentioned planned premiums.  This is an important concept because the life insurance guy that you are working with is someone you are relying on to properly design your permanent life insurance policy.  If they make a mistake or don’t know what they are doing, you’re the one that has to deal with the consequences.  Unfortunately, you probably won’t realize for a while after the policy has been put in place.  It becomes that much more important to work with someone who specializes in designing permanent policies.  Every successful insurance person can tell you horror stories and messes they have of cleaning up other people’s mistakes.

Get it done right the first time, either let the insurance people compete for your business or work with a specialist.

Related posts:

1. What Every Life Insurance Policy Shouldn’t Be Without
2. Life Insurance Secret
3. Whole Life Insurance is Stackable

If you are like most people, you might see that your company offers you some pretty good benefits.  One of those benefits just might be group disability insurance.  You say ‘great’ and sign right up.  The money comes right out of your paycheck and you think ‘at least if something happens I am protected’.  That’s perfectly normal.  Just like any healthy well adjusted person you think two things: 1. I’m never going to need it, and 2. I’m covered just in case.

What most people don’t realize is what ‘covered’ means.  If you are really on your group disability insurance the key is that you don’t control the coverage that you have, your employer does.  Whether it is good, great or horrible coverage is up to you to figure out.  Last time we looked at 7 Ways Your Group Disability Insurance Will Fail.  Today, we’ve got a few more things to add to the list.

1. You could loose your job. Your group disability insurance policy is dependent on you having a job.  Since it is offered through your employer, if you loose your employment you loose your policy.  The next job you get may or may not offer the same benefits.  Also, if they don’t, you maybe paying more for your individual disability insurance policy because your not getting any young and your health probably isn’t getting a whole lot better.
2. You could loose your policy. Your employer controls your policy.  They decide how good of coverage the group disability insurance policy will offer.  Just because you have a good policy today doesn’t mean you will tomorrow.  When times are tough your employer could easily decide to cut coverage to save money.  Or worse yet, they could drop it all together.
3. Expect the premiums to increase. It’s a group benefit.  Just like your health insurance, every time your plan is up for renewal you are most likely going to see a premium increase.  Unlike, health insurance, some of the larger group disability insurance policies might lock in premiums for 2 or 3 years.  However, they are still going to increase soon whereas an individual disability insurance policy the premiums are locked in as long as the policy stays in force.
4. It’s an ERISA plan.  Group disability insurance plans fall under a federal statute called the Employees Retirement Income Securities Act (ERISA).  The biggest downfall for this in regards to disability insurance is appeals.  If you were to get denied a claim through a group policy there are a lot stricter set of rules to follow.  You’re options are also a lot more limited.  For instance, through ERISA you are not entitled to a jury trial and you will almost never receive any type of attorney’s fees or punitive damages.
5. It’s limited to your employment income. Do you have any income that you receive outside of work?  When I say that I mean earned income.  Any unearned income will offset you disability benefit in an individual policy.  However, any earned income outside of your employer will not be covered.  Maybe you have a side job that you receive income from or a second job, these are not covered.

It’s not unusual to find out that the coverage you thought was great is grossly inadequate.  Do you, and more importantly, your loved ones a favor, review your coverage.  Talk to a qualified financial professional when you don’t understand what they are telling you come ask me.  An insurance assessment is a great way to learn about what you do have and make better decisions with your money.  Most people will supplement their group disability coverage with an individual disability insurance policy to fill the gaps and/or shortfalls.

Related posts:

1. 7 Ways Your Group Disability Will Fail
2. Pricing Your Disability Insurance
3. 7 Disability Insurance Add-on Features

Most people don’t even think about disability.  It’s sort of the ninja of personal finance.  It silently hurts you.  The reason I say this is because there is no announcement in the newspaper and there are no big events held.  Something bad happens and you end up in near seclusion as you try to recover.  Usually the only people that are around to help and support you are your family and friends.  Unless you are one of those people you never realize what someone has to deal with when they become disabled.

Maybe you are one of the lucky one’s that has group disability coverage through work.  You really, truly want to believe that your coverage will be there to help you if something were to happen.  Well here’s 7 ways that group disability coverage will fail you.

