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Bragging Post

Twelve months ago, this life insurance blog didn’t exist.  In the past 6 months, I’ve taken 24 life insurance applications from leads I’ve generated solely through this website, with just over $30,000 commission as a result of thoseapps.  Let me stop for a second here and say I realize that $30,000 is not a whole lot of money, but if you compare what this blog has generated with my other website (HuntleyWealth.com), the results are amazing. 

I spent thousands on that Huntley Wealth site, and have never generated one sale from it, and here I have this simple blog bringing in over 500 visitors per month and converting the traffic into leads.  It’s really quite laughable when you compare the two sites.  My Huntley Wealth site is beautiful, but it was set up all wrong so no one can find it on a google search. 

In fact, twelve months ago, I had no web presence at all.  Now, you can do a Google search for terms such as “insurance for cigar smokers” or “life insurance that pays you back”, and I’m on the 1st page!  A year ago, I was only licensed in the state of California.  Now I hold non-resident licenses in 15 states and am selling life insurance all over the U.S..  My insurance buddies and general agency have begun asking me how I built a website that successfully generates sales so quickly.  Well, let me start by telling you what hasn’t worked for me.  

I’ve been a life insurance agent for just over 5 years and have tried numerous methods to market my insurance business, none of which have succeeded until I learned how to sell life insurance on my website.  Here’s a quick run-down of some of the marketing techniques I’ve tried that have not been successful:  Mail campaigns (postcards and letters), networking groups, referral incentive programs (gave away a 42″ HDTV once), advertising on websites’ banner ads and in newspapers, and the most costly of all… purchasing life insurance leads.  None of these worked for me, at least not well.

HERE’S WHAT WORKED FOR ME.  Finally, an insurance buddy referred me to this website about Building an Online Insurance Agency.

Rick Liuag, the owner of this site, changed my outlook on sales completely.  I realized that most prospects these days are searching the web for information about life insurance before they buy it, and I needed a way to capture some of that market.  You can probably guess he introduced me to the idea of creating this blog.  I would recommend this website to anyone who is opening a new insurance business or already an insurance agent and wants to market your business effectively online.  Thank you, Rick!

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When a famous actress like Brittany Murphy dies at a young age, google gets inundated with questions about whether or not the star took drugs and if they owned life insurance, and how much.  The drug searches seem logical.  It’s less commonly known, however, why another popular search is for details about the deceased actor’s life insurance policy.  People want to know whether or not he/she had one, how much the death benefit is, and if it’s going to pay out if they died of a drug overdose.  So let’s answer these questions.

If Brittany Murphy purchased her life insurance policy less than two years ago, the policy is said to be in its contestability period.  During this period, if the insured dies, the life insurance carrier has the right to go back to the original application and launch an investigation into whether or not the insured lied about anything on the application.  If they did, and if they find a material misrepresentation (such as answering no to a question about whether they’ve ever taken any types of non prescription drugs when in fact they have), then the insurance carrier can deny the claim.

This exact thing happened when RBC/Liberty Life Insurance Co. learned that Heath Ledger had died.  He had taken out a policy just 6 months before his death.  Technically, they should not have paid out the $10 Million death benefit because he lied on his application about his drug use, which would have altered their decision to issue a policy.  Unfortunately, his lawyers sued RBC and it was such bad PR for them that they reached a settlement with the family to quite them.  Not fair but it happens when famous people are involved.

If Brittany Murphy bought her policy more than two years ago, she’s in the clear.  Even if we do find out she died of a drug overdose, and even if she lied about drug use on her insurance application, they’ll still have to pay out.  In fact, you can even commit suicide after the two year contestability period and the carrier still has to pay out.

