September 2009
59% of workers in their 30s would elect to stop contributing to Social Security and not receive benefits, once eligible. 51% of workers in their 40s; 44% of workers in their 50s; and 33% of workers 60 and over would also elect to stop contributing.
Source: Survey of about 1,200 Americans by Sun Life Financial
"They'll only go out of business if they keep doing what they've been doing, which is taking people's health insurance away if they get sick."
-- Dr. Howard Dean on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report (6/23/09), when asked if private health insurance companies would go out of business if a public health insurance option is introduced.
3 funniest actuary jokes
Two actuaries with shotguns sit in a duck blind. A flock in close formation flies in front of them. One takes aim and fires 10 yards behind the ducks. The other shoots 10 yards in front. They turn to each other, slap a high five and say, "Got 'em!"
An actuary is walking down the corridor when he feels a twinge in his chest. Immediately, he runs to the stairwell and hurls himself down. His friend, visiting him in the hospital, asks why he did that. The actuary replies, "The chances of having a heart attack and falling down the stairs are much lower than the chances of having a heart attack only."
When a marketing officer asked an actuary why he recommended selling more life insurance policies to 98-year-olds, the actuary replied, "According to our tables, very few of them die each year."
From the Archives: September 1926
Editor's note: the following three excerpts are from the Sept. 1926 issue of Life Insurance Selling, the year the magazine first debuted under the direction of Founding Editor Donald H. Clark.
Do You Talk Too Much?
An agent must talk to sell insurance but he must not talk enough to defeat his object. When he has given a man a good argument in favor of buying insurance and has covered all his points well, he should let his customer have the floor. Then, if he is an intelligent listener, he can find out what objections are in the customer's mind that he hasn't met. No one likes to be tired out with repetition, and a sales talk which bores a man does not deserve to be called a sales talk.
Are you superstitious?
o If you see the full moon over your left shoulder, it's a sure sign that your last sales talk was weak and you need to put a little more punch into your proposals.
o If you dream of falling down stairs it usually signifies that if you climb a few more you will get more business.
o If you dream of a beautiful blonde, it is certain that you will sell a policy to a beautiful blonde's husband in two days.
Life Insurance -- A Successful Profession for Women
By Mrs. Z.B. Subers, General Agent at Bainbridge, Georgia, for the Franklin Life
From the fullness of my experience of about eight years as a Life Insurance solicitor I have seen fulfilled the visions which I entertained when I entered this work. I have seen homes provided for widows and the fatherless; funds provided to pay honest debts, and education provided for orphans. I have in mind a case where the mother of a nine-year-old boy was a hopeless inmate of an insane asylum. The father permitted me to write a policy to be paid to the son on the Monthly Income Plan, and today the $10,000 which the Company was called upon to pay before the second premium fell due is carrying that boy through grammar school, and will carry him through high school and college, and undoubtedly there will be a little nest egg left for him to start in business. I am never happier than when I am placing an installment policy for the education of a child.
