Answers Insurance Quotes

Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.

There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.

The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up.. if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be.. a prudent insurance policy.

A question in your nerves is lit Yet you know there is no answer fit To satisfy, insure you not to quit To keep it in your mind and not forget That it is not he or she or them or it that you belong to...

If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be...a prudent insurance policy.

If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief in all that would not be a leap of faith and it would not a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy. I'm not interested in the insurance industry. I am tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way light amuses itself on water.

Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world. Besides,

Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world. Besides, your success in the world depends essentially on how well you harness the prowess of the body and mind. So, in order to achieve success, pleasantness has to be the fundamental quality within you.

The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited for volume of trading to return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next 24 months. The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.

Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be . . . a prudent insurance policy. I’m not interested in the insurance industry. I’m tired of being a skeptic, I’m irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

Is not true that marriage is the answer, it is true that by simply living independently, they face an additional set of challenges in a world that remains designed with married Americans in mind. Single women foot more of their own bills, be they necessities like food and housing, or luxuries like cable and vacation; they pay for their own transportation. They do not enjoy the tax breaks for insurance benefits available to married couples. Sociologist Bella DePaulo has repeatedly pointed out there are more than one thousand laws that benefit married people over single people.

In a section of The Vaccine Book titled “Is it your social responsibility to vaccinate your kids?” Dr. Bob asks, “Can we fault parents for putting their own child’s health ahead of that of the kids around him?” This is meant to be a rhetorical question, but Dr. Bob’s implied answer is not mine. In another section of the book, Dr. Bob writes of his advice to parents who fear the MMR vaccine, “I also warn them not to share their fears with their neighbors, because if too many people avoid the MMR, we’ll likely see the disease increase significantly.” I do not need to consult an ethicist to determine that there is something wrong there, but my sister clarifies my discomfort. “The problem is in making a special exemption just for yourself,” she says. This reminds her of a way of thinking proposed by the philosopher John Rawls: Imagine that you do not know what position you are going to hold in society—rich, poor, educated, insured, no access to health care, infant, adult, HIV positive, healthy immune system, etc.—but that you are aware of the full range of possibilities. What you would want in that situation is a policy that is going to be equally just no matter what position you end up in. “Consider relationships of dependence,” my sister suggests. “You don’t own your body—that’s not what we are, our bodies aren’t independent. The health of our bodies always depends on choices other people are making.” She falters for a moment here, and is at a loss for words, which is rare for her. “I don’t even know how to talk about this,” she says. “The point is there’s an illusion of independence.

Mr. Wills, do you have medical insurance?” The question seems odd; however, they asked me the same, so I’m interested in hearing his answer. Well? Jackson doesn’t have a chance to respond before Michael says, “Because if you don’t shut your mouth and let Margret answer my questions, you’ll need it.

For the insurance company, the illusion of agreement was shattered only by the noise audit. How had the leaders of the company remained unaware of their noise problem? There are several possible answers here, but one that seems to play a large role in many settings is simply the discomfort of disagreement.

Why did you spend your whole life working in an insurance company? You should have been a painter, a musician, well, I don't know. Why didn't you follow your calling?" Don Rigoberto nodded and reflected a moment before answering. "Because I was a coward, son," he finally murmured. "Because I lacked faith in myself. I never believed I had the talent to be a real artist. But maybe that was an excuse for not trying. I decided not to be a creator but only a consumer of art, a dilettante of culture. Because I was a coward is the sad truth. So now you know. Don't follow my example. Whatever your calling is, follow it as far as you can and don't do what I did, don't betray it.

Atlas There is a kind of love callend maintenance, Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it; Which checks the insurance, and doesn't forget The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs; Which answers letters; which knows the way The money goes; which deals with dentists And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains, And postcards to the lonely; which upholds The permanently rickety elaborate Structures of living; which is Atlas. And maintenance is the sensible side of love, Which knows what time and weather are doing To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring; Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps My suspect edifice upright in air, As Atlas did the sky.

Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be…a prudent insurance policy.

In my time in Washington, no battle has consumed more energy than stopping Obamacare. On the evening of September 24, 2013, it began with a prayer. In my tiny “hideaway” office wedged into a dome in the Capitol Building, Senator Mike Lee and I bowed our heads, read from the Book of Psalms, and asked for the Lord’s guidance. I then walked to the floor of the U.S. Senate and announced, “I intend to speak in support of defunding Obamacare until I am no longer able to stand.”* I opened by noting that “all across this country, Americans are suffering because of Obamacare.” And yet politicians in Washington were not listening to the concerns of their constituents. They weren’t hearing the people with jobs lost or the people forced into part-time work. They had no answers for the people losing their health insurance, or the people who are struggling. With good reason, men and women across America believe that politicians get elected, go to Washington, and stop listening to them. This is the most common thing you hear from the man on the street, from Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians: You’re not listening to me.

With this warning, Mussolini demanded and was given authority to do just about whatever he wanted; but his initial priority, surprisingly, was good government. He knew that citizens were fed up with a bureaucracy that seemed to grow bigger and less efficient each year, so he insisted on daily roll calls in ministry offices and berated employees for arriving late to work or taking long lunches. He initiated a campaign to drenare la palude (“drain the swamp”) by firing more than 35,000 civil servants. He repurposed Fascist gangs to safeguard rail cargo from thieves. He allocated money to build bridges, roads, telephone exchanges, and giant aqueducts that brought water to arid regions. He gave Italy an eight-hour workday, codified insurance benefits for the elderly and disabled, funded prenatal health care clinics, established seventeen hundred summer camps for children, and dealt the Mafia a blow by suspending the jury system and short-circuiting due process. With no jury members to threaten and judges answerable directly to the state, the courts were as incorruptible as they were docile. Contrary to legend, the dictator didn’t quite succeed in making the trains run on time, but he earned bravos for trying.

