Of all the different types of policies, the universal life insurance seems to be the most favorite among today’s policyholders. It is a much later innovation, conceived to meet a modern need. However, it does not mean that the earlier policies have all become redundant. No, even term life, the original life insurance policy, has quite a big following even today and so have the whole life policies. Nonetheless, people seem to prefer universal life because it combines the low cost protection of the term life with the saving elements of a whole life to provide a perfect solution to modern insurance need.I am sure you are aware that the term life is the original type of insurance policy. Indeed, life insurance may have actually started in the form of burial clubs and artisans’ guilds in the Middle Ages, but the term insurance that we know of today is a much refined version. It is a pure life insurance policy valid a temporary period only. You can buy one for a period of 1/5/10/15/20/25/30 years. Since these policies do not accrue any cash value, you can have a large coverage at a very reasonable rate.However, on the con side, unless you die within the valid period, the term insurance policies offer no return. The whole life policies were next conceived as its antidote. They had saving element incorporated in them. However, such policies were little too expensive and premium payment mode was little too rigid. The universal policies came next. It became instant hit because it offered more flexibility when it comes to cost and coverage.Indeed, if you want to take advantage of the market without loosing the security of the life policy, there can be nothing better than a universal life. Following are some of its salient points:• It is a permanent policy valid for the life of the insured and so whenever the insured dies, his beneficiary is sure to get the benefit.
• These policies are slightly overpriced and amount paid above the cost of insurance is credited to a cash value account.
• Interest too is credited to the account. It may either be determined by the insurer or pegged to financial indexes such as stock, bond etc.
• If you fail to pay the premium, the amount will be debited from this account, thus keeping policy in force in spite of occasional lapses.Today we also have variable universal insurance, which allows the cash value to be directed to a number of separate accounts that operate like a mutual fund. However, since these policies are equity based, they can offer higher return, but if the market goes down, they offer greater risk too. If you are buying the policy solely for insurance purpose, such a policy may not be a very good idea because the death benefit will be paid as long as you have enough cash value to pay the costs of insurance in the policy.However, it is not for me to tell you what type of policy to buy. Receive different categories of life insurance quote on line and then decide. All said and done, I cannot stop myself from adding that, for life insurance purpose, you will do well if you buy only a term life insurance. It is true that a term life does not offer cash value, but its rates are so low that only a financial fool will expect it from the policy. Instead, the financial advisers say that one should buy a low cost term life for insurance purpose and then invest the difference in separate fund.However, not every type of term insurance is cheap. The term life insurance no medical exam policy for example is so expensive that the concept of investing the difference cannot be applicable here; in fact, the price structure of such a policy does not leave any difference to invest. Sometimes they are as expensive as a universal life policy is. Yet, such policies are no less popular because they too have some unique advantages.No medical policies provide instant coverage. You apply today and if you qualify, your family will start being covered by the policy from tomorrow and that too for the full amount. Of course, just as every other case, suicide within first two years is always excluder from its purview; otherwise, every other type of death in included under this policy. You may wonder why this policy is so expensive. Actually, without the medical test, the carriers can never work out the exact cost of insurance and so they charge more. Remember, they are here to do business, not for charity.
Universal Life Insurances Can Be Popular – But Is It For You?
Education With Personal Objectives
Most parents do not start their children’s primary education with goals in mind, with personal objectives. But, when general public education began to develop, there were objectives underlying its foundation. Many would suggest that Horace Mann was the founder of the modern public American education system. This statement by no means implies that he was the founder of all educational programs that existed during his primacy, and surely he did not contribute to institutions that preceded him. His focus was upon educating the greater public. Additionally, his strategies served the rapidly developing American Industrial Revolution. The Mann philosophies were implemented to a large degree for the purpose of assuring that our young citizens of European descent were sufficiently educated to both engage in necessary menial tasks, care for the equipment, and to manage the new manufacturing infrastructure developing across our young America.
The Mann-concept based educational system was sufficient to buoy our economy for the primary benefit of the Anglo population and provided a significant edge to this group in conjunction with Jim Crow laws that legislated separate and scarcely ever equal systems for people of all other colors. Additionally, because World Wars I, II, and subsequent major wars in Asia also decimated competitive industrial and knowledge assets, as well as trained labor forces in Europe and Asia through the mid-1970′s, America thrived. However, since then, America has suffered losses in superiority in manufacturing processes, technology, education delivery. Additionally, we never elected to develop a rich common culture by which to bond citizens. As such, the United States economic machine has surrendered much of its superiority to others internationally.
With nationalism scarcely an hors-d’oeuvre on their menu, in favor of profit, a host of large American companies have elected to take their manufacturing facilities to foreign countries for the benefit of lower employee wage costs, easier access to production materials, less critical environmental regulations, and lower tax burdens. Not only does this take money out of our country, but many thousands of jobs are lost to international populations annually. Sometimes companies simply contract for services to be performed abroad that could employ and feed thousands of Americans very handsomely. And, to add insult to injury, many American corporations that cannot transfer their work or facilities abroad lobby for and take advantage of legislation that allows foreign nationals to acquire jobs within the continental U.S. (e.g., H1B, and J1 visas). Don’t be fooled by employer outcries suggesting that the jobs cannot be otherwise filled with available citizens. The employers often pay foreign employee counterparts the legal minimum rate, even asking Americans to train them before the Americans are released from their positions.
What this means regarding education is that there is a growing disconnect between employers, and the U.S. educational system (from primary through advanced degrees), with a lesser assurance of the value of any diploma, certificate or degree in the marketplace. A self-serving, liberal arts education narcissist might suggest “We do not educate students to perform tasks. We leave that type of training to trade schools”. Colleges and universities, with their increasing ranges of majors and rising costs, are graduating only fifty percent of those who they admit, and most schools no longer align their curricular objectives with specific needs of the business sector. They no longer promote delivery of market-valuable degrees, rather sell the “opportunity” for students to develop themselves in robust, information based, experience rich environments. So, increasing numbers of students, if graduating from college at all, manage to do so with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of school loan debt, diverse experiences, but no job prospects or offers only in the customer service and sales sectors. The jobs attained are often of no relation to that which they studied.
Remember when Aunt Mary would pinch you on your little cheek and ask, “What do want to be when you grow up?” Everyone laughed as you answered in a manner that reflected your very limited exposure to the fact that people “did anything that matters” other than spending time with you. As seemingly unimportant as those scenarios may have appeared, we should be earnestly asking those questions of our children regularly, from an early age. We should provide them with as broad a range of productive options as we can identify in our research. We should enhance their 3R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) skills as far as we are able (with assistance) as foundations as they also learn to code, play instruments, to compare, contrast, interpret, problem solve, learn to design and handle tools and machines, interact effectively with others, and demand more of the world around them as they grow. We should show them there are demonstrable numbers of cultures and species that share the planet, with diverse world surfaces, deep waters, vast skies, and uncharted space to consider. There are colors, sounds, aromas, textures, flavors, thoughts, and planes of existence beyond our senses. We should emphasize that we vigorously apply ourselves and learn today, tomorrow and the next day so that one day they will be able to select preferred options, not the detritus roles left by others, secondary systems and markets, leftovers for the inadequately prepared. With such perspectives and targets as these, our children will seek a higher level of achievement and experience education with personal objectives.