A man in Clearwater, FL, claimed to have grown a grapefruit that looked exactly like an orange - except that it was bigger and yellow.  The attempt at comparison is understandable given other features characteristic of both. What If Clients: 1) Don’t have access to a qualified retirement plan, or 2)...

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I remember reading an IRS Private Letter Ruling that had about it the worst method an insured/grantor could use to pay premiums on a policy inside an irrevocable trust. He was the sole owner of a business that each year cut a check directly to the carrier...

There’s the joke about the insurance advisor who said to her client:  “I have some bad news and some good news!  The bad news is your premiums will be higher than we thought!”  Client:  “Gee, what’s the good news?”  Advisor:  “It’s because you’re highly rated, so you won't have...

It wasn’t too long after I turned my face from home and toward the world that I bumped into the reality of having to fend for myself at mealtime.  With few culinary skills and less patience I quickly adopted the philosophy that if something took longer to make that it did to eat, then the dish wouldn’t...

Why is it that the most important item on an insurance application is allocated so little space?  Why is it that the second most important item gets equally parsimonious treatment? All that other stuff is necessary from either a practical or a legal standpoint, but when the dust of policy issue and underwriting...

The greatest distinction of criminal Alphonse “Scarface” Capone is that he is, still, the best-known person ever to appear on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List.”  But what is not as well-known is the reason why he was eventually imprisoned in 1933.  “Public-enemy No. 1” was jailed for tax evasion. ...

A simple coin toss is the most popular form of settling disputes or making decisions.  Subterfuge is often used to improve a participant’s odds.  If the caller sees through the “heads-I-win/tails-you-lose” ploy then the flipper can introduce a GMO known as a two-headed coin, usually a Washington...

A bidder at an auction purchased a Stradivarius and a Rembrandt for what he felt was an unbelievably low price.  He took them to an appraiser to see if they were authentic.  The appraiser informed him, “Yes, they are authentic. It’s just a shame that Stradivarius couldn’t paint and that Rembrandt...

It was an eye-opener the first time I walked into the office of a civil engineer back in the 1970s and saw, spread across an entire wall, the flowchart mapping out the relationship and time sequence of all that was involved in getting an eight-story building there in the Burg from ground-breaking to grand-opening. The...

It is the bane of high school mathematics students and a fixture in sidebars illustrating data discussed in a newspaper, magazine or website article: the basic X-Y coordinate graph. And two coordinates come into play when financially justifying an amount of life insurance coverage applied for.  (The...