1. It covers 60% of your income. Most group disability insurance covers up to 60% of your income.  Can you live with that big of a pay cut?  Don’t forget to add on the extra medical bills from the accident that caused the disability.  Then there are the medical bills from the rehabilitation.  Well we can ignore those for now.  Make a list of your five biggest bills (mortgage, car payment, taxes, etc.).  Now which two aren’t you going to pay?
2. You’re employer is nice enough to pay for it. Isn’t that nice of your employer to pay for your group disability insurance?  I would think so too at first.  From an IRS standpoint though, if your employer pays for the coverage that means you don’t pay taxes on that money.  Now if you were to become disabled, since there were not taxes paid yet, the benefits are now taxable.  This means that if you are in a 15% effective tax rate, then your 60% coverage just got cut down to about 50%.
3. You make bonuses and/or commissions. There are a lot of people out there who have a large part of their income tied to bonuses and/or commissions.  Did you know that most group disability insurance doesn’t cover these at all?  Usually they only cover base salary.  This means that if you have a $100,000 base salary plus an extra $50,000 through bonuses and/or commissions, then when you factor in #1 & #2 above you are now down to about 33% coverage.  The pay cut just keeps getting bigger.
4. There is also a cap. Most group coverage will cap your monthly coverage amount.  The most common cap is between $5,000-$6,000 per month.  To give you an idea, each $1,000 of month coverage, covers $20,000 of salary at 60%.  So a $5,000 cap will cover the first $100,000 and a $6,000 cap will cover the first $120,000.  If you make more than that, you are taking an even bigger pay cut.
5. There is a social security offset. Most group disability insurance will offset your benefit by the amount you receive from social security.  If you’ve been reading this thinking that you’ll have some extra money on top of your disability benefit, don’t count on it.  Some companies won’t even pay you the social security portion until your coverage has been denied by social security (which will most likely happen when you apply anyways).
6. You can go work somewhere else. With disability insurance there is a feature called own-occupation.  This means that you are unable to perform the duties of your specific occupation even if you are able to work in an other occupation.  Good group disability coverage will cover your own-occupation for a period of 2 years after that if you can work anywhere (yes, even McDonald’s) then you receive no more benefits.  Notice I said ‘good’ coverage, a lot of policies don’t even have the own-occupation benefit.
7. You can’t contribute to your 401k when you aren’t working. No one ever thinks of this.  If you are not working you cannot contribute to your company 401k.  I have yet to see any type of group coverage that will account or help with this in any way.  Most individual disability insurance policies will have a rider or stand alone feature that will continue to contribute to your retirement for you if you were to become disable (yes, this costs extra).

If you ever get a financial plan done it should include an analysis of your disability coverage.  A lot of times and individual disability insurance policy is needed to supplement your group coverage in order to provide adequate protection for you and your loves ones.  If you are unsure about your coverage you should consult a financial professional or get an insurance assessment.

Related posts:

1. 5 More Ways Group Disability Insurance Disappoints
2. Pricing Your Disability Insurance
3. 7 Disability Insurance Add-on Features

Have you ever asked your financial adviser what he/she does? What was the response?  Was it a long list of things?  Did it make any sense?  I work with financial advisers, I network with them, I meet them all the time, they are everywhere.  The second biggest turnoff when talking with these people is when they tell me they do everything.  Maybe it’s just me but I constantly struggle with this.  Or maybe it’s my background.

When I started in the financial industry I was pretty fresh out of college.  I was deciding between working for a big wirehouse and a smaller boutique firm.  I chose the smaller one pretty much because I didn’t want to work under someone else for a few years.  I wanted to build my own business.

The funniest thing in the industry is training.  I’m convinced the training is based on the business model that there will be huge turnover.  Depending on where you look most statistics say something like, only 10% of financial professional make it through 4 years in the business.  I’ve heard tons of stats that all seem to be slightly different.  This is how the big companies in financial services train.  They train people to sell products, as much as possible, as quickly as possible.  Who benefits from this?