And it would be startlingly cheap. IV estimates the “Save the Arctic” plan could be set up in just two years at a cost of roughly $20 million, with an annual operating cost of about $10 million. If cooling the poles alone proved insufficient, IV has drawn up a “Save the Planet” version, with five worldwide base stations instead of two, and three hoses at each site. This would put about three to five times the amount of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Even so, that would still represent less than 1 percent of current worldwide sulfur emissions. IV estimates this plan could be up and running in about three years, with a startup cost of $150 million and annual operating costs of $100 million. So Budyko’s Blanket could effectively reverse global warming at a total cost of $250 million. Compared with the $1.2 trillion that Nicholas Stern proposes spending each year to attack the problem, IV’s idea is, well, practically free. It would cost $50 million less to stop global warming than what Al Gore’s foundation is paying just to increase public awareness about global warming. And there lies the key to the question we asked at the beginning of this chapter: What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common? The answer is that Gore and Pinatubo both suggest a way to cool the planet, albeit with methods whose cost-effectiveness are a universe apart.

Justice and honesty and loyalty are not properties of this world, she thought; and then, by God, she rammed her old enemy, her ancient foe, the Coca-Cola truck, which went right on going without noticing. The impact spun her small car around; her headlights dimmed out, horrible noises of fender against tire shrieked, and then she was off the freeway onto the emergency strip, facing the other direction, water pouring from her radiator, with motorists slowing down to gape. Come back, you motherfucker, she said to herself, but the Coca-Cola truck was long gone, probably undented. Maybe a scratch. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, her war, her taking on a symbol and a reality that outweighed her. Now my insurance rates will go up, she realized as she climbed from her car. In this world you pay for tilting with evil in cold, hard cash. A late-model Mustang slowed and the driver, a man, called to her, “You want a ride, miss?” She did not answer. She just kept on going. A small figure on foot facing an infinity of oncoming lights.

Do you have any cheese preferences?” Jack asked. “All cheese is good cheese, Lend said. “True dat.” I nodded solemnly. “You did not just say ‘true dat,’” Arianna said, walking into the kitchen. “Because if you think you have any ability whatsoever to pull that off, we are going to have to have a long, long talk.” “Can I at least use it ironically? Or ‘dude.’ Can I use ‘dude?’ Because I really want to be able to use ‘dude.’” “No. No, you cannot, but thank you for asking. Besides, ironic use always segues into non-ironic use, and unless you suddenly become far cooler or far more actually Californian than you are now, I simply cannot allow it.” “But on Easton Heights—” “You are not going to bring up Cary’s cousin Trevyn’s multiepisode arc where he’s sent there as punishment for his pot-smoking surf-bum ways, are you? Because that arc sucked, and he wasn’t even very hot. Also, what’s the lunatic doing?” She jerked her head toward Jack. He flipped a gorgeous looking omelet onto a plate and placed it with a flourish in front of Lend. “I am providing insurance against frying pan boy deciding to enact all the very painful fantasies he’s no doubt entertained about me for the last few weeks. An omelet this good should rule out any dismemberment vengeance.” “Have you been reading his diary?” I asked. “Because I’ll bet he got really creative with the violence ideas.” “No, I only ever read yours. But let me tell you, one more exclamation mark dotted with a heart while talking about how good a kisser Lend is and I was about ready to do myself in. You’re rather single-minded when it comes to adoring him.” “True dat,” Arianna said, nodding. “How come you can use ‘true dat’ if I can’t?” I asked, rightfully outraged. “Because I’m dead, and none of the rules apply anymore.” Lend ate his omelet, refusing to answer Jack’s questions about just how delicious it was on a scale from cutting off limbs to just breaking his nose. I gave Jack full points for flavor but noted the texture was slightly off, exempting him from name-calling but not from dirty looks. Arianna lounged against the counter, and when I finished first we debated the usage rules of “dude,” “true dat,” and my favorite, “for serious.” “I kind of wish they’d shut up,” Jack said. “Dude, true dat,” Lend answered. Jack nodded solemnly. “For serious.

He let out a breath. "How old are you?" he asked, fearful of the answer. "Twenty-five." She gave him a wry smile. "And since you yelled it at Heather, I know you're 'forty fucking years old'." He would have laughed, but he couldn't breathe. Jesus, he'd known she was young, but hearing her actual age..."That's fifteen years." "I can do the math, but you know what else? I'm legal. I can drink. I have decent car insurance since I hit the quarter century mark, and I own this house." she paused. "Well the bank owns most of it, but I qualified for a loan and everything since I have decent credit." Her nose wrinkled. "I'm getting off subject. If the age difference truly bothers you, then I will see you at the shop to finish your tattoo. No hard feelings." He growled softly. Well, something was hard, and it wasn't his feelings.

At first I thought the key would be to put the burden on my back rather than my brain, and so I worked as a restaurant cook and, later, as a waitress. And I was right, there was plenty of room in my head for stories, but because I fell asleep the minute I stopped moving, very few of those stories were ever written down. Once I realized that physical labor wasn’t the answer, I switched to teaching—the universally suggested career for all M.F.A. graduates—and while I wasn’t so tired, days spent attending to the creativity of others often left me uninterested in any sort of creativity of my own. Food service and teaching were the only two paying jobs I thought I was qualified for, and once I’d discovered that neither of them met my requirements, I was at a loss. Could I follow the example of Wallace Stevens and sell insurance? All I knew for certain was that I had to figure out how to both eat and write.

For every extra year a young person was exposed to TV in his first 15 years, we see a 4 percent increase in the number of property-crime arrests later in life and a 2 percent increase in violent-crime arrests. According to our analysis, the total impact of TV on crime in the 1960s was an increase of 50 percent in property crimes and 25 percent in violent crimes. Why did TV have this dramatic effect? Our data offer no firm answers. The effect is largest for children who had extra TV exposure from birth to age four. Since most four-year-olds weren’t watching violent shows, it’s hard to argue that content was the problem. It may be that kids who watched a lot of TV never got properly socialized, or never learned to entertain themselves. Perhaps TV made the have-nots want the things the haves had, even if it meant stealing them. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the kids at all; maybe Mom and Dad became derelict when they discovered that watching TV was a lot more entertaining than taking care of the kids.

