Today there are many things being done at government level to help people that hurting financially.  When you see someone that is a friend benefiting from these you are grateful; but is this really the best answer?  Lets compare what happens to consumers (not big evil corporations) when the help comes directly from the government, and not through the private sector by comparing two scenarios.

During college I was offered a job as a janitor at a small business in the town where I was attending college.  Jobs were hard to find, and when the offered me $5.00 per hour to push a broom and scrub toilets I considered it a great offer.  After being faithful at these tasks and anything else I was asked to do for a while the pay started going up.  I did everything I could to be the best employee possible.  One day I was shocked when the owner walked up to his son and I and was frustrated that we were not "committed" enough.  I was confused and somewhat insulted... but still grateful for the job.  His son fired back that he didn't know what the owner was talking about.  To that end, the owner stated that he wanted us to get our feet wet.... be at work early, be so committed that we left every night with a headache.  What??!!??  But I was grateful for a job and set about examining my actions every day to figure out what he was talking about.  Guess what, when I reached the point that I was "invested" in the business, I really did leave every night with a headache.  That was because every customer was my best customer, every issue they had was my task to provide a solution for.  Any customer lost was unacceptable... my rules, not the bosses.  Then the boss would come through and say... John, how much do we pay you now?  Then the pay raise would come.  And come they did.  By the time I left the company at graduation I was pulling in double that pay (more than most men with families in town made), having my tuition paid at college, and a company vehicle.  But most of all, I left with experience that I still use today.  My customers are still King, I will do anything I am able to take care of them and give them a good experience.

Now contrast that to an experience my parents had yesterday:

Ahead of a predicted ice storm they go into a small (family owned) chain dairy store.  When they walk they are greeted by the glare of a college age man that is put out that he has several customers coming in.  When they get what they need and go to check out he is put out that they write him a check.  He types the check information in and announces loudly that their check was no good.  Being older, my parents knew that this was not correct, and my mother was humiliated to be accused of writing bad checks in front of other people in a small town.  She advised that there had to be a mistake, to which he defiantly turns the screen around and points at it and says "see rejected!".  So, she asks him to verify that the numbers are typed in correctly.  So, he holds her check up to her and begins typing one number at a time and then pointing at the check.  During this he mistyped the number 4 different times.  Each time, either due to computer issues or his complete incompetence, he had to clear the screen and start completely over.  Finally after on the 5th retry he got it right; and miracle of miracles... the check was good. 

So, compare the two stories, in one customer is King, the other, the customer is a pain.  What makes the difference?  If you don't want to be at work, but minimum wage keeps growing as the great equalizer, unemployent is hard for an employer to fight; why try harder?  They employer gets penalized for even giving someone a chance to earn a living, as a fired employee you get a paid vacation, and the consumer gets hassled.  Is this an enhancement?  Are we going about this correctly?

I met yesterday with someone that I consider a mentor in my life. He gave me employment for a number of years, taught me to negotiate tough deals, set and meet tough deadlines,.... and most of all re-inforced that you must treat other people with kindness and respect.  He drove this point home by the way he treated people, even when the corporate politics made it seem that we were being challenged for our jobs.

So, you are wondering what my point is.  Well, this meeting was not a sales call.  It was just catching up with an old friend to see how things were going.  The amazing thing with this guy is that you can talk about any issue, no matter how pleasant or tough the issue is, and the conversation will end on a positive note.  It just will, I can never think of a time a conversation has not.

Today, we see a lot of challenges.  Incomes seem to be frozen, jobs seem to be scarce, (insert your favorite gripe here).  We can easily catch and spread the sour grapes syndrome if we don't watch or attitudes closely.

During our lunch we talked about all the same topics that every other casual conversation contains, and at the end I walked away again with a smile.  The entire rest of my day was better than what is typical, and I just was able to see every challenge as a possible win.

We all leave a wake wherever we go.  In this mans wake is eternal optimism.  I am going to make an intentional effort to leave the same in my wake today.  How about you?

Answers on this vary from state to state, but if you are in Oklahoma the answer is yes.  There is usually a base rate, then discounts applied on a sliding scale for the increased financial responsibility.  I have been asked what the corrolation is. While I am not the spokesperson for the process, it seems to be based on the thought that the more risk you are willing to take with your money, the more risk you are willing take with your other property.  Here is the upside to this.. you have an opportunity to really reduce your rates.  A few years back my wife would apply for any credit card offers just to save on the counter purchase.  What she didn't realize was how it was impacting our credit... which impacts everything from home loans to home insurance rates.  Well, after a bad experience with a credit card she stopped this practice.  By doing that alone my overall rates were reduced 10-20%.  Amazing.  Another client, I brought them on with a huge savings over their prior carrier, then when reviewing again this year we dropped another 10%.  What a great conversation it was to call them and tell them that their rates went DOWN this year. 

