This weekend, PBS was having one of those pledge drives that I can’t stand. Oh, I know, they need the money…but I don’t like having to watch them beg for it. I wish they had some kind of button I could press after I make my contribution that makes me able to see the programs instead of the beggars.
But PBS does keep its most popular shows for these pledge drives. Instead of 15 hours of Antiques Roadshow reruns (which I do love for the first 3 hours) they show Joseph Campbell lectures and the Suze Orman Women & Money special—heavy hitters in my opinion.
I watched the Suze Orman special yesterday and, as always enjoyed Suze Orman. In the financial services industry, many people disagree with Suze Orman’s advice regarding life insurance. In general, she promotes term insurance for everyone, as opposed to whole life (which builds cash values and has coverage that doesn’t end unless you stop paying premiums). She generally advises people to avoid whole life insurance because it is more expensive and cash values are not always a good form of return on your investment.
Many in the insurance industry disagree with this advice and a more cynical person might point out the difference in commissions between term insurance (low comissions) and whole life (high commissions) as the reason for this. Personally, I think it’s a little deeper than that. I think that insurance industry agents and employees are more upset about the sweeping generalization of her advice. In general, she’s right—term policies are fine. But there are always situations in which a whole life, universal life, variable life or equity indexed life insurance policy are good ideas too.Only the advisor working hands-on with the client will really know what the right choice is.
Another interesting point she brought up is that women should always have their own savings account separate from their husbands. For me, this advice was a little weird because I’ve always been very financially independent. I realized though, as I watched her show and watched the women in the audience take notes, that many women don’t have their own money.
How ever you and your family decide to handle your finances is obviously your own decision, but I think it is important for every woman to have her own financial identity. Whether you work and add an income to the family’s accounts or stay home and act as full time day care, housekeeping, chauffeur and cook. Every woman adds something important and invaluable to her family, shouldn’t she be able to have some financial independence to show for it?
Even if you simply take the money you save by finding free deals and sales at CheapToday and throw that in your savings account, you’ll be accumulating a little slush fund for yourself that no one else has jurisdiction over.
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Photo by designkryt