Some incidents of facial profiling have been more inconvenient than others. I’ll never forget walking through airport security when I was flying to give a speech to a Christian men’s group in Montana. The Department of Homeland Security screeners obviously didn’t recognize me as “Jase the Duckman” from Duck Dynasty, and I felt like I was one wrong answer away from being led to an interrogation room in a pair of handcuffs! Hunting season had recently ended, so my hair and beard were in full bloom! The security screeners saw a Bible in my bag, and I guess they figured I was a Christian nut because of my long hair and bushy beard. Somehow, I made it through the metal detector and an additional pat-down, and I guess they couldn’t find a justifiable reason to detain me. But as I was getting my belongings back together, I accidentally bumped into a woman. She screamed! It must have been an involuntary reflex. It was a natural response, because she thought I was going to attack her. Once she finally settled down, I made my way to the gate and sat down to compose myself. After a few minutes, a young boy walked up and asked me for my autograph. Finally, I thought to myself. Somebody recognizes me from Duck Dynasty. Not everyone here believes I’m the Unabomber! Man, I could have used the kid about twenty minutes earlier, when I was trying to get through security! I looked over at the boy’s mother, and she was smiling from ear to ear. I realized they were very big fans. I signed my name on a piece of paper and handed it to the kid. “Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Sure, buddy,” I said. “Ask me anything you want.” “How much does Geico pay y’all?” he asked. My jaw dropped as I looked at the kid. “Wait a minute, man,” I said. “I’m not a caveman!” “What do you mean?” the boy asked. “I’m Jase the Duckman,” I said. “You know--from Duck Dynasty? Quack, quack?” It didn’t take me long to realize the boy had no idea what I was talking about. In a matter of minutes, I went from being a potential terrorist to being a caveman selling insurance.

Cade stood midfield, waiting for Zach to take his place at the line of scrimmage. “When’s the last time you threw a football?” Zach asked worriedly. Aside from the few times Cade had tossed one around casually with friends, a long time. “About twelve years.” Zach threw him a panicked look. “I won’t push it,” Cade said. It wasn’t as if his shoulder was entirely unusable; in fact, on a daily basis it didn’t bother him at all. His rotator cuff simply couldn’t withstand the repetitive stress of competitive football. “I just want to see what I can do.” He pointed emphatically. “And if the answer is ‘not much,’ you better not tell a soul. I’ve got a reputation to uphold here.” Zach smiled, loosening up. “All right. I don’t want to stand in the way of you reliving your glory days or whatever.” “Good. But in case this all goes south, my car keys are in the outside pocket of my duffle bag. When you drive me to the emergency room, if I’m too busy mumbling incoherently from the pain, just tell them I’ve got Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance.” Zach’s eyes went wide. “I’m kidding, Zach. Now get moving.

When we get down to potential versus reality in relationships, we often see disappointment, not successful achievement. In the Church, if someone creates nuclear fallout in a calling, they are often released or reassigned quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury when we marry. So many of us have experienced this sad realization in the first weeks of our marriages. For example, we realized that our partner was not going to live up to his/her potential and give generously to the partnership. While fighting the mounting feelings of betrayal, we watched our new spouses claim a right to behave any way they desired, often at our expense. Most of us made the "best" of a truly awful situation but felt like a rat trapped in maze. We raised a family, played our role, and hoped that someday things would change if we did our part. It didn't happen, but we were not allowed the luxury of reassigning or releasing our mates from poor stewardship as a spouse or parent. We were stuck until we lost all hope and reached for the unthinkable: divorce. Reality is simple for some. Those who stay happily married (the key word here is happily are the ones who grew and felt companionship from the first days of marriage. Both had the integrity and dedication to insure its success. For those of us who are divorced, tracing back to those same early days, potential disappeared and reality reared its ugly head. All we could feel, after a sealing for "time and all eternity," was bound in an unholy snare. Take the time to examine the reality of who your sweetheart really is. What do they accomplish by natural instinct and ability? What do you like/dislike about them? Can you live with all the collective weaknesses and create a happy, viable union? Are you both committed to making each other happy? Do you respect each other's agency, and are you both encouraging and eager to see the two of you grow as individuals and as a team? Do you both talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk? Or do you love them and hope they'll change once you're married to them? Chances are that if the answer to any of these questions are "sorta," you are embracing their potential and not their reality. You may also be embracing your own potential to endure issues that may not be appropriate sacrifices at this stage in your life. No one changes without the internal impetus and drive to do so. Not for love or money. . . . We are complex creatures, and although we are trained to see the "good" in everyone, it is to our benefit to embrace realism when it comes to finding our "soul mate." It won't get much better than what you have in your relationship right now.

Shortly after I returned home from the Ukraine, I became severely ill with what doctors believed was a parasite. I couldn’t hold my food down and lost a lot of weight. Different doctors kept prescribing me antibiotics, but none of them seemed to help. For a couple of months, I was poked and tested in a variety of ways, only to have more questions surface than answers. Then I was sent to an ear, nose, and throat doctor for an evaluation. I was sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of toddlers, when my name was called. By the time I got into the examination room I knew I’d had enough. “Hey, I’m outta here,” I told the doctor. “I’ll take my chance with the resurrection.” Well, a couple of weeks later, my insurance agent called me. He was one of my lifelong friends and sounded concerned. “Hey, Jase,” he said. “Your insurance company wants you to see a psychiatrist.” Apparently, the ear, nose, and throat doctor recommended I undergo a full psychiatric evaluation based on my refusal to be examined, along with my speech on the resurrection! Apparently, he thought I was crazy. I convinced my buddy that I didn’t need a psychiatrist and eventually got over my illness. I would later read a passage of scripture in the Bible that caused me to smile in reflection on the entire ordeal. Second Corinthians 5:13 says: “If we are out of our mind, as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.

