Holiday Book Guide: Top 3 Books for the Life Insurance Skeptic
A lot of us approach Life Insurance from the perspective of lowest cost and that it pretty much is all the same. You die and your beneficiaries get some money - like a Term Policy. Once you go beyond this you enter a more complicated world of life insurance products, different ways they can be built, grow cash value and there are different providers with different benefits.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “Buy term and invest the difference” especially if you are one that ascribes to the usual suspects of older financial personalities. They often hate permanent life insurance, like Whole Life, and have developed quite a following of people that think it is the worst financial tool on the planet. You might be one of these that I call “Life Insurance Skeptics.”
Trust me when I tell you that there are a lot of terrible life insurance tools and agents out there. But there are really good ones out there as well and running away from them because a guru said so may prevent you from a type of financial progress you are hoping for that life insurance could provide.
Part of the skepticism is that they can be complicated to understand. They can also feel very expensive compared to cheap term. Last, you may not understand how to properly use it while you are alive. All fair and valid reasons to be skeptical and so I have prepared a list of my Top 3 books for the skeptic.
Within the Life Insurance conversation it is as if someone said a particular car brand was bad and they always break down and so we think all car brands are bad.
Here is the list.
Money. Wealth. Life Insurance. By Jake Thompson
This is always my go-to shorty for those interested in learning more about Life Insurance and how people use it. Because it is more like a long pamphlet rather than a complicated book, the barrier to entry is low and the time commitment is an hour or so. People are surprised to find out how people have used their life insurance policies while they are alive for things like building Disneyland. Life insurance is not simply a tool for the rich but can be a powerful financial tool in creating legacy and financial change. Thompson simply discusses how they work and how people use them. This also arms you with a good resource when you consider adding the tool of life insurance to your financial life.
The And Asset by Caleb Guilliams
What I love about this book is that it provides the best overview of features and uses of permanent life insurance. It also does so in common language that makes it easier to understand. He invites you in to understanding a feature and asks you if that is something you’d like. More often than not, the answer is yes. This is an honest take on life insurance as well and not what you see on social media that it is amazing, is always the best thing and that it solves every financial circumstance. It does not but it does do a lot and helps the other financial tools you have perform better. Many of the life insurance books available require you to have an advanced degree in the subject to understand the language. Guilliams provides the intro course with this book.
Busting the Life Insurance Lies by Kim Butler and Jack Burns
My story of learning about life insurance began before becoming a financial advisor and it began with this book. Actually, it began a bit before reading this book. Many people in church circles follow a particular financial personality that says whole life insurance is bad and you are an idiot for having it. It may be one of his strongest soap boxes. So I asked the question, “If it is so bad, why has it been around for so long and why do so many people use it. Why do all the major banks in the US keep billions of cash in these if they are so bad?” That led me to typing into the google search something akin to the title of this book and got me started exploring another perspective. There are a lot of misconceptions presented by gurus or other advisors. There are a lot of misconceptions by those that specialize in life insurance. That is why this book is so helpful and lives up to its name. Each chapter tackles a different lie or myth. You can find one on the list that you probably have heard or maybe believe yourself.
As always, it is important to be educated on different financial products in order to move forward in this financially complicated world. These 3 resources should be great steps to understanding life insurance more and cause you to consider its place in your financial life.