Next, why would Brittany Murphy need life insurance.  It is publicized that she earned several million dollars during her acting career.  She earned $1,000,000 for her role in “Uptown Girls” and $4,000,000 for her her role in “Little Black Book”.  It is not public knowledge, but it would make sense that her two biggest paydays were for “8 Mile” and “Just Married”, and she appeared in at least a dozen other films that hit the big screen.  So let’s just assume she made $15,000,000 during her career, and her net worth at the time of her death was $10,000,000.<

If you die with a net worth of $10 Million in 2009, you have to worry about estate taxes.  The IRS will only allow you to transfer $3.5 Million tax free to your beneficiaries.  After that, every dollar you pass down gets taxed at a rate of 45%.  In this case, 45% times $6.5 Million would equal a $2,925,000 tax bill her estate would owe.  Here's where life insurance comes into play.  Life insurance is often used to pay estate taxes.  So with a net worth of $10,000,000 you can see that a policy with about a $3 Million death benefit would be in order just to pay the tax bill.  Then, of course, you have her loss of income that life insurance can be used to replace.

Now, since Murphy had no children, she probably left most of her estate to her husband.  You can leave an unlimited amount of money to your spouse without incurring a tax bill, but then he will have to worry about estate planning down the line.  I've also read Murphy was extremely close to her mother, and wouldn't be surprised if she left half of her estate or more to her.  In this case, her estate would owe taxes on whatever portion given to her mother that exceeded $3.5 Million.

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If you’re like me, you HATE paying insurance premiums.  I can’t stand lining Farmers Insurance’s pockets year after year as I pay my auto premiums and never file a claim.  Perhaps you feel the way about long term care insurance.  You know you need it, but are afraid you’ll pay into it for years and never use it.  Wouldn’t that be a terrible waste of money!  Well, my friend, I have good news for you.  Finally Lincoln Financial came out with a life insurance and long term care product that we can all live with.  If you don’t use it, you can get your money back! 

It’s hard to imagine getting excited about a life insurance product, but with 100% return of premium at any time during the life of the policy and long term care benefits to boot, the revolutionary, new Lincoln Money Guard Reserve is as exciting as it gets in the insurance world. 

3 Key Benefits of LincolnMoney Guard Reserve

1. Return of Premium:  The Money Guard solves a big issue raised by opponents to return of premium life insurance… lack of liquidity.  You see, with a traditional term life insurance policy, you could add a return of premium, and theoretically get back 100% of your premium, but not unless you kept your policy in force for the entire term.  So say you bought a 15 year term policy, and decided after 10 years you no longer needed the policy.  You might only get back 50% of the premiums you’ve put it up to that point. 

If you cancelled the policy after just two or three years, you might not get back anything at all.  As you near the end of the term, you get back a higher percentage.  Not so with LincolnMoney Guard Reserve.  You could deposit your premium today, and later if you decide you no longer need the coverage, get back 100% of your premiums, whether it’s 5 years from now or 5 months from now, no strings attached (less any long term benefits paid out or loans & withdrawals taken, of course).

2. Long Term Care:  For a typical client (65 year old female, non smoker), a $100,000 single premium could provide up to $500,000 of long term care reimbursement benefits if she gets sick and needs care, and the benefits are income tax free.  I’ve read that 60% of people 65 and older will need some form of long term care during their life.  The question is how will they pay for it? 

According to the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, the average cost for a private room in a nursing home is $77,745 per year, and the average annual cost of living in an assisted living facility is $35,628.  Medicare does not cover extended nursing home care stays, so you can see where an extra $500,000 could provide substantial protection for baby boomers’ and seniors’ nest eggs.

Of course, the big difference between traditional long term care insurance and Lincoln Money Guard Reserve is that with the traditional variety, if you don’t use it, you lose it, right?  With Money Guard Reserve, if you don’t use it, you can either get your money back or if you die without using it, your deposit blossoms into a life insurance death benefit.

3.  Life Insurance:  Unlike traditional LTC policies, Money Guard Reserve clients don’t just get to use its benefits if they get sick.  If they never use the long term care benefits, their beneficiaries will receive and income tax free death benefit.  So take the 65 year old, typical, female client again.  For that same client, a $100,000 single premium provides $166,000 of life insurance.