My Future Self My future self and I become closer and closer as time goes by. I must admit that I neglected and ignored her until she punched me in the gut, grabbed me by the hair and turned my butt around to introduce herself. Well, at least that’s what it felt like every time I left the convalescent hospital after doing skills training for a certification I needed to help me start my residential care business. I was going to be providing specialized, 24/7 residential care and supervising direct care staff for non-verbal, non-ambulatory adult men in diapers! I ran to the Red Cross and took the certified nurse assistant class so I would at least know something about the job I would soon be hiring people to do and to make sure my clients received the best care. The training facility was a Medicaid hospital. I would drive home in tears after seeing what happens when people are not able to afford long-term medical care and the government has to provide that care. But it was seeing all the “young” patients that brought me to tears. And I had thought that only the elderly lived like this in convalescent hospitals…. I am fortunate to have good health but this experience showed me that there is the unexpected. So I drove home each day in tears, promising God out loud, over and over again, that I would take care of my health and take care of my finances. That is how I met my future self. She was like, don’t let this be us girlfriend and stop crying! But, according to studies, we humans have a hard time empathizing with our future selves. Could you even imagine your 30 or 40 year old self when you were in elementary or even high school? It’s like picturing a stranger. This difficulty explains why some people tend to favor short-term or immediate gratification over long-term planning and savings. Take time to picture the life you want to live in 5 years, 10 years, and 40 years, and create an emotional connection to your future self. Visualize the things you enjoy doing now, and think of retirement saving and planning as a way to continue doing those things and even more. However, research shows that people who interacted with their future selves were more willing to improve savings. Just hit me over the head, why don’t you! I do understand that some people can’t even pay attention or aren’t even interested in putting money away for their financial future because they have so much going on and so little to work with that they feel like they can’t even listen to or have a conversation about money. But there are things you’re doing that are not helping your financial position and could be trouble. You could be moving in the wrong direction. The goal is to get out of debt, increase your collateral capacity, use your own money in the most efficient manner and make financial decisions that will move you forward instead of backwards. Also make sure you are getting answers specific to your financial situation instead of blindly guessing! Contact us. We will be happy to help!

Smart Sexy Money is About Your Money As an accomplished entrepreneur with a history that spans more than fourteen years, Annette Wise is constantly looking for ways to give back to her community. Using enterprising efforts, she qualified for $125,000 in startup funding to develop a specialized residential facility that allows developmentally disabled adults to live in the community after almost a lifetime of living in a state institution. In doing so, she has provided steady employment in her community for the last thirteen years. After dedicating years to her residential facility, Annette began to see clearly the difficulty business owners face in planning for retirement successfully. Searching high and low to find answers, she took control of financial uncertainty and in less than 2 years, she became a Full Life Agent, licensed Registered Representative, Investment Advisor Representative and Limited Principal. Her focus is on building an extensive list of clients that depend on her for smart retirement guidance, thorough college planning, detailed business continuation, and business exit strategies. Clients have come to rely on Annette for insight on tax advantaged savings and retirement options. Annette’s primary goal is to help her clients understand more than just concepts, but to easily understand how money works, the consequences of their decisions and how they work in conjunction with their desires and goal. Ever the curious soul who is always up for a challenge, Annette is routinely resourceful at finding sensible means to a sometimes-challenging end. She believes in infinite possibilities as well as in sharing her knowledge with others. She is the go-to source for “Smart Wealth Solutions.” Among Annette’s proudest accomplishments are her two wonderful sons, Michael III and Matthew. As a single mom, they have been her inspiration and joy. She is forever grateful to the greatest brothers in the world- Andrew and Anthony Wise, for assistance in grooming them into amazing young men.

I’m telling you, you bastard, you’re going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don’t care which.” “Captain Mallory.” Gray’s baritone was forbidding. “And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks.” “My thanks? For what?” “For what?” Now O’Shea entered the mix. “For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that’s what.” “I’ll thank you to go to hell,” the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. “You can’t just board a man’s craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot.” “Oh, now we’re the knaves, are we?” Gray asked. “I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed.” “Well, if you’re such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I’m trussed like a pig?” Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope. Gray answered, “We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we’re keeping you bound now because you’re sober and still out of your skull.” The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. “Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I’ll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion.” O’Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Grayson cut short. “Captain Mallory,” he said, his own highly polished boots pacing slowly, deliberately to halt between Mallory’s and Gray’s. “I understand your concern over losing your cargo. But surely you or your investor can recoup the loss with an insurance claim. You could not have sailed without a policy against fire.” Gray gave an ironic laugh. “Joss, I’ll wager you anything, that rum wasn’t on any bill of lading or insurance policy. Can’t you see the man’s nothing but a smuggler? Probably wasn’t bound for any port at all. What was your destination, Mallory? A hidden cove off the coast of Cornwall, perhaps?” He clucked his tongue. “That ship was overloaded and undermanned, and it would have been a miracle if you’d made it as far as Portugal. As for the rum, take up your complaint with the Vice Admiralty court after you follow us to Tortola. I’d welcome it.

The most important modification that must be made to a standard analysis of incentives is salience. Do the choosers actually notice the incentives they face? In free markets, the answer is usually yes, but in important cases the answer is no. Consider the example of members of an urban family deciding whether to buy a car. Suppose their choices are to take taxis and public transportation or to spend ten thousand dollars to buy a used car, which they can park on the street in front of their home. The only salient costs of owning this car will be the weekly stops at the gas station, occasional repair bills, and a yearly insurance bill. The opportunity cost of the ten thousand dollars is likely to be neglected. (In other words, once they purchase the car, they tend to forget about the ten thousand dollars and stop treating it as money that could have been spent on something else.) In contrast, every time the family uses a taxi the cost will be in their face, with the meter clicking every few blocks. So a behavioral analysis of the incentives of car ownership will predict that people will underweight the opportunity costs of car ownership, and possibly other less salient aspects such as depreciation, and may overweight the very salient costs of using a taxi.* An analysis of choice architecture systems must make similar adjustments.

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works. Now you can make the decision about going through with it, if it's right for you!