This is all I think of when people tell me they do everything.  I was trained this way.  “Don’t leave money on the table” was what an old manager use to say.  How sad is that?  I couldn’t run my business this way so I changed but most people don’t and they might never.  I have learned one thing, the best advisers I meet niche.  They have their specialties and work with other specialists.  It might be fee only planing and they work with the product people.  It might be people insurance people that work with investment people or the investment people that work with the planning people.  The fact of the matter is that there is too much to know in the financial industry.  There are too many areas and too many situations to be able to handle them all.

So when you sit down with your adviser or you meet a new adviser, can they admit what they don’t know? Do they have help and support of specialists not only behind the scenes?  By the way that is what most advisers will say, “oh we have a group of specialists available to me”.  Most of the time that means, “I’m on my own I just want to seem like it’s more than just me”.  Next time you hear an adviser talk about all the things he/she knows and all the areas they can help you just realize that you might be talking to an expert at nothing.

How many hats is your financial professional wearing?

Related posts:

1. Your Ideal Financial Planner

Have you ever read an enrollment book for your 401k?  A lot of them show examples of how much ‘tax savings’ you can get by investing in your 401k.  They say that if you are in a 25% tax bracket that for every $100 you contribute you’ll pay $25 dollars less in taxes, right?  Ever hear your account tell you that a strategy for paying less taxes is to max out IRA or 401k contributions?  Do you believe these statements?  Let’s look at it…

You’ve got an extra $10,000 you want to put away for retirement and you are trying to figure out whether to do all in your Traditional 401k or all in your Roth 401k and you are in a 25% tax bracket.  You hear about this great ‘tax savings’ so you say…

Traditional 401k

You have $10,000 the full $10,000 goes into your Traditional 401k.   So you’ve probably been told that you don’t pay taxes on the $10,000 so you’re saving $2,500 in taxes, right?  To keep that math simple we’re going to use a 7% rate of return and the Rule of 72 let’s us estimate that it will double every 10 years.  So in 10 years it doubles to $20,000; another 10 years and it’s $40,000; and the final 10 years and you have $80,000.  Now your in a Traditional 401k so the growth is tax-deferred which means you don’t owe any taxes on the growth.

Now when you want to access the money in your Traditional 401k it’s fully taxable because you haven’t paid any taxes on it right? Right.  So all things kept equal, you are still in the same 25% tax bracket because who wants to retire on less money.  That means you owe $20,000 in taxes on your $80,000.  So you only really have $60,000.

We forgot something, your ‘tax savings’.  You’ve been a good boy and saved the $2,500 you were told you saved.  So you put it into an investment and it got a 7% rate of return, so you’re doing awesome.  It doubles, $5,000; doubles again, $10,000; then the final double, $20,000.  Great so your laughing all the way to where ever you want as you go to cash in this investment.  You are about to offset the taxes they say you owe and guess what?  Your hit with capital gains (best case scenario) on your investment that you just sold off.   Now today that’s 15%.  So where do you come up with the money to pay the $3,000 capital gains tax bill?  You now have $17,000 to pay a $20,000 tax bill. 

Where’s your ‘tax savings’? 

To Be Continued…

Related posts:

1. Tax Savings, It's In The Paycheck?
2. Tax Savings, The Finale
3. Tax Savings, Advantage Over The Roth?

I see more and more people referencing self insurance as their goal.  What does that mean?  I mean maybe I’m slow or I’m missing something.  So from what I hear, the goal is to grow your wealth (savings, investments) to a big enough amount while also paying off all your debts.  Once your debts are paid off there is no reason to have life insurance.  Is that what you read too?

I was reading Life Insurance Basics: Part One on Personal Financial By The Book the other day.  Listed under the heading “Does everyone need life insurance?” was the following paragraph:

Anyone who is self insured. What do I mean by self-insured? Those who have done so well managing their finances that their survivors will do fine without needing a life insurance payout. These people would have paid for houses, no debt and a healthy retirement and investment portfolio. This, by the way, should be everyone’s goal.

