The best part about this book is that I’m done reading it. My goodness, that was painful.
I think the book was trying to be a story telling book like The Wealthy Barber. It doesn’t pull it off. Instead of adding to the book and making the information palatable, the ’story’ that wraps the facts ends up being something I had to wade through. Neither is the story believable, though I guess that’s just the writing style.
The Facts Of Live: how to build wealth and protect your assets with life insurance started off poorly before I even opened the book. It’s right from the sales book where life insurance is the miracle cure for what ails you. The only thing missing is how life insurance is going to cook my meals and clean my house. I guess when you’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The story tells of a retired life insurance agent who is the summer house guest at the family cottage and JUST. WON’T LEAVE. Geesh, don’t we all have family like that. Throughout the course of the summer the former agent walks each of his family members through their insurance problems, all the while using his retirement hobby - a breadmaker.
The book also has some extremely poor sales tactics presented as facts. The author presents the 1970’s idea that term insurance versus permanent is like renting versus owning. Sales people use this because it sounds so good - everyone wants to own right? Unfortunately we happen to be talking life insurance here. It’s a contract with an insurer. Nobody is renting or owning anything. That’s like saying I should pay for collision insurance on my $1000 car, because that’s like ‘owning’ my auto insurance policy. Huh? People need to buy insurance based on their needs, not based upon sales presentations and poor analogies.
Another example of the book presenting sales techniques guised as facts is in talking about future value. Apparantly the author missed out on watching Dr. Evil’s ‘One Meeeeelion Dollars’ . One Meeeelion Dollars in 1960 was an awful lot of money. Twenty years from now in 2035 it’s not likely to be very much. There’s this little thing called inflation that he completely neglects to mention. In short, trying to present the shock value of $925,000 as a lot of money is fine. Trying to present $925,000 as a lot of money in twenty years without noting that it’s not the same amount of money in todays dollars is they type of sales technique that can leave people short of cash in twenty years. This is where Gramma comes in to cash her life insurance policy she’s been saving for junior’s education. Sorry Gramma. When you bought that policy in 1975 the $3000 cash value would put junior through college. Now you need $30,000. Did the agent forget to mention inflation? Of course if the agent had tried to sell you a $30,000 cash policy back then you’d have balked right? Much easier to sell a $3000 policy. Oh well, junior can get a job. Just make sure that’s not you needing to get a job just when you thought you were going to school.
The moral here is that this is why insurance agents have ears. That gives them something to land on when you throw them out after they use these types of tactics.
Title: The Facts Of Life: how to build wealth and protect your assets with life insurance, by Paul Grimes, ISBN 0470833254
Rating: 1 star out of 5. Barely.
Who should buy this book: Friends and family of the author.