Get Educated About Acupuncture With These Simple To Follow Tips Acupuncture can be a great experience for people that are informed about the process and the benefits that can result. Rather than assuming that acupuncture will be very uncomfortable or painful, keep reading on to find out the truth. The tips in this article should give you some clarity about the process! Make sure you contact your insurance company prior to scheduling acupuncture appointments. There may be some treatments or specific programs that are covered and others that your insurance company might not pay for. Prior to treatment, check out insurance issues with both your insurance company and the acupuncturist. If you are nervous about acupuncture, and you are not sure if it is right for you, do not be afraid to ask questions. Believe it or not, one of the most common inquiries is whether or not the acupuncturist practices a painless style of treatment. Your fears may be eased when you hear some of the answers. Some vitamins or supplements should be stopped if you are starting acupuncture treatments. Ask your specialist if there should be any certain medications or vitamins that you stop taking before the treatments begin. You don't want to inadvertently stall your progress. It is always important that you feel comfortable with the person preforming acupuncture on you. Being uncomfortable and remaining tense through the treatments can end up being counterproductive to your therapy. Find an acupuncturist that you feel totally comfortable with and once you do, stick with that person. You can even give other people referrals. Herbs Talk to a doctor about anything you are taking if you plan on having acupuncture treatments. If you are currently taking medication, herbs, or supplements, you need to speak to your doctor about what you can continue to take. They may have to make changes to what you're taking before or in between your acupuncture treatments. Ask your acupuncturist if there are certain herbs you should consume in between sessions. Remember, this is a holistic practice. There are many different things to it compared to Western medicine. Herbs are a big part of it. They can help relax your body and remove any sort of pain left over from your session. Acupuncturists often recommend herbal treatments prior to a session. These herbs can benefit you, but they may either have side effects or wreak havoc with your current medication. Speak to your main doctor prior to taking herbal supplements so as not to cause problems. Are you currently taking any medications, vitamins, or herbs? If so, get in touch with your doctor and ask him whether or not you can continue to take these things before and during your acupuncture sessions. You would hate for your acupuncture sessions to be less effective because you did not know you weren't supposed to take any of these things. If you want to try acupuncture and you have not heard that much about it, you can learn more about the process by reading about it or asking friends. However, the tips in this article should have given you some idea on how it works by visit rosholistic.com

Retirement Lifestyle Planning There are four (4) major financial questions that you must be able to answer in order to know if your current or future plan will work for you. What rate of return do you have to earn on your savings and investment dollars to be able to retire at your current standard of living and have your money last through your life expectancy? How much do you need to save on a monthly or annual basis to be able to retire at your current standard of living and your money last your life expectancy? Doing what you are currently doing, how long will you have to work to be able to retire and live your current lifestyle till life expectancy? If you don’t do anything different than you are doing today, how much will you have to reduce your standard of livingat retirement for your money to last your life expectancy? Motto for Retirement Lifestyle Planning A solid financial plan is a powerful possession that offers a sense of peace and freedom. Our process allows us to determine appropriate strategies and help you understand how to achieve your goals and live your dreams. Our process stresses informed financial decision making. We encourage you to review all decisions with your team of tax and legal professionals. For the record, we are not tax or legal professionals and this information is not intended as tax or legal advice. Now we’d like to remind you that a well-executed financial plan requires diverse knowledge and utilizes some or all of the following strategies and services: -Retirement Lifestyle Planning Making the most of your employer-sponsored retirement plans and IRAs. Determining how much you need to retire comfortably. Managing assets before and during retirement including Social Security analysis. -Estate Planning Referring you to qualified Estate Attorneys to review your wills and trusts to help preserve your estate for your intended heirs by helping with beneficiary designations. Reducing exposure to estate taxes and probate costs. Coordinating with your tax and legal advisors. -Tax Management Helping to reduce your current and future tax burden by considering multiple strategies for review by your tax professional.Also, referring you to qualified tax specialists if needed. -Legacy Planning/Charitable Planning Creating a solid future for generations to come by ensuring that your legacy will live on through those you love or causes you care deeply about. -Risk Management Reviewing existing insurance policies. Recommending policy changes when appropriate. Finding the best policy for your individual wants and needs. -Investment Planning Determining your asset allocation needs. Helping you understand your risk tolerance. Recommending the appropriate investment vehicles to help you reach and exceed your goals.

At New London, parking was available for submariners at the head of the finger piers. Should a submarine be brought alongside at too high a speed, or if a backing bell failed to be answered, the heavy, protruding bow on occasion overrode the dock and damaged the car parked at the head of the pier. To emphasize the need for caution in avoiding a possible submarine-auto collision, the first parking space was reserved for the skipper of the submarine, thereby guaranteeing the enthusiastic co-operation of the CO in preventing possible damage to a U.S. naval vessel if only to avoid more serious damage to the family wheels. Insurance claims based on collisions between submarine and automobile in New London were unusual but far from unknown.

My breast cancer diagnosis was in March, and now it was November. Reflecting back, why did I not get tested when I was first diagnosed? As an expert-patient, why did I not even think about getting tested for a BRCA mutation? The very short answer is that I did not really meet the criteria for testing and the test would have cost several thousand dollars were my insurance to decline to pay for it. The long answer is more complicated. No one recommended it.

There's nothing wrong with me. This has been medically proven, once. My former insurance company stopped honoring my requests for more diagnostics and labs. A therapist gave me medicine but I didn't take it because she didn't even run tests. She based her diagnosis on my answers, on the things I told her, and I bullshitted so much I couldn't even remember which parts were genuine. How could I take a pill based on that? And what if it worked? What if my bullshit was the right-sized hole for a pill-shaped fix? I felt helpless in the face of someone helping me.

Disability insurance provides a portion of your income if you can't work because of an illness or non-job-related injury. To me, being over 50 doesn't lessen the need for it. On the contrary, it may increase it. Many people in their fifties are in their peak earning years and building their retirement nest egg. An extended disability at this time of life could completely derail their financial future.

The best answer is that oral sex carried a sort of taboo tax. At the time, it was considered a form of perversion, especially by religious-minded folks, since it satisfied the lust requirements of sex without fulfilling the reproductive requirements. The Everleigh Club was of course happy to profit from this taboo.