I think the Money Guard Reserve would sell wonderfully if its only two components were long term care insurance with return of premium at any time.  But this product also adds life insurance!  Add the fact that there’s no medical exam, and the policy gets issued in just a couple weeks, and the Lincoln Money Guard Reserve is a slam dunk.

For an illustration of how the Money Guard Reserve could help you, call me, Chris Huntley, at (619)564-4873.

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With the rough economy, I know some people are struggling to pay their bills.  If one of those bills is a life insurance premium, here are some ideas of how to keep your policy’s benefits without breaking the bank.

1. Reduce the face value - For term and permanent insurance, most carriers will allow you to reduce your face value one time, which will lead to adjusted, lower premiums.

2. Reduce the premium - If you have a universal life or whole life policy with some cash value built up in it, you may be able to reduce your premium without affecting your policy’s guarantees.  Or you might be able to skip a payment or several.  In fact, some people may be able to stop making payments for years.  Even if you’ve had a term policy, you may be able to skip or stop making payments if it was issued more than 10 years ago and if you added a return of premium rider.  Note:  BE VERY CAREFUL to check on how reducing your premium will affect the policy’s guarantees.  Ask your agent or the carrier first before making any changes. 

3. Purchase less expensive policy - Term prices have been coming down.  You may be able to replace your current policy with a new one with the same benefits for lower cost.  If you have a whole life policy, how about a 1035 exchange into a less expensive guaranteed universal life policy, if applicable?  For example, many whole life insurance policy holders could cut their premiums in half by applying their cash value to a less expensive, universal life policy.  They’ll still have coverage for life, but without the high costs.  Of course, they’ll still have to be healthy to do this because they’ll have to apply for a new policy.

4. Reduced Paid-Up - Some permanent policies allow you to eliminate your premium payments completely by taking a lower, paid up death benefit.  For example, you pay $1000 per year for $500,000 of coverage.  Your reduced paid-up option might give you $150,000 of coverage for the rest of your life without paying another premium.

5. Sell your policy - Another option is a life settlement (for seniors).  Why let the policy lapse or take reduced death benefit if you could sell your policy for 3 times the surrender value?  You may be able to take the life settlement amount a purchase a single premium life insurance policy with it with a higher face value than the reduced paid up amount.

6. Ask for help  - Last, what about asking your children (or whoever the beneficiaries are) to help with the premiums?  If they are ultimately to benefit from the policy, they may be willing to subsidize your premiums or take them over completely.  This especially makes sense if you’re not in great health.

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Looking for a creative way to market your business?  Use magic.  People love it.  I incorporate an insurance sales pitch into the trick, but any business can tweak the wording and use this. 

It’s a mind reading trick, and is absolutely great for trade conventions.  I’ve used it successfully at a medical convention and landed some very high net worth doctors.  I’ve also sponsored a hole at a golf event and used it there, which was nice because everyone stops at your hole and usually has to wait a minute to tee off, so you have a captive audience.

The trick goes like this.  You have 6 small, blank pieces of paper, 3 right in front of you, and 3 in front of the prospect.  You tell them you are a world famous mind reader and that you will be reading their mind.  For your first mind reading act, ask them to look into your eyes and think of any boy’s name.  As they think about it, you ask, “Okay, do you have it?  Good.  Write it down,” and you start writing on your 1st piece of paper simultaneously the words “Nothing out of pocket”.

Next, you crumple up the piece of paper you wrote on and stick it in their hand, telling them to hold on to your answer, and that now that you have guessed, they may reveal their answer.  Let’s say they tell you, “Steve”, and reveal the paper that says Steve.  You act indifferently to this revelation, or with a smug smile as if you know you guessed it correctly.

