What's Wrong With Your Life Insurance [Hardcover]

Norman F. Dacey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1989

A completely revised and expanded edition of the controversial bestseller that for more than 25 years has alerted hundreds of thousands of Americans to the abuses of the life insurance industry.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A standard "cash value" life insurance policy will pay its prescribed death benefit in any year the prescribed premium is paid up, and the premium usually is reduced eventually to zero by an ever-increasing annual "dividend." Nevertheless, in this updated version of a controversial 1963 title, Dacey ( How to Avoid Probate! ) denounces the insurance industry as a whole for misusing policyholders' money. Huge surpluses from lapsed policies, investments and favorable mortality experience, argues the author, finance exorbitant executive salaries and agent compensation. He sees deception everywhere in the modern insurance world of policies combining mortality charges with a savings/investment program. The variety of such formulas is almost infinite, their complexity confusing to the prospect they are meant to fool (and to the reader), as Dacey demonstrates exhaustively. His uncomplicated advice: "Buy cheaper term-insurance and invest the difference."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Just about everything is wrong with your life insurance, according to Dacey, unless you have simple term insurance. In this scathing update of his 1963 book of the same name, Dacey, also author of How To Avoid Probate (1965), catalogs the numerous abuses and deceptions he sees being foisted upon an unsuspecting public. Dacey has an inflammatory style ("avaricious industry" and "financial Moloch" are representative epithets), but amply demonstrates, largely from the industry's own sources, how agents strive to sell high-commission cash value policies that leave customers under-insured. His advice: Buy term and invest the difference. While this is a valuable source, it has an enormous amount of detail and is far too repetitious. Careful editing would have made it leaner, if not meaner. Nevertheless, recommended.
- Jack Ray, Loyola/Notre Dame Lib., Baltimore
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 452 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan General Reference (October 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0025293508
• ISBN-13: 978-0025293502
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #759,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Insurance > Life

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST READ for anyone who's planning to buy life insurance!, March 20, 2000

By 

Mark G (Orlando, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What's Wrong With Your Life Insurance (Hardcover)

This text smashes the myths put forth by the big life insurance companies about how life insurance REALLY works! If you are planning on protecting your family's well being through the purchase of a life insurance policy, READ THIS BOOK FIRST! If you already OWN a life insurance policy, this text will REALLY open your eyes. (not to mention, probably get you VERY angry!) You will save yourself a LOT more then the purchase price of this book. I guarantee it!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Real AMMO for your next talk with an insurance salesman, February 26, 2001

By 

Thomas G. Haws "Thomas G. Haws" (Mesa, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What's Wrong With Your Life Insurance (Hardcover)

Yes, this book is an idealogical tirade against the concept of permanent insurance and the companies that have pushed it for years. But it also presents tremendous amounts of interesting factual information. This book will get you asking the questions that really matter:

1) How could anybody pretend to insure me permanently against the most certain event in life--DEATH?

2) Why should I need insurance after I retire?

3) Why and when do I really need insurance?

Yes. This book will make you spit bullets. Your Grandpa and your life insurance salesman friends will not like this book. Try to be understanding of them. They have been trained to think buying insurance is like buying a car; why would anybody want to lease when he could buy? But if you have read and agreed to "The Millionaire Next Door," you will agree that you have little need for permanent life insurance.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The BIBLE of Life Insurance Product Knowledge, May 15, 2002

By 

Max H. Herr (California, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What's Wrong With Your Life Insurance (Paperback)

For anyone concerned about the vast array of life insurance products, Dacey is right on target about the way cash value and term life insurances work. His analyses are timeless, because the products are constructed the same today as when he originally wrote the book. "There is nothing new under the sun . . . ."
Despite the ever-changing assortment of "titles" the cash value industry puts on its policies, the fundamentals are the same, always have been, always will be: as you get older, the risk of dying and the cost of insurance increases; if you don't increase the premium with time, or create the correct level premium from day one, the product is most likely to collapse at some point in the future when you can least afford that event (AKA: Universal Life -- see the "guaranteed" column in your policy's illustration pages, not the "based on current assumptions" column), because "current assumptions" that create initial premiums are artificial -- there can be no guarantee that they will remain the same into the future (and most never do).
Buy AND READ this book--all of it!!--to get a thorough working knowledge of the industry, its products, and understand your true need for INCOME PROTECTION, not LIFE INSURANCE that your cash value life agent wants to sell you. Do business with someone who also understands and believes in Dacey's "buy term and invest the difference" concept. They're out there!!