The Meaning of Life

Forgive the dueling studies, but an especially disturbing one from three Ivy League researchers finds that almost half of Americans die owning less than $10,000.

The study’s authors, James Poterba of MIT, Steven Venti of Dartmouth and David Wise of Harvard, wrote in February, “We find that a substantial fraction of persons die with virtually no financial assets—46.1% with less than $10,000—and many of these households also have no housing wealth and rely almost entirely on Social Security benefits for support.”

Hopefully, you see where I’m going with this. If Americans are dying broke, financial advisors are at least partly to blame. Advisors’ traditional aversion to offering life insurance (at times almost snobbishly so) isn’t helping, and an unbiased second look at the product is well worth the time. Part of it should be spent reading Kevin Kimbrough’s piece, “Life Partners: When Financial Advisors and Life Insurance Experts Team Up, Clients Benefit and Practices Grow,” beginning on page 84. Sure, this topic isn’t sexy, but death rarely is.

Clients benefit, practices grow and, most importantly, heirs and loved ones will be provided for—something that, according to Poterbas, Venti and Wise, isn’t happening as much as it should. Life Insurance Awareness Month is a great time to start.