This really got me thinking.  I’m not saying Joe is wrong.  I mean he is a Dave Ramsey certified financial coach.  So he is out helping people and I think that is great.  People need help.  Now as for Dave, there are parts that I think are great and parts I definitely don’t agree with but I’ll let you make up your own minds.  I think he’s great for the right person.

First, I never want to have no debt and I never want to pay off my house but that’s just me and that’s not what this post is about.  I do want to be debt-free.  Read Debt-free to me to learn my views on being debt-free.

So now let’s say I’m debt-free or maybe I reach Joe’s goal above.  Now I should let my life insurance go?  If that’s the case then why stop there?  Should I drop the limits on my car insurance to the minimums?  Raise deductibles to the max?  Drop my disability and liability insurance.  Mortgage is paid off I could just drop homeowners coverage right?  I mean I have no debt and a ‘healthy’ portfolio.  I didn’t even mention health insurance I could probably self insure there as well.

Wait why do we call it self-insured?  Shouldn’t I just say no insurance?  Isn’t that the same?  Why is it that I only hear about self insurance with life insurance?  Shouldn’t it apply to all insurance?  Or is there a pecking order I don’t know about? 

Have you read the definition of self insurance on wikipedia?   I don’t think that applies to 99% of the population.  I hope I’m wrong with how much I see it as a goal.  The funniest thing might be that self insurance is mostly mentioned in terms of life insurance.  When I look around insurance that’s the only one that’s certain; death and taxes.  I wish I could get tax insurance.

Related posts:

1. Debt-free to me

In the financial world there is always the goal of being debt-free.  So what does that mean to you?  It seems that in the world of financial blogging it means to pay off all your debts such as mortgage, loans, credit cards, etc.  Is that your goal?  What if I said it’s not mine?

What does debt-free mean to me?  It means two things.  The second is more important than the first because if you achieve the second you’ll have had to have already achieved the first.  So here is how I determine being debt-free:

Make a balance sheet listing your assets and liabilities.  In order to be debt-free you need your liquid assets to outweigh your liabilities.  Notice that I said liquid assets.  This means that under any circumstances and whenever you choose, you can take your liquid assets and pay off the liabilities instantly.  The key to this is liquid assets.  If your money is tied up and you can’t get to it right away it doesn’t count.  Think of the worst thing in the world happening now you need access to your money right away, this second.  That’s liquid money.  It doesn’t necessarily mean go to the bank and take it out.  I mean transfer it and it will go right then, not three days from then.

This means that yes, I plan on having debt.  Yes, I plan to always have a mortgage.  I will have credit cards and maybe even a loan if I choose to.  However, I will manage the mortgage, loan and especially the credit cards.  I want to use other people’s money.  I might use some of the things from Robert Kiyosaki.  I might use some of Douglas Andrews‘ teachings.  I don’t ever want to rely on banks, I want to be my own bank.  I’m not saying these are the perfect concepts but they can work when used right.  Pieces of these concepts are great and these aren’t the only concepts I enjoy learning about, just some of them.

Many people want to discredit these concepts using averages.  These concepts are not for average people using average products.  They are for people who want to be successful, be the best, be well above average.  In order to do so they use the best products and work with people who understand this.  There are very few people like that out there unfortunately.

So then what does debt-free mean to you?  The most important thing is you and your peace of mind.  I’ve come to grips with mine.  Have you?  What is peace of mind for you?  What are you goals based on your peace of mind?  Don’t base your goals on what other people tell you to do.  Figure out what makes you happy and what you want to be.  It’s all about you.

No related posts.

Did you read When Returns Lie?  This will be a continued discussion so make sure you read where it started and check the comments.  Now I want to thank Paul Escobar for pointing out that there are more accurate ways to measure the returns on your investments (not for laying into me while doing it).  I wanted to show you how some financial people talk about rates of returns and how they can be very deceiving.  I’ve seen a recent push by financial people to talk about how great market is and paint a positive outlook on the market in order to get people to invest more with them.  I’m not commenting on the market here I’m instead making you aware of the tactice people are using.

What can you do about it?

