Sure-Fire Results: How Old Sensibilities Are Proving a Potent Balm for Modern Personal Finance Ailments

The ’10/10/10′ Formula of Savings Rescues Many Overstretched Family Budgets

Executive Summary: Most modern Americans overspend, assume too much debt, and fail to invest wisely for retirement.  Tim Austin, a leading proponent of ‘old-fashioned’ spending and savings strategies, recommends a time-tested 10/10/10 financial formula: saving 10% of gross income for the near-term; 10% for the mid-term; and setting aside 10% for the long-term.  Austin’s favorite savings tool is specially-designed dividend-paying whole life insurance policies such as those structured by Bank On Yourself’s specially trained and Professionals.

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By Pamela Yellen and Dean Rotbart

Even back in 1975, the year comedian Woody Allen wrote, directed and starred in the movie Love and Death, the perception of whole life insurance as a savings instrument designed for fuddy-duddies and masochists was already commonplace.

There are some things worse than death”

…deadpans the film’s protagonist, Boris Grushenko, played by Allen…

If you’ve ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, I’m sure you know what I mean”

[Read more…] “Sure-Fire Results: How Old Sensibilities Are Proving a Potent Balm for Modern Personal Finance Ailments”

Small Business Owners Turn to Whole Life Insurance and Other Alternative Financing Options to Overcome Tight Credit

Now is the Best Time to Prepare for the Next Economic Downturn

By Pamela Yellen and Dean Rotbart

Executive Summary: Among the best non-conventional or alternative financing options for small businesses are loans taken against the owners’ or business’s whole life insurance policies.  Correctly structured, policies such as those that conform with the Bank On Yourself strategy, are tax-advantaged and readily accessible sources of the cash that every small business owner requires to survive harsh economic times.

DENVER – Small business owner Terry Hauschulz recently needed a $15,000 loan so that he could pay the tab on his October 15th federal tax return.

Clients of Hauschulz’s 10-year-old medical equipment repair business have been dallying when it comes to paying him.  “Great receivables, no cash,” Hauschulz laments.

The 55-year-old proprietor mulled asking his commercial bank to help tide him over.  “You know what that would be,” he says of the iffy and laborious process of winning a loan approval these days even for those borrowers with good credit.

rejected creditInstead, Hauschulz, like tens of thousands of other self-reliant entrepreneurs, professionals and small business operators, looked to non-conventional finance options.

The solution he selected – borrowing against his individual whole life insurance plan – allowed him to promptly receive the necessary funds without a credit check, without having to submit financial statements, without needing the approval of a loan committee and without any bureaucratic hassles.

[Read more…] “Small Business Owners Turn to Whole Life Insurance and Other Alternative Financing Options to Overcome Tight Credit”

Six scary facts affecting your finances

A number of items have come across my desk recently that should spook the living daylights out of you…

Scary Fact #1: 40 percent of all workers plan to delay retirement

61% blamed the decline in their 401(k) for this.  And a majority said they’re prepared to spend less in retirement according to a new survey by Towers Watson.

Scary Fact #2: Nation’s retirement shortfall exceeds $4.6 trillion!

A recent study revealed Boomers and Generation X’ers are coming up frighteningly short on their retirement savings.

And when nursing home and home health care costs are added in, that shortfall doubles, according to a study released this month by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Nearly half of both Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers won’t have enough funds to cover living expenses, according to an EBRI report released earlier this year.

Scary Fact #3: New 401(k) disclosure rules don’t put a lid on fees

New regulations announced this month by the Department of Labor will require better disclosure of all the hidden fees you’ve been paying in your 401(k), starting in January, 2012.

scary bat

But, for all the noise on Capitol Hill about this horrifying issue, NO regulations have been proposed or even discussed to reduce the confiscatory fees you pay!

scary bat

Even a one percent higher fee can cost an employee $64,000 or more in realized savings by age 65, according to the DOL’s own estimates.

The 401(k) situation is so bad that you will probably need to get an average annual return of 8% to 10% – just to break even!

Not convinced?  Check out the shocking exposé Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Dean Rotbart and I recently co-wrote on this.