So when you have a client that has just cleaned up their credit history.. add value to their relationship with you.  Have them check for a positive impact on their rates. 

I often get asked the difference between replacement cost for insurance and the market value for a home being resold.  Since I know this is a question/concern out there I thought that I would write about it.  Replacement cost is the cost it is estimated to take to put that house back with like quality features in today's market.  Usually this will be a higher value than resale.  I will list a couple of reasons for this.  Scenario 1) You are selling a home that is a great deal for someone, but needs a little updating.  The updating requirements are going to push the market value of the home down.  But from an insurance perspective if you have to rebuild that home, the same quality sinks, carpet, paint, roof, etc... have to go back into the building process.  These items will be bought at today's prices and today's like quality, not a discounted price because tastes have changed over the years.  Scenario 2) You are selling a new tract home in a new neighborhood.  The rebuild cost will often come in higher because you are looking at replacing that home without the benefits gained from mass production.

In summary, the goal of the policy is to be there for the insured with the amount of money needed to put them back in like kind and quality of home.

I have had many people ask me how I ever went from a getting a degree in physics to becoming an insurance agent.  The answer is simple.  I made my decisions the same way for the past 11 years and they are all focused on one thing.... family. 

Right out of college and newly married my wife and I headed for a high tech job in Richardson, Tx in the telecom industry.  We loved the area, but later began to realize that it was not where we wanted to raise children.  Mergers upon mergers followed opening the doors to move back to Oklahoma and beyond if we desired, but we decided to call Owasso home.  As time ticked on we weathered layoffs, callbacks, company changes, job description changes... the works.  But one day I started to realize what my kids saw, and I did not like it very much.  They saw their dad going to work in the morning, making it home just about bedtime, being paged away from family gatherings and such, but had no idea about what "work" meant.  I wasn't teaching them to work, I was teaching them to expect me to be gone all the time.  As I pondered this one day I was impressed that it was time to change.  Time to change to a business that I could teach the kids life skills with.  Time to change to a business that I could offer them an opportunity in later.  Time to go.

So long story short, here we are, and I really couldn't ask for a better job.  I get to help people daily, and get paid to do it.  The kids are free to come to my office when needed and now I can teach them my trade.  I love it!  I hope that you love your job as much.

In the real estate business I am sure that you will get some of these calls.  They go like this "We had a storm last night and I had a spot show up on my ceiling.  Should I get an adjuster out from my insurance company?"  The thing I want my customers to know going into the process is that their insurance is fully behind them and to understand the process so that they will be completely satisfied with the result.  If an adjuster comes out prematurely they may agree that there is a spot, they may be able to give them an idea of what it would cost to fix the spot, but the paths may part there because the adjuster is looking for signs that physical damage that caused the spot.  If the spot was caused because of a general maintenance issue the customer is now frustrated and may believe the adjuster is just trying to beat them out a settlement.

I encourage my customers to talk to the repairman of their choice first to get an idea of what is happening to their house (if it is not obvious).  This does two things: 1) The customer is educated before they ever enter into a discussion for any settlement, leaving them feeling like they have more control, 2) The customer is hearing from someone that they feel does not have a vested interest in steering them in one direction.

The goal in the end is a thoroughly satisfied customer.  Good luck out there today!

You know, for every popular swing in opinion there is a marketing bonanza that just brings in floods of people dying to use it to pry dollars out of your hands.  But not all actually fall into lock step with the actual initial intent of the message.

Before you start getting ideas to the contrary, I probably grew up in a greener home than most of the voices of the green movement today, but we didn't call it being green, we called it waste not, want not.  I remember the long profitless and thankless days and evenings spent with my father tearing down an old house to salvage the lumber.  This wasn't a business for him, but the home was going to be demolished and was full of hardwood building materials.  So, we settled with the owner to tear it down for the lumber in it.  It was hard work, but for a couple of years after that people would stop in occasionally needing hardwood, or better quality wood than they could buy on the current market, and dad would oblige.  I remember learning to use a reel mower because "it was so pointless to run the gasoline powered mower".  But you know, when we did that we were the odd ducks that "just must not be able to afford a better lifestyle" in the eyes of onlookers.