Naturally, immunity is a natural physician that fends off all invading bacteria and viruses, whereas food becomes its medicine or trouble since that appears to increase or decrease your immune system; thus, choose the right and healthy food, and adopt this proverb: Eat to be alive, not live to eat. Experienced and qualified doctors understand the side effects of medicines before the prescription. Indeed, the majority of doctors hold a professional degree and certificate, whereas virtually none of them has the latest and accurate knowledge; as a result, it executes no difference between such doctors and a robot. When naturopathy experts and spiritual figures predict with significant certainty that you have no cancer or whatever other sickness, it confuses, surprises, and creates suspicious feelings in your mind, whereas doctors have diagnosed metastatic cancer. What should one believe and what not? However, one’s enemies are still awaiting its death. One breathes, expecting and waiting for the miracle of God; it will soon happen if one believes. You neither feel trust in your family doctor and specialists nor feel satisfaction with their treatment. You always realize that they do not tell the truth about how risky your disease is, and they never discuss it. If doctors fail to meet your sufferings of mucus, shortness of breath, and swallowing difficulties because of medication’s side effects, they will indeed put you on medical victimization, ignoring the better quality of life that the medical system promises. Most doctors work for the insurance companies instead of caring for patients. It is factually a medical crime that doctors, hospitals, or insurance providers put patients at high risk. Many doctors do not respect patients’ requests to fulfill it because patients want treatment according to international medical guidelines. Such refusal results in the spreading of their suffering. It saddens patients that the doctors only think about the insurance provider and not the patient. Indeed, such a situation can put one on the track in a dilemma. However, one’s experience and others may prove that none of the medicines give patients a good quality of life, whether homeopathy, allopathy, naturopathy, or even a spiritual one. If your fate stands as a barrier in front of you, no one sees or realizes what you have faced and is still facing worries about your health. Factually, robot doctors cannot provide significant information that may help to ease patients’ suffering; there is only one way to change lifestyle and stay strict on diet; it will have a better result than medicine, which is full of toxins that damage patients’ health instead of curing it. One can think or predict that the medical world has become a medical trade in which one cannot exclude the medical mafia. Is it a valid context that requires an authentic answer?

Rush Limbaugh nailed it on his broadcast: “Obamacare is not about improved healthcare or cheaper insurance or better treatment or insuring the uninsured, and it never has been about that. It’s about statism. It’s about expanding the government. It’s about control over the population. It is about everything but healthcare.” Obamacare is just one part of the unwanted, unnecessary, unaffordable fundamental transformation of America hoisted upon us; its premise is unquestionable government control over a free people. Limbaugh’s message echoes that of early nineteenth-century minister William John Henry Boetcker: “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. . . . You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence. . . . You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.” Good leaders understand that the ills of our economy and our society won’t be solved by a bigger, more intrusive government. The answer to restoring America is to restore her values of freedom, hard work, and individual initiative. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, get more informed about how big government is antithetical to America’s foundational principles. Work to elect leaders who promise (and then deliver!) to rein in government, repeal Obamacare, and return power to the people, who can make better decisions for themselves, their families, and their businesses than bureaucrats ever will.   DAY 92

easing the learning curve of new users is essential to successful ODR implementations. Provide an animated Flash movie, narrated by a human voice, that explains how to use the ODR tools made available to users. Provide extensive documentation and context-sensitive help files, so that users can always get a quick answer to questions that may arise. As one of the focus group participants put it, "The instructions, tour, and attention to detail were all helpful. For me, it was the `fear of the unknown' and the ... belief that [the platform] would be difficult" It is the job of the designers of ODR technology to proactively address this fear and to ease new users into an understanding of how new tools will benefit them. Don't

Drinks DUI expert group to help guide However, the best men s and women s drunken food you like it petty crimes, other traffic violations on the wrong goal that seems to be the direction. If you see that the light sentences and fines to get website traffic is violated, the citizen towards crime. When under the influence of a great interest behind the violation was due to more significant impact. Prison term effects were stuck down the back of people who are well, these licenses is likely that you want to deal with nutrition break and automated attacks can be, that s why. Yes it is expensive insurance, and other options in the outcome of the order of DUI, in everyday life, it affects people and the need to process, I love you. An experienced legal drunk driving charges, and it was presented to a lawyer immediately after the contract has announced that although his own. You are trying to remember the legal rights towards the maximum is very cool, you must be straight. The alternative thinking in any direction, does not encourage conservation officials as a record on suspicion of drunken driving after turning self, yourself simplest explanation, it may be possible to do so until is. His car really only answer whether the director should start by asking, encourages statement. A judgment is impaired, you probably have a file, you can use your account to say that the elements can get. When he finished, completely, their legal rights, and in a quiet warehouse to check their own direction and I will speak, and the optimal route is being used against itself. Most use a positive direction, you might think it accuses because your self, and also to examine the consequences of drinking have been able to rule out the presence of blood. Of course, as long as you do not accept the claims are by drinking in the area, they are deprived of a lawyer. Additional measures will not fix it claims that his lawyer, the Czech-out you can. Therefore, it is also within the laws of their country to be aware of your car. Owned independent certification system will be canceled. It can record their own and as an alternative to the paper license, driving license, was arrested for drunken driving, the licensee, are confiscated in accordance with the direction. License, for how long, but canceling function is based on the severity of their crime. But even apart from some a license, you completely lose its supply is proposed well motivated are not sure. Your sins, so not only is it important for your car can pass only confiscated. DUI price of any of the reception towards obtaining a driving license, DMV hearing is removed again, but the case was registered, although this aspect of themselves independently as a condition of. The court file, however, take care of yourself, as well as independent experts was chosen to listen to their constitution.

Question 1: “What are you thinking about?” The proper answer to this is, “I’m sorry if I have been a bit distant, darling. I was just reflecting on what a warm, wonderful, thoughtful, caring, intelligent woman you are and how lucky I am to have you in my life.” This response obviously bears no resemblance to the truth, which most likely is one of the following: • a. “Nothing.” • b. “Football.” • c. “Angelina Jolie naked.” • d. “How fat you are.” • e. “How I would spend the insurance money if you died

Question 3: “Do I look fat?” The correct answer is an emphatic “Absolutely not! You look perfect!” Among the incorrect answers are: • a. “Compared to what?” • b. “I wouldn’t call you fat, but you’re not exactly thin.” • c. “A little extra weight looks good on you.” • d. “I’ve seen fatter.” • e. “No. I inadvertently put a twenty-pound weight on the scale when you were on it.” • f. “Could you repeat the question? I was just thinking about how I would spend the insurance money if you died.

