X-Message-Number: 19998
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 05:16:47 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: term/whole life

Clay Young has posted a message expressing concern about the risk of a
term life policy ending before he dies. Personally I have a whole-life
policy that is index-linked; the face value increases in ratio with the
cost of living. (Naturally, the premiums increase too.) But this kind of
policy will not be cheap for someone in his late 50s.

I have a friend who has a term life policy, on the assumption that by the
time the term ends, he will have made enough money to "pay cash" for
cryonics. This creates a different set of problems (even assuming his
optimism is justified), although a cryonics organization might accept
funding via a "Payable On Death" account, available at most banks. This
circumvents probate, but on the other hand the cryonics organization has
no guarantee that the money is still in the account. During the days of
CryoCare, I suggested that we could accept PoD accounts if the account
holder provided us with sufficient information so that in an emergency, we
could call the bank's automated account service and check the balance.

Really there is no substitute for paying for cryonics by purchasing life
insurance while you are in your 30s. I realize this isn't very helpful for
someone in his 50s.

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