Whit & Wisdom

Happy New Year!

2011-01-06T19:24:00.000-06:00

And Merry Christmas to our Orthodox Christian readers, from Whit and Wisdom!

Importance of Disability Insurance

2010-11-27T19:56:00.000-06:00

Possibly the most important insurance you can purchase is Disability Insurance. Yes, you need health insurance. You might even want life insurance. But what good does life insurance do for your family if you are bed-ridden for ten years?

The answer is that life insurance does nothing. But Disability Insurance will. Nowadays there have been advancements in medicine that allow people to live much longer even while they're sick. This may keep you from passing on to the next plane of existence, but it doesn't keep your family safe from financial hardship.

You might be lucky enough to have a job that provides you with Group Long-term Disability coverage. Unfortunately for you, though, you can't keep most group disability plans. The only way to go is to secure individual disability insurance - this is the only way to protect your most important asset: your ability to earn an income. This is an asset that your family can't afford for you to lose.

So if you have the opportunity, you should consider purchasing individual disability insurance. Three of the top disability providers are Unum Provident, Berkshire Guardian, and MassMutual.

1) Unum Provident: The underwriting for Unum is the easiest of these three providers. That means that if you aren't in the best health, the standards for getting a policy without restrictions are lower than either MassMutual or Guardian. However, Unum is known for denying claims where MassMutual or Guardian would pay them.

2) Berkshire Guardian: The underwriting for Guardian is notoriously difficult. However, their premiere policy is very generous (if you can get past their vicious underwriting).

3) MassMutual: The underwriting for MassMutual is in the middle of the road. You won't be flat-out declined at MassMutual where you might be with Guardian. But where you might be covered fully with Unum, you might get a specific restriction with MassMutual. However, MassMutual is generous in their claims department. As long as you are under a doctor's care and can't work, they will pay your claim.

For any decision so important, it is best to consult a financial advisor. Find an insurance agency that specializes in disability coverage; an insurance agent will best be able to compare the policies for you.

No matter how you go about seeing which policy is right for you, disability insurance is important in your plan to take care of your family should something unexpected happen to you.

Advantages of a Small College Experience

2010-11-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

You walk into an auditorium with three hundred of your closest classmates. Your professor knows the names of five of you. He wrote the text book, but can he write you a recommendation to Law school? No.

Among the advantages of the liberal arts collegiate experience are mentoring relationships with your professors. If there are 2,000 students in your entire college, what are the chances that 300 of them will take the same class that you will - AND at the same time? Not going to happen.

If you choose to attend a small school, you won't have to be a thorn in the side of your professors; they will know your face and name within the first week. And with little more than a good personality and the willingness to try (even a little), you'll score a recommendation. Try that at Harvard when 300 other students are vying for the attention of the one man who spends more time researching his next textbook than looking over his TA's evaluation of your term papers...

Besides the attention that you can't help but receive, small colleges afford you access to everything. Some larger schools require reservations to use the treadmill - and those weeks in advance!

Perhaps the best reason to choose a small college for your higher education is the population. The group of people who choose a small college have something inherent in common; something appeals to the core of each and every student who wants to be in an environment that small colleges provide. Imagine the diverse demographic at a university with 12,000 students. Now imagine trying to seek out the 5 people you mesh with best.

All in all, every school has its own personality, just as people do. You may be a small school person, you may not. But if you think you might have it in you, go for it. The advantages FAR outweigh the pitfalls.

who's laughing now?

2010-07-22T18:04:00.000-05:00

Everybody seems to be so into reality television. And for a long time I've been adamant that most fictional television programs are more real than most reality television programming. I believe that the Fonz would and could jump a shark a lot more than I do that Paris Hilton ~~is smart enough to cook up even a harebrained scheme~~ is smart.

So... I guess I'm not that cool. Or at least not trendy.

But face it: there's a lot of really bad reality television out there. Even the shows that feature wildly entertaining spectacles, like Dancing with the Stars featuring Joey Fatone, are less believable to me than shows like Friends, where Jennifer Aniston and Winona Ryder kiss in order to distract critics from their questionable talent.

The point is, no show is either sad or believable like Last Comic Standing. I might have peed a little watching a semi-finalist loser, Kurt Metzger, tell America that “golf is how old people die.” And I just don’t laugh that hard. (Okay, unless I’m drunk.) But if you can make me laugh until I need Depends, it’s a tragedy if you don’t win $250,000. Not that I laughed much harder at that guy than a lot of the people that beat him. But still.

What really kills is that it’s pretty clear that some of the “losers” are funnier than the judges. Let’s hope that someone equally opinionated but infinitely more powerful than I am can help these incredible folks out in their careers, nipped so brutally in the bud as they have been.