Difficult People “So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” DEUTERONOMY 31:6 NLT Jennifer had been successful in her job at a large insurance company, but a shift in management turned her dream job into a nightmare. Jennifer and her new boss did not get along. Whatever she did, he seemed displeased. He called her into his office and complained about her work, and he stood at her desk and scolded her in front of her coworkers. Sometimes Jennifer went home and cried. She didn’t know what to do. There were several options. She could find another job; she could learn to put up with her boss’s bad behavior; or she could confront him in a godly way. As she searched for answers through prayer and scripture, Jennifer decided to have a talk with her boss. The idea frightened her. Her mind raced with the consequences. She could lose her job! Still, it was what she needed to do. Jennifer carefully prepared what she would say. She planned her next steps if the conversation went badly, and she held tightly to the promise that the Lord would lead her. Are you dealing with a difficult person? Then do what Jennifer did. Seek God’s will. Act in faith knowing that He will support you. Lord, help me in my relationship with _____________. Show me what to do. Amen.

Do you want to be safe, or do you really want to change the world? The conflict is that we want to be brave, we want to take risks . . .but we also want to be safe. The problem is, we can't have it both ways. We want the American dream: to graduate from high school, go college, get a degree, and then what? Find the love of your life and get married. Then what? Get a job. Then what? Buy a car, buy a house, buy life insurance. Then what? Grow old and retire. Then what? ls that it? ls that all there is? In fact, couldn't we just sum up the entire American dream in the single word "safety"? That's what it's all about. No matter what you want out of life, you can achieve it in America in comfort, style, and in the end, safety. But there is a problem. We cannot be safe and take risks at the same time. Eleanor Roosevelt said, 'You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do' and 'Do something every day that scares you.' This can get messy. It gets uncomfortable. It means touching people who are dying of diseases. It means going to the filthy slums, the garbage dumps, the places we would never normally go . . . just to reach that one hurting person. So we must answer the question: Do we want to stay safe, or do we want to change the world? We can't have it both ways.

Fiona said. “I wonder if he had a big insurance policy on Prudence?” “Ed didn’t mention that to me yesterday, but it didn’t really come up in the conversation either. He claims he was at Cutty Marina when she was killed, so he has an alibi I can check.” “Josiah claims to have an alibi too. Says he was out lobstering and his deck hand can verify it.” “Okay, I’ll check into that,” Jake said. “Let’s just get on with searching this area.” They put their heads down and started looking. Fiona pushed the leaves around with her feet disturbing a few little orange fire newts that were hanging around underneath. “There’s lots of newts here. Do you guys think one could have just crawled into Prudence’s mouth on its own?” “That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?” Jake asked. “Yes,” Morgan answered. Then she laughed.

According to Satwalekar, former head of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd, who was on the bank's board for eight years, the biggest thing about leadership is asking questions and not necessarily providing the answers. 'That makes your people think. Look at the retail portfolio of all banks and NBFCs [non-banking finance companies] in 2008—whoever was aggressive got decimated. The exception is HDFC Bank as they were always very clear in their mind on what could and could not be done. Aditya would ask the right questions and make his people see what was required. The top line was not a target for him. Value creation through profitability was the objective,' says Satwalekar.

I also quickly came to appreciate the importance of watching what’s said around clients. When clients make unexpected requests for legal advice – as they often do – I learned that it was better to tell them I’d get back to them with an answer, and go away, research the question, and consult with a supervising attorney, rather than firing back an answer off-the-cuff. A friend of mine at another firm told me a story that illustrates the risks of saying too much. It seems an insurance company had engaged my friend’s California-based firm to help in defending against an environmental claim. This claim entailed reviewing huge volumes of documents in Arizona. So my friend’s firm sent teams of associates to Arizona, all expenses paid, on a weekly basis. Because the insurance company also sent its own lawyers and paralegals, as did other insurance companies who were also defendants in the lawsuit, the document review facility was often staffed with numerous attorneys and paralegals from different firms. Associates were instructed not to discuss the case with anyone unless they knew with whom they were speaking. After several months of document review, one associate from my friend’s firm abandoned his professionalism and discretion when he began describing to a young woman who had recently arrived at the facility what boondoggles the weekly trips were. He talked at length about the free airfare, expensive meals, the easy work, and the evening partying the trips involved. As fate would have it, the young woman was a paralegal working for the insurance company – the client who was paying for all of his “perks” – and she promptly informed her superiors about his comments. Not surprisingly, the associate was fired before the end of the month. My life as an associate would have been a lot easier if I had delegated work more freely. I’ve mentioned the stress associated with delegating work, but the flip side of that was appreciating the importance of asking others for help rather than doing everything myself. I found that by delegating to paralegals and other staff members some of my more tedious assignments, I was free to do more interesting work. I also wish I’d given myself greater latitude to make mistakes. As high achievers, law students often put enormous stress on themselves to be perfect, and I was no different. But as a new lawyer, I, of course, made mistakes; that’s the inevitable result of inexperience. Rather than expect perfection and be inevitably disappointed, I’d have been better off to let myself be tripped up by inexperience – and focus, instead, on reducing mistakes caused by carelessness. Finally, I tried to rely more on other associates within the firm for advice on assignments and office politics. When I learned to do this, I found that these insights gave me either the assurance that I was using the right approach, or guidance as to what the right approach might be. It didn’t take me long to realize that getting the “inside scoop” on firm politics was crucial to my own political survival. Once I figured this out, I made sure I not only exchanged information with other junior associates, but I also went out of my way to gather key insights from mid-level and senior associates, who typically knew more about the latest political maneuverings and happenings. Such information enabled me to better understand the various personal agendas directing work flow and office decisions and, in turn, to better position myself with respect to issues and cases circulating in the office.

Health insurance companies have created a financial black hole in an already broken healthcare system.

Then why play games? Why the beard-and-beat routine?” The boy thought it over carefully. For a moment or two it seemed that he might not answer. Then he spoke. “It’s like this,” he said. “My old man lives up in Yonkers. He’s got his own insurance agency there. Dull as dishwater but it pays for groceries and keeps oil in the tank, you know?