The fist thing to do is the take a lesson from Paul.  Make sure the financial professional that you are talking with or working with is using the geometric or compound average rate of return.  I think All Returns Are Not Created Equal from Investopedia does a great job of explaining the differences between these two calculation techniques.  Unfortunately, if you look around the internet you will learn that mutual funds sometimes advertise the arithmetic mean or simple average.  When you have positive returns these numbers are very closely related.  When you throw in a big down year, such as 2008, it throws numbers wildly off as represented in my previous post.

There is was a question posted on LinkedIn for me titled Interested in your take on this.  See how people responded.  Most acted as if they know about the way in which returns are falsely advertised.  I hope they are sharing this with their friends and in some cases their clients.  I also recommend Average Long Term Returns vs. Compound Annual Growth Rate and Mutual Fund Return Lies: Average Annual Return vs Compound Annual Growth Rate which both help support my point.

Did you learn something new?  How does your adviser show you rates of return?  I guess I hope that you will realize that a rate of return that is sold to you or shown to you during some sales presentation might very well be nothing but a number and have no real meaning behind it.  Or maybe worse yet, it’s that a trusted adviser might be using these false methods to predict your future.  Am I naive to think that people will learn from this post?

Related posts:

1. When Returns Lie
2. Universal Life Failure Part I
3. Universal Life Failure Part II

I was reading the local paper this past Sunday.  Yes, I am the one person that reads the paper.  Actually I read my dad’s paper.  That might be worse but I digress.  In the Sunday Business section there was a listing of the 25 biggest mutual funds.  (I would link you to it but I can’t find it online on the newspaper’s website)

For those who didn’t know the largest mutual fund (excluding money market funds) is Pimco Total Return Institutional(PTTRX).  The simple reason it is the largest is because it’s the largest bond fund so it didn’t suffer from the huge stock market losses in 2008 and early 2009.  The chart in the newspaper lists the 5 year percent return.  So I went through and pulled out the top performers according to this number.  I got Pimco Total Return Institutional (PTTRX), American Funds Capital World Growth & Income (CWGIX), American Funds EuroPacific Growth (AEPGX), Dodge & Cox International Stock(DODFX) and American Funds New Perspective (ANWPX).  I later dropped DODFX from the conversation because there is no 10 year return numbers that I was looking for.  Funny that 3 American Funds for top performers, I guess their reputation is well earned.  Is this another topic for active versus passive?  I won’t go there now.

So why did I pull these 5 (now 4) funds out?  I wanted to look at their rates of returns to see what these numbers mean.

Now my disclaimers about these numbers that you should know.  What I did was take the annual returns for each of these funds over the time frame.  So for 10 year it runs from 1999-2008 and for 5 year numbers it runs from 2004-2008.  The newspaper included year-to-date performance that I through out to make the analysis easier.  I also didn’t account for any sales loads, which of course American Funds has and thus, might eliminate them from being top performers depending on the structure of the account.  Also in the last column I looked at what $10,000 would have grown to over that time period.  Now this is dollar value using the annual performance numbers for the funds.

Now let’s look at what we can get from this chart.  Did anyone think that a 5% rate of return could beat 7% or even 8% rate of return over 5 years?  I didn’t think so.  How about a 6% rate of return beating an almost 7% or almost 8% rate of return over 10 years?  This is pretty eye opening isn’t it.

So what does this mean?  I would love to hear your opinions.  What does this mean to you?  What do you think it means to investment or financial people?  How does this affect you?  Hopefully, I’ll get some good answer and I can’t wait to chime in.

Related posts:

1. When Returns Lie Part II
2. Money Is Not Math…
3. Destroying Your Compound Interest

You’re missing the conversation and we want you to be a part of it.  There’s a conversation going on in the comments at Financial Highway.  We want your input.  What do you think?

Look for my post later in the week about how compound interest is one of the most widely misunderstood financial theory.  Most people, especially financial advisors/planners, don’t fully understand how it works and what it means.

Related posts:

1. Investment Industry Secret
2. Destroying Your Compound Interest
3. When Returns Lie Part II