Next, you tell them to think of any type of car in the world and write it down.  You stare in their eyes, give a nod like you’re onto them, and then you write down “Steve”.  Meanwhile, they write down their car, let’s say a “Lexus LS430″.  You repeat the end of step 1, crumple up your paper and give it to them, and have them reveal that it was the Lexus.

Last, you say, “My goodness, you’ve got a difficult mind to read, so for my third and final mind reading, I’m going to ask for an easy one.  You’re going to give me a 50/50 shot of answering this correctly, just to make this easy for me.”

Now you tailor this to your own business, but I say…

“But first, sir, I have to come clean about an itty bitty secret I’ve been keeping from you.  I’m not actually a world famous mind reader.  I actually make a living helping high net worth individuals purchase life insurance with no cost out of their pocket.  Now sir, if you could qualify for a $5 Million dollar life insurance policy, would you rather pay $100,000 annual premium for it or would you rather pay nothing?  Just write down ‘out of pocket’ or ‘nothing out of pocket’, sir.”

They write down “nothing out of pocket” every time.  At this time you write down the answer they revealed from question 2, Lexus LS430.  You crumple it up and hand it to them, and ask them to reveal their answer to question 3.  They say “nothing out of pocket”, of course.

You now have all three of their answers written down in front of you, and you say, “Okay, let’s go ahead and see how I did at reading your mind.”  They open up the three crumpled pieces of paper, and you nail it every time. 

Just make sure you have some way of getting their contact info… a sign up sheet, enter their name to win a prize, etc.  I have really wowed people with this one, so in most cases I was able to just ask for their business cards directly and got permission to follow up.

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One injustice in the life insurance world is that people who are non smokers, who have recently quit, still have to pay tobacco ratings, which are at least double the premium of non tobacco rates.  For example, if you haven’t touched a cigarette in 6 months, the best offer you’ll get from most carriers is Preferred Tobacco.  In most cases, you must have quit for over 1 year to get back to Standard Non Tobacco rates.  Then for each year you stay away from cigarettes, you climb the ladder of rates available to you, starting with Standard Plus after 2 years, then Preferred after 3, then Preferred Plus after 3 to 5 years with most carriers.

I think it’s unfair that non tobacco users should be classified this way.  RBC, also known as Liberty Life, has done something about it.  They will now consider non smokers for their best rating, Preferred Plus Non Tobacco, after only 12 tobacco-free months!  How big of a deal is this?  Huge!

Take a 50 year old who quit smoking 12 months ago, but is otherwise in great health and a preferred risk for insurance carriers.  If he wants a 20 year level term with a $500,000 face value, the best he’ll do anywhere besides RBC/Liberty Life is at American General where he’ll be rated at Standard Non Tobacco and pay $1714 annually.  If he went to RBC/Liberty Life, however, he could get Preferred Plus and pay just $1260 annually for the same coverage!

So, attention all cigarette smokers who are getting ripped off on life insurance.  Here’s an incentive… quit now, and after 12 short months, you can get the same rates as your non smoking Olympic athlete neighbor.

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As a life insurance agent, I hear a lot of stories about death.  Some of the decedents have life insurance and some don’t.  The gift of life really is amazing, and we truly never know what freak accident could victimize us tomorrow and leave our loved ones to make due without our presence.  So the first thing that I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving is that I’ve not fallen victim to a “what are the odds?” disaster, nor has anyone else in my immediate family.

I shouldn’t be working today, so let me finish with a few thoughts about why Thanksgiving is the perfect time to buy life insurance.  First of all, if tonight you ate a tub of mashed potatoes swimming in gravy, a half a pig, and washed it down with a Coors, you’re practically begging for a heart attack.  Can I interest you in some life insurance… perhaps term life insurance, to protect your family?

If your wife is making you wake up at 4 in the morning tomorrow on Black Friday and dragging you to the local mall where you’ll play the part of her bag-carrying mule, and you’ll jam into the stores sardine style with hundreds of other shoppers (many of whom have Swine Flu and are contagious), and you’re spending the day stressed about all the money exiting your bank account, well, I just don’t see how you’ll live another week.  Can I interest you in some life insurance… perhaps whole life or universal life insurance to protect your family?