Having said all this I will get to the point.  When someone wants to sell me a lightbulb that will save the earth, is anyone looking at the consequences of the manufacturing process?  What about the mercury gas in that bulb.  Sure, sure the label says dispose of properly, but what is properly, and how many people are doing that?  My education is in Physics, and I get excited about making the most benefit out of the least amount energy usage, but I am starting to have some questions.  For instance, what are the consequences of creating the solar panels?  Will more energy ever come out of them than has been used making them?  Those high tech materials take a lot of processing to create.  Are we taking this into account when looking at the benefits?  The problems always faced with electric cars has been portability.  Put the electricity into lead batteries and you have a lot of weight (not from the electricity)..... and lead.  So now we have new capabilities with batteries, but these are not easy on the enviroment.  They take increased mining and more intrusive smelting processes.

In conclusion, I say the following.  We have to start somewhere, and we have to change.  But WE determine the market place, and consequently have to do our homework.  A 30 second advertisement may have a conflict of interest when it comes to fully informing us of what is the best for the world.  Going green may not always be glamorous but it can be done, often times with less expense than we are investing now.

On a previous post questions came up regarding Disability Insurance.  I will try to outline as simply as possible these products and also  provide some reference material.  There are two basic types of disability insurance.  These are Short Term Disability and Long Term Disability.  These are meant to replace some percentage of your income if you are unable to work.  Each one of the policies will have a period of time that you must be disabled before you are able to draw benefits.  This is called the elimination period.  They also will have a maximum amount of time that they will pay out.  A Short Term Disability policy will have a shorter elimination period and a shorter payout period.  Inversely Long Term Disability will have a longer elimination period and a longer payout.

Of course each provider will have their own twists to the basic policy structure.  Some have minimum requirements on length of time in profession if you are self employeed.  Some policies are for accidents only.  Usually you can add provisions that will pay you a partial income in the event that you are only partially disabled, other options include the ability to adjust the policy over time for cost of living changes.

One big question often asked is how affordable the coverage is.  This is affected by how extensive the conditions of coverage are, the type of job you are doing, and of course the amount of income you would need to replace.  Another option is that you may be able to gain access to a group policy through a trade organization or your management structure.

Things to look for:  What are considered disabilities, what the elimination period is, your ability to renew, and the stability of the company that you are purchasing from.

For a detailed read I would encourage you to look at http://www.iii.org/individuals/disability/.

When someone looks at their budget these days they immediately start looking for things that can easily be eliminated.  This is a good practice to do from time to time, regardless of the economy.  A slow economy is a good time to look at life insurance because you are assessing your costs and liabilities critically.  When doing this it is simple to identify what your needs are if an income were to cease due to a death in the family.

Additionally a market time like this helps you assess how much you should really be depending on that group life at work.  Can you really control whether that job and group offering will be there tomorrow?  Also you need to ask yourself whether you really plan on working until the day you die in order to keep that group offering in place.

Owning a personal policy can accomplish an uninterupted plan to account for each of these.  Term plans with conversion options can often times make coverages affordable even on a tight budget, while protecting ones insurability and liabilities they have as a family.

When I started college I had in mind that I would get college over with and get down to the real stuff, making a living.  Education time would be over and I could get serious about making a living (I.E. cash flow... something we didn't have in college).  As I progressed through the process to gain my Physics degree I started to see that with the gains in science I would be having to refresh my education continually.

Upon graduation I entered into the corporate world, into a job not directly related to my degree, so the lectures and lab time stopped.  But you have already guessed, in order to get promotions and to keep up I was continually learning something new, or learning more thoroughly the process that I already was assigned.  Later as I had employees of my own, I tried to improve the materials provided them to learn, tried to make more obvious to them the resources available.  From time to time though I would still have employees approach me and say "nobody ever trained me".  I would point out to them the classes that had been provided, the training meetings, and last but not least, the actual on the floor, on the job training.  Unfortunately those employees usually never suceeded, they could not see the opportunity.

I say this all to say, I am seeing now more than ever that I need to be a student for a lifetime.  In trying to make a small business go, I have started reading.  Each book I try to put into practice, and see that it helped me get a little closer.  But I always have to pick up another book and start reading and practicing.  I am never completely there.  At first it was hard to start reading again, but now I see what I lost in the time I wasn't reading.  How much better would I have been at my other jobs if I added ongoing reading to the mix?  I am reading to my kids and while they get a tremendous amount out of it, I think I get more.  More opportunity to visit with them, to see how they think, to train them to think, to prepare them for life.

Be a student for a lifetime, read, practice, experiment, live.