BreadWithSpam[at]fractious.net wrote:

- quote -

A quick look shows that our bargain basement friend, Vanguard, offers VAs. I
don't know anything beyond that. -- Doug

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.

On Feb 14, 12:40*pm, BreadWithS...[at]fractious.net wrote:

- quote -

Instead of assuming that "low-load" insurers will provide policies
that perform better than the traditional insurers in the long run, I
suggest that you get comparable illustrations of policies from several
insurers. In 2002 I did this for universal life policies and did not
find that the low-load policy looked better, and I discussed the the
possible reasons for this.

Newsgroups: misc.invest.financial-plan
From: beliav...[at]aol.com (Beliavsky)
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 18:45:10 CST
Local: Sun, Nov 10 2002 7:45 pm
Subject: low load life insurance
http://groups.google.com/group/misc....d30b5377160753

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.

It appears, having done a bit of research on it, that
the typical commission (and surrender fee period) on
VULs is quite expensive, and I'm hesitant to get involved
with or suggest insurance based products in most cases
(ie. VAs). However, there are places where these
structures can make some sense - in particular, I'm
looking at them in the context of estate planning and
setting up an irrevocable trust with the kids as
beneficiaries and funding that trust with a VUL -
it make sure the kids get a nice payout if the
parents die before having accumulated and transferred
a lot of money in, the money there grows tax-deferred,
and since it's paid in over the course of years, if
the premiums are below the gift tax threshold, it's
a means of getting assets out of the estate without
simply gifting them outright.

But the vast majority of these things are apparently
sold with those outragously high commissions, and I'm
not sure how competitive the actual insurance rates
inside them are.

I've found a couple of no(low)-load providers -
Ameritas and TIAA-CREF. Are there any others? How
do these compare to buying from more traditional
providers (with surrender fee periods) like AXA
or AIG, for example?

(FWIW, this isn't for me and, frankly, I'm still a
little skeptical of the need for these kinds of
policies at all, but given the irrevocable trust
involved, I don't see how alternatives like buying
term and investing the difference can work as well,
plus is seems kind of difficult to really compare
the cost of insurance inside a VUL against term -
other thoughts about this, of course, are also welcome)

Thanks, all!


--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.