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updated Visible Policy site

Several years ago, folks on this forum provided extensive advice to me as I was first authoring the Visible Policy site:

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    It is a detailed analysis of my whole life insurance policy from New York Life. I should update it each year as a new annual statement arrives, but for various reasons I let that slip for a number of years. For the past couple weeks I have been playing catch up, and now it includes all 14 of the statements received to date.

I've also done some cleanup here and there, fixing broken links, extending the list of "frequently asked questions", and added a simpler spreadsheet just tracking actual performance over the years. I have not, however, updated the more complex spreadsheet with various models. So many of the curves on the site still need to be updated. However, the "current" chart has been updated, and it tracks the actual performance of the policy, comparing it with a BTID strategy. Suze Orman might be surprised ...

At any rate, the site is still completely non-commercial, and I continue to take pains to approach the subject neutrally and thoughtfully. I don't know how many of the "old guard" who helped me years ago are still around, but even if they aren't, some of you may be interested. The group seems pretty slow right now, and maybe we can get some discussion going.

-- Rich Franzen

Reply to
Rock
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How about giving us a paragraph or two synopsis (some of us are not detail people).

Thanks.

Reply to
HW "Skip" Weldon

Skip,

I'll have to give several answers. :)

Official Synopsis ===========The Visible Policy site is a web book about my participating whole life insurance policy. It includes background information, raw data, and analysis. By investigating one specific policy, visitors may better understand whole life insurance in general.

an unsolicited review (we later patched things up) ==============What a waste of time! You are definitely not a spammer, as your "website" would cause people to die of boredom well before the app was signed.

an overview ========I had a new participating whole life insurance policy. "What is it really, and how does it work?" I started researching and soon decided to share my results on the web. Thinking back to my childhood I remembered various scientific toys such as "The Visible Body" and "The Visible Brain". That inspired the name of my site, The Visible Policy. It reveals the policy in various ways. One is to show each annual statement, then dissect and reformulate them so visitors could easily track actual performance statistics year to year in a consistent way. (Start with

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and use the arrows at the top of the table to navigate the overlaidcomparisons.)

Another way was to formulate and explain those performance metrics. Anything has to be better than New York Life's bland, "your share of the divisible surplus". This led to Black Box Annual Gain (BBAG), Inflation Wave Ratio (IWR), and Linear Increase in Value (LIV).

I'm still open to suggestions and feedback, so I hope if any of this intrigues folks, they take a look and comment.

-- Rich

Reply to
Rock

Your interest is in comparing whole/term life insurance. I noticed a while back that Americans like the conclusion in the first sentence, then the explanation. Unless it's a murder mystery, in which case the only acceptable first-sentence conclusion is "I don't have a butler." The English apparently like the discussion, followed by the conclusion at the end.

I got to page two, but the equations you excerpted from your insurance course are not readable without term definitions. I might go back and try again, but what it looks like to me is that I'll have to read many pages of detail before arriving at a conclusion. Not that it isn't entertaining.

Reply to
dapperdobbs

I'm sorry if you got that impression, dapper, but that is not my main interest at all. The whole-life/BTID comparison is an afterthought. I added it once I realized that every other life insurance site on the web has commentary relating to BTID and permanent life. It occurred to me that in this multi-year project of mine, I need not speculate, nor repeat what someone else had said or written. Let's see an actual head-to-head comparison for a change. :)

Heh, glad you appreciated my attempt at wry humor.

Ack! I don't think you realized this was another attempt at wry humor. The except is intentionally over-the-top complex piece of an actuarial course syllabus. (Not a course I took; I just found it on the web. And I just added that section two days ago.) Do you think I should delete it?

Reply to
Rock

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