Scary Fact #4: Hope is not a strategy

We’re headed for a retirement train wreck, and it’s going to get really ugly over the next 15 years”
– Rob Arnott, a widely respected market strategist

In a well-researched article in this month’s Fundamentals Index Newsletter, the authors point out that the return assumptions built into pension and retirement plans today assume that “everything will go right.”  They’ve relied on unrealistic assumptions.  The authors also go on to demonstrate why returns are likely to be much lower in the future.

We’re relying on hope.  But hope is not a strategy; hope will not fund secure retirements.  We’re planning for the best and denying that worse can happen.  It makes far more sense to hope for the best, with plans for realistic outcomes – and contingency plans for worse ones.”1

Scary Fact #5: 40 percent of retirees were forced out of work early

Remember the scene from the 1983 movie classic, “The Big Chill,” where the character played by Jeff Goldblum asks…

Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?”

Well, many boomers today are trying to rationalize away the fact that they won’t be able to retire when and how they had planned by trying to convince themselves that retirement is overrated.  They now talk about continuing to work in some capacity as long as they can.

While there’s no question that this can give you more of a sense of purpose and fulfillment and keep you from dying of boredom, the reality is that many people are being forced to retire earlier than they can afford to.  Job layoffs and health issues are the primary reasons for this.

I love what I do, and I hope to be doing it for a long time.  But shouldn’t the decision to retire – or not – be a matter of choice, not necessity?

The reality is that you may not have a choice.  Nearly four in ten retirees say they were forced out of work earlier than they’d planned because of layoffs, poor health or the need to take care of a loved one, according to EBRI.

Scary Fact #6: All Bank On Yourself policy owners received a guaranteed increase and a dividend – again

I was just checking to see if you were paying attention! That’s not a scary fact (unless you’ve been procrastinating on starting to Bank On Yourself).

Halloween CashWhole life insurance is an asset class that has increased in value during every stock market decline and every period of economic boom and bust for more than a century.

A dividend-paying whole life policy grows by a guaranteed and pre-set amount every year.  In addition, the growth is exponential, meaning it gets better every single year with no luck, skill, or guesswork required to make that happen.

This gives you some protection against inflation and provides peak growth when you need it most (retirement).

A Bank On Yourself-type policy includes an option that turbo-charges the growth of your cash value in the policy.

You can know (rather than hope) the minimum guaranteed income you can take from the policy in retirement.

And, you can access the money in retirement with little or no tax consequences, under current tax law.

You can also have access to capital when you want it and for whatever you want.  No nosey credit apps or pledging your first born.

So, if you haven’t added Bank On Yourself to your financial plan yet, doesn’t it make sense to request a free Analysis and find out what your bottom-line numbers and results could be?

There’s no obligation, it’s not scary, and no one’s going to twist your arm!  If you haven’t already started to Bank On Yourself, please take the first step today and take back control of your financial future!
REQUEST YOUR
FREE ANALYSIS!

1. “Hope is Not a Strategy,” Fundamentals Index Newsletter, October 2010 Issue

Introducing the Bank On Yourself Nation

What started in 2002 as a quest to educate Americans and help them achieve financial security and peace of mind using the Bank On Yourself method came to uncover an all-American treasure more exquisite than I ever imagined.

Pamela Yellen

The revelation was gradual.

Pamela Yellen

At first, my concentration was tightly focused on helping people reach their savings and retirement planning goals and objectives using a seldom-trumpeted, but proven variety of whole life insurance.  After laborious and extensive research, a system was created that would permit almost anyone – rich and poor, young and old – to wean themselves from dependence on banks, credit cards, auto leases, mortgage companies and the risks and volatility of the stock and real estate markets and traditional retirement plans.

People could sleep well at night knowing that their savings were growing – safely and predictably – even when the markets tumbled.

Soon, the American public began to come around to my way of thinking – or at least that’s what I believed at the time.  People from all walks of life made initial inquiries, read up on Bank On Yourself materials, met with the specially trained financial representatives and then made the choice to bank on themselves.

Clients became our most potent marketing tool, as they began sharing the Bank On Yourself concept with their family, friends, neighbors and colleagues, as well as increasing their own commitment to this proven savings and money management philosophy.

I’ll admit I was pretty pleased with myself…

To be honest, I was pretty self-satisfied both by the consistent growth in the number of folks who were using the concept, and by what we professed to be our innovation.  There was no question that our Bank On Yourself precepts were changing how people viewed investing and financial planning.

Little did we know…

[Read more…] “Introducing the Bank On Yourself Nation”