X-Message-Number: 31061 From: Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:08:02 EDT Subject: A short note on insurance backing, finances, and recent event... Hello, Folks, This is Rudi Hoffman in Florida. Exciting days to be in the financial services industry. It is probably a good idea to remind readers in the US that their life insurance and fixed annuity accounts are safe. Unless the fabric of society fall apart, and money is repudiated, and anything done on paper is meaningless...and under this circumstance all bets and backings are unknowns. Dig your guns and your gold up from the back yard, cause this would be a pretty rough ride. Life insurance face amounts are generally protected by the state guarantee funds. In Florida and most states, this means that even in the unlikely event of an insurance carrier failure, the death benefit is guaranteed up to a maximum of $300,000. The cash accumulation is guaranteed to a maximum of $100,000. Additionally, cryonics organizations, and my personal policy at Hoffman Planning, encourage/require that we use carriers with A excellent ratings--or better-- from A.M.Best and also high ratings with other independent rating services. While there are a lot of variables that can go wrong with your optimal suspension, it is one of my missions in life to make sure that funding and secure finances are not one of these problems. Hope this helps. I acknowledge that there is a lot of anxiety regarding financial issues and financial concerns over recent events. Part of my job as a financial advisor and certified financial planner is to both put people in relatively safe accounts, and also to encourage people to take a long view when events like the recent volatility occur. My clients are continuing to make money on a long range basis, due to underlying structure and underlying guarantees on their accounts. Everyone has an opinion about both recent events and the economy as a whole. And most of these are useless and not particularly helpful speculations about the future. Especially the "economic sky is falling" predictions, which have, it has been somewhat humorously stated, predicted seven out of the last three recessions. We are indeed in a recession, deeper and wider than most, but this won't last forever. (A quick bit of semi-humor often told at financial meetings defining the difference between a recession and a depression. A recession is what happens when your friend and neighbor loses their job. A depression is what happens when YOU lose your job. ) Finances and the economy are relevant to cryonics...but I hope this posting does not precede, presage, or encourage a huge semi-off topic thread on cryonet. I have been in financial services about 30 years...and made and saved some money...and learned a few things. One is to try and underreact to media observations of alleged "meltdowns." The take home story from above posting is this. If your life savings...or your life insurance...is with me, you and I will both be fine. Let us continue to make the most prudent and rational choices we can. Respectfully Submitted, Rudi Rudi Richard Hoffman CFP CLU ChFC Board Member Financial Planning Association fpafla.com Board Member Salvation Army salvationarmy.org Member Alcor Life Extension Foundation alcor.org Certified Financial Planner(TM) CFP Board of Standards Member Libertarian Party libertarianparty.org Member National Rifle Association nra.org Member World Transhumanist Association http://transhumanism.org/ World's Leading Cryonics Insurance Provider rudihoffman.com **************Psssst...Have you heard the news? There's a new fashion blog, plus the latest fall trends and hair styles at StyleList.com. (http://www.stylelist.com/trends?ncid=aolsty00050000000014) Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=31061