Ben Baldwin
1 the Key is know HOW to FUND it right
Life ins. is a most preferred product for retirement if you know how to fund it right. Buy just enough ins. so it not MEC, and put as much as you can for cash value, and it needs time 20+ yr. to accumulate, not a short term.
It offer liquidity, safety, Rate of Return, Tax favored, protection for peace of mine.
Read Missed Fortune by Doughlas Andrew. so you will understand and think different about permanent life ins.
Only about 20% of insurance agents know how to plan it right. The key is HOW TO FUND it right and it NEED TIME TO ACCUMULATE.
so start as young as you can in the 20's not in the 50's with the right Agents, TIME IS YOUR GREATEST ASSETS.
2 Most confusing book of all time
Most people feel guilty about lack of savings, too little life insurance protection, and too much debt. Here comes a book that promises to help people understand cash value life insurance once and for all. However this book is more complicated than the life insurance policies themselves. The cash value life insurance policies, written by attorneys, are confusing to most people to the point that people have no real idea as to what exactly they agreed to. This book makes the situation even worse.
Everyone needs a plan to get out of debt, a term life insurance policy if other people/kids are depending on their income, and a wealth building strategy that includes a diversified stock mutual fund portfoilio if you want to avoid working the rest of your life or retiring broke. After you fund your emergency fund, you should fully fund your Roth IRA if qualified in your portfolio. Your Roth IRA will provide Tax-Free income to you in retirement. Cash value life insurance is the most expensive investment vehicle ever and will never be able to provide tax free money for retirement. Then fund your 401k especially if your company matches. Any investment advisor that advises against any of the previous strategies probably wants to make a fortune selling you incomprehensible, expensive and inappropriate cash value life insurance. A good financial advisor is out there just call around.
3 Not what I was expecting, too biased
If you're looking for an objective presentation of life insurance choices, this is NOT the book. This is biased towards Variable Univeral Life. I'm returning this book.
4 Decent
Although Mr. Baldwin did a nice job explaining the various insurance products, he came across as too much of a salesman.
I also found a portion of what he said to be misleading. He talks about how if a person is happy paying their premiums (and expenses) with after-tax dollars, then term insurance is good for them. He then states that by using a VUL product, a person can pay their fees with before-tax dollars. This is misleading in that the premium you pay to the insurance company IS AFTER TAX!
The best thing to keep in mind while reading this book is that Ben Baldwin is an insurance salesman!
5 powerful info!!!
This is a wonderfull consumer friendly book! It puts in english all the information on the various types of insurance.
It dispells many of the mis-conceptions regarding variable universal life. Refering to it as the swiss army knife of financial products sums it up!!!
Mr. Baldwin is an extremely respected person in the planning community-- this books is well worth reading for anyone!!!
6 Really learn about life insurance
The reviewers who think this books is peddling one form of life insurance (VULs especially) really are missing the important part of this book. This book is organized to teach you all about the forms of insurance on the market, from the simplest (term), through the most complex (VUL), because each one builds upon the prior! Why do you think so many forms of insurance exist? Because they started simple, and over time the industry added features they thought consumers would like. It helps to understand where it all came from. In fact, if you try to just dive into the VUL section you may get lost.
This can be a difficult, time consuming read, but it does an excellent job of explaining how life insurance works. The book does not pander to one type of insurance over another. It does give you crucial information about plan types that can help you make the right decision for you. Once you understand the book, you can easily look at an insurance contract and understand the most important fine points. I could stump the agent with the most basic of questions! Cut through their sales tactics. Now that is power!
7 Not just a book, a tool to help you make the most of money.
The book is user friendly and full of great ideas to help you make the most of your money. Perfect use of life insurance and its unique tax advantages. I feel sorry for those that believe that investing the difference and buying term is the best choice, it is not anymore a good choice.
8 Great book for industry professionals as well as investors
This book is a must own for any financial services professional as well as any investor. Ben Baldwin takes the new investor through the basics of financial planning, teaches about mutual funds, life insurance, annuities in an easy to understand way pointing out the pros and cons of each product. Originally one of the fiercest detractors of variable products, Ben Baldwin was open minded enough to take a serious look and study variable products. His volte-face is as impressive as his credentials. To those who keep claiming that variable products are expensive, fee ridden products, maybe you should really open your mind and study these products. You might even change your mind and realize maybe is knows something you don't, that VUL might actually be the swiss army knife of financial planning.
9 The New Life Insurance Investment Advisor
This book is a must read, for anyone attempting to accumulate significant amounts of wealth and ample case reserves for a secure retirement. Once you grasp the full understanding of how best to pay for Life Insurance, the hardest part may be finding a qualified Financial Advisor to assist you over the long run. This is a long term arrangement, one that requires a long term Advisor, to assist you in doing what most people are not capable of doing....accumulating wealth. The book will also be a guide to refer back to, from time to time.
10 Debunking the myths with great tax advice
VUL is a wonderful product, which if used correctly, can be a great tool for lowering taxes in retirement. I'm not sure what the person below was referring to when he says to buy level term and invest the difference in a better performing mutual fund. The insurance in the VUL is term, which can even be a decreasing term if the insured so pleases. (Why not buy the term insurance with tax-free income in the VUL policy!)I've never heard of a level term that lasts more than thirty years and the investment subaccounts have the same managers and investments as mutual funds! The biases against this tool come from people who have not accumulated much money, since they are unaware of the tax potholes people face from their qualified plans. Other biases come from people who write for WSJ or other media who probably failed as financial professionals. I understand the desire to hate insurance, but people need to ask themselves: between taxes and insurance, (since you have to pay for one or the other)why not pay for the one that is clearly cheaper over the long haul---insurance.
11 Fair Tradeoff
Variable life is the next best thing to 401(k). This book explains why 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use this tax strategy to fund supplemental retirement plans for top executives. Clearly, one who believes buying term and investing the difference is smart has not built much of a pile of money, so doesn't understand what 1099 income does to their taxes. This book affirms my own actions. While I'd like to avoid the commissions, it is a worthy tradeoff - the avoidance of confiscatory taxes on the growth and, later, on the income I will intentionally generate for retirement. My program functions like a tax free mutual fund, my agent is a CFP, and the overall package was well worth the few thousand of commission I paid. Compared to the unearned commission the IRS charges, this is a bargain for anyone with the intellect and logic to overcome age old biases and heresay. Thanks to this book, I like what I own even better now.
12 A training manual for insurance agents!
Run _don't walk_ away from people who want to sell you a VUL. There is a reason the WSJ and every one else in the insurance industry slammed this investment product: it is detrimental to anyone's ability to create wealth. In this case the old rule still applies- buy a level term policy and invest the rest of the money you would be saving in a mutual fund with better performance and flexibility than a VUL! I also recommend that you read The New Rules of Money.
13 It's like an insurance salesman in your living room.
I think it is a very detailed, organized, and thought out sales pitch for variable universal life insurance (VUL). I came to the conclusion that the product could be useful some a few people with long term need for life insurance, a higher tax bracket, probable estate tax liabilities, and success at finding a policy with low fees. There are a lot of fees associated with the VUL policies which this book primarily pushes. Good investment performance would also be needed. I came to the conclusion that VUL would only make since for me if estate taxes would be an issue 30 to 40 years from now. Otherwise the buy term and invest the rest strategy would probably win out. He made a strong pitch for buying through an insurance professional (his profession), but it is my opinion that this would result in excess fees which would off-set much of the tax advantages. In my case I would already need to pay a for the preparation of the life insurance trust to give me the estate benefit I wanted. He also proposed that VUL was a much better choice than a non-deductible IRA (book was written pre-Roth IRA) because of all the trouble or cost for the paperwork required by non-deductible IRAs. Seemed to me there was as much paperwork involved with VUL, although much of it may be prepared by the insurance company. They should do something for those fees. It was a well written book and read well. Easier to put down though than it is to get an insurance salesman out of you living room.
14 All you need to know about Variable Universal Life.
If you are buying investments and don't know about the processes that Ben Baldwin explains in this book you are probably spending foolishly. Every family in America should, at least investigate this optimum method of addressing insurance and investment growth with very tax favorable qualities. Let me know if your VUL experience is as good as ours has been.
15 For anybody that calls themselves financial advisor
This book is for any life agent, financial advisor, CFP, CPA, or anybody who specializes in the financial services industry. This book is for agents who still sales whole life or universal life ,variable universal life can do anything that fixed insurance product can do and more. This book is also for those who sale the VUL, it will help you understand what it is and how it works, It is a hell of a lot more than just Life insurance. This book is also for buy term and invest the difference people, after reading this book you will understand that term investing the difference is a foolish mistake and a amiture one as well. If you are giving financial advise and not looking to see if the VUL can fit into their portfolio in some cases you might be leaving your client an incompleate financial plan. I would ask for all those specializing in these areas to please read this book. As of today there isn't a financial product that can do what the VUL can if structured properly. Please email me if anybody finds a better and more productive product.
16 All about variable and variable-universal life.
A book that covers various concepts about life insurance. The common thread running through this book is that variable-universal life is the ideal life insurance product. The author is endowed with impressive credentials.