So no, Serena couldn’t and wouldn’t settle for just any man, and if she could help it, she would, with no exceptions, marry the man of her dreams. A man who was well-educated and one who could financially bring to the table as much as she did. In particular, a man like Tim, who was chief financial officer for a large insurance company. And if God answered all Serena’s prayers, her future husband would ultimately be able to provide

If you are a midwife, a yoga instructor, a bookseller, a gardener, or an architect, you are likely to be a Democrat. Conversely, beer wholesalers, car salespeople, home builders, exterminators, and insurance agents are disproportionately Republicans.

she added, I’d still have to answer to insurance companies with their time-consuming mounds of paperwork, which would take me away from patient care. Has it really come to this? I thought. Writing as a way to support a living as a doctor? Didn’t it used to be the other way around?

I went to see the house. (...) The place was a squat—thirty-five heroin addicts were living there. The chaos was palpable. It smelled like dog shit, cat shit, piss. (...) One floor was literally burned—it was nothing but charred floorboards with a toilet sitting in the middle. This place looked terrible. “How much?” I asked. Forty thousand guilder, they told me. They clearly just wanted to dump this house. But if you bought it, you were also getting the heroin addicts who were squatting in it, and under Dutch law, it was all but impossible to get them out. For any normal human being to buy this place would be like throwing money out the window. So I said, “Okay, I’m interested.” I talked about it with my friends. “You’re nuts,” they said. “It’s not money you have—what the hell are you going to do?” ...A drug dealer [had] bought the place. But he didn’t pay the mortgage. And he didn’t pay and he didn’t pay, and finally he was in such financial trouble that he decided to burn the place down for the insurance. Except that the fire was stopped in time and only the one floor was damaged. And then the insurance investigator found that the drug dealer had done it intentionally, and the bank took the house away from him. And this was how it turned into a squat for heroin addicts. “But where is this guy?” I asked. “He’s still living in the house,” the neighbor told me. This house had two entrances. One went to the first floor and the other to the second. The door with the board across it was the entrance to the first floor, where I’d already been; the drug dealer was living on the second floor. So I went around and knocked on the door, and he answered. “I want to talk to you,” I said. He let me in. There was a table in the middle of the floor, covered with ecstasy, cocaine, hashish, all ready to go into bags. There was a pistol on the table. This guy was bloated—he looked like hell. And suddenly I poured my heart out to him. I told him everything... I said that this house was what I wanted—all I wanted—the only home I could afford with the little money I had. I was weeping. This guy was standing there with his mouth open. He stood there looking at me. Then he said, “Okay. But I have a condition.” “This is my deal. I’ll get everybody out; you’ll get your mortgage. But the moment you sign the contract and get the house, you’re going to sign a contract that I can stay on this floor for the rest of my life. That’s the deal. If you cross me...” He showed me the pistol. It was in a good neighborhood, where a comparable place would sell for forty to fifty times the price. And [now] it was empty—not a heroin addict in sight. I got a mortgage in less than a week. But now, since my bank knew the house was empty, Dutch law gave them the right to buy the house for themselves. So I went back to the drug dealer and said, “Can we get some addicts back into the place? Because it’s too good now.” “How many you want?” he asked. “About twelve,” I said. “No problem,” he said. He got twelve addicts back. I took curtains I found in a dumpster and put them on the windows. Then I scattered some more debris around the place. Now all I had to do was wait. My contract signing was two weeks away—it was the longest two weeks in my life. Finally the day came... and I walked into the bank. The atmosphere was very serious. One of the bankers looked at me and said, “I heard that the unwanted tenants have left the house.” I just looked at him very coolly and said, “Yeah, some left.” He cleared his throat and said, “Sign here.” I signed. “Congratulations,” the banker said. “You’re the owner of the house.” I looked at him and said, “You know what? Actually everybody left the house.” He looked back at me and said, “My dear girl, if this is true, you have just made the best real-estate deal I’ve heard of in my twenty-five-year career.

You must have always wondered why your father and I stayed together for as long as we did,” my mother said—to me, I guessed, although she was looking at the hole. This surprised me even more than the eulogy. In fact, I had not wondered this at all. I had not ever even considered my parents’ not staying together a possibility. I had not ever even considered my wife and me not staying together a possibility either until it actually happened. But I didn’t say this to my mother. I wanted there to be peace between the living and the dead and also between the living and the living. “Why does anyone stay together for as long as they do?” I asked—rhetorically, I thought, although my mother answered anyway. “God,” she said, “family, fear, loyalty, sex, security, compassion, companionship, complacency, children, guilt, money, real estate, health insurance, not wanting to eat alone, not wanting to go on vacation alone, not wanting to watch television alone, not wanting to drink alone, not wanting to go on cruises alone, not wanting to go on cruises at all, not wanting to leave one person and find another person who then wants to go on cruises, not wanting to leave a person and not find another person at all, not wanting to find another person, not knowing what you want, not knowing what your problem is, love.

The forest, I believe, will stay with Bert as he ages. It is a deep terrain, a place of unending variance and subtle meaning. It is a complete sensory environment, whispering with sounds that nourish rather than enervate, with scents that carry information more significant than “nasty” or “nice.” It is different each time you meet it, changing with the seasons, the weather, the life cycles of its inhabitants. It is marked by history and mythologies; stories effortlessly spin from its depths. It is safe from the spite of suburban playgrounds, and dangerous in a way that insurance won’t indemnify. Dig beneath its soil, and you will uncover layers of life: the frail networks of mycelia, the burrows of animals, the roots of trees. Bring questions into this space and you will receive a reply, though not an answer. Deep terrain offers up multiplicity, forked paths, symbolic meaning. It schools you in compromise, in shifting interpretation. It will mute your rationality and make you believe in magic. It removes time from the clock face and reveals the greater truth of its operation, its circularity and its vastness. It will show you rocks of unfathomable age and bursts of life so ephemeral that they are barely there. It will show you the crawl of geological ages, the gradual change of the seasons, and the countless micro-seasons that happen across the year. It will demand your knowledge: the kind of knowledge that’s experiential, the kind of knowledge that comes with study. Know it—name it—and it will reward you only with more layers of detail, more frustrating revelations of your own ignorance. A deep terrain is a life’s work. It will beguile, nourish, and sustain you through decades, only to finally prove