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It’s official.  I’m now a licensed life insurance agent in Wyoming.  I believe that makes 9 or 10 states total.  I do the majority of my life insurance and annuity business in California, but have also done several deals in Arkansas, Georgia, Arizona, and Colorado.  I had a client call me from Colorado looking to purchase life insurance on her mother in Parkman, WY, which I understand is near Sheridan, WY.  This is why I had to get my non resident license in Wyoming.

Parkman itself is a tiny town in the hills, so it will be interesting to see how far the medical examiner has to travel to get to the proposed insured’s house.  I wonder if the closest examiner might live in Billings, MT.  Please note that even if you live in a state where I am not licensed, I can help you with your life insurance needs.  What I do is take the application over the phone and mail it to you.  While it’s in transit, I get a non resident license.  By the time you receive the application, review it to make sure nothing has changed, and sign and date, I’m already licensed in your state.

This was an interesting case.  My client in Parkman, Wy, is a 69 year old female.  She had a pulmonary embolism in her lung about 10 years ago for which she received anti-coagulating injections and cumadin.  No problems since.  She also takes medication for obsessive compulsive disorder.  I called around to several underwriters and everyone said she could be considered for standard non tobacco.

I loved dealing with the daughter in Denver, Co.  She will be paying the life insurance premiums.  She got a quote from a local agent, who quoted her $3700 annually through Allianz for an adjustable premium universal life insurance policy.  Allianz is wonderful and I’ve sold several annuities through them, but they don’t always have the lowest universal life pricing on the market.  In this particular case, my client was not interested in building up any cash value.  I was able to quote her $238 monthly (works out to $2856 annually) and save her 23% off of the Allianz quote.  It’s through Aviva, their Advantage Builder Series II product, which is a no frills, guaranteed universal life contract with a no lapse guarantee.

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Visualize a stocky, motorcycle riding, work in my shop all day, gun carrying, manly man, and you’ve got a picture of my client who gave me a big bear hug in our last meeting as we closed a life insurance deal we’ve been working on.  That’s my first hug I’ve ever received from a male client.  Why the unexpected embrace?  Well, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I simply worked a life insurance miracle with him.  I  helped this man and his family more, I believe, than I’ve ever helped another client.

He and his wife came to me with whole life insurance policies that they were paying over $700 per month in premiums, and they could simply no longer afford the premium.  I cut their payment to $330 per month, with better benefits.  They had had these policies for years (like, over 20 years).  When they originally purchased the whole life policies, their agent had told them that at some point, their cash value account would accumulate to the point where they could stop paying their premium, and the cost of insurance would be deducted from their cash value, which would sustain the policy. 

Well, 20 plus years later, we ran illustrations on their whole life policies, and found out that if they were to stop paying premiums today, their death benefits would begin decreasing immediately in year two.  But we didn’t just find out they couldn’t quit paying premiums.  We also found out they couldn’t reduce their premiums without their death benefit being affected.

A special note here is that both husband and wife have had health changes since originally purchasing their policies.  The man is now a smoker, and you should know that life insurance for smokers costs on average double to triple the premium for a non smoker.  The wife had a melanoma just a few years ago. 

When all was said and done, we made a simple change to the husband’s whole life insurance policy and added some term insurance, giving him better benefits than what he had before for about $330 per month.  The wife’s deal was better.  I cut her premiums out all together and got her a 120% higher death benefit guaranteed for life, never to make another premium payment.

Do you think I deserved a hug for this?  Would you hug me if I saved you $370 per month and gave you better life insurance benefits?  The way I look at it, I was just doing my job, but I certainly appreciated the act of thanks.  Please note that if you have a whole life insurance policy, on average I can save you 50% or more off your premiums, so give me a call to discuss your case at 619-564-4873.

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