New York Life must be on a revenue generation mission. My latest AARP magazine had an advertisement for their AARP group term insurance with an increased limit I hadn’t seen before. You can now “add to your family’s financial security with up to $100,000 in affordable life insurance” through this overpriced, hideous excuse for senior advocacy. Oops. Let my feelings out again.
We’ve run the numbers on $50,000 when that was the max and in previous posts found out just what a horrid deal they are offering. Now they want to double your pain. I just wonder how in the world spending far too much money for something “adds to your family’s financial security?”
If AARP and New York Life are anything, they are consistent. They have used the bully pulpit of advocacy for the elderly for as long as I can remember to pad their pockets. It amazes me 1. How they can do it with a clean conscience and 2. How they can do it legally at all? It seems to me if you turned someone in that was going door to door preying on the elderly selling a total rip off life insurance product they would be out of business in no time and probably sitting in a prison somewhere thinking up their next sick scheme.
The truly sad part about this is that AARP has the attention of most of the elderly in this country, not because they’ve done them well, but because they have branded themselves into our minds. They could sell good, fairly priced products and probably do better than they are right now because they would pull in a whole group of people who are too savvy to fall for their current game. They could do the right thing and win too.
Bottom line. The only way I can see this whole thing getting any worse is if Suze Orman goes on Oprah and comes up with some pea brain reason why it’s a good idea.
June 18th, 2009
I will post this very quietly so as not to wake the life insurance underwriters who would likely leap on an article like this to do away with the great non smoking rates that cigar smoking applicants are getting right now. By the way, I haven’t seen this information shared in Cigar Aficianado.
I remember as a child when the family would travel. My Mom was a cigarette smoker and my Dad smoked cigars. In the winter in Wyoming there isn’t a whole lot of rolling the window down for fresh air, so at the end of a 50 or 100 mile trip I often felt like I had inhaled the equivalent of a small tobacco plantation on fire. It was not pleasant.
While much has been made of cigarettes and their second hand smoke, very little has been said about cigars and both the first and second hand dangers they pose.
The article made some very good points that I honestly hadn’t considered. Cigars often have a great concentration of nicotine, the substance you get addicted to. The not inhaling into the lungs argument is a myth as the nicotine is readily absorbed into the blood through the lining of your mouth.
While cigars are not as frequently blamed as cigarettes for lung cancer, they are a major risk factor for pancreatic cancer, bladder cancer, heart disease, and lung disease.
While a person might only smoke a cigar or two a day (frequent smoker), they are larger and because they are wrapped differently than cigarettes, have more of the toxins and irritants than cigarettes. “A Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology study found higher levels of the toxin carbon monoxide at two cigar social events in San Francisco than on a busy California freeway”.
Currently there are a handful of companies that will approve non smoking rates for frequent cigar smokers and plenty of companies that will just about look the other way for occasional cigar use.
Bottom line. Consider the risk. Consider your life insurance and take advantage of the fact that there are at least a few companies that haven’t put frequent cigar smokers in the same category as the cigarette smoking counterparts. Consider those who get to share that smoke!
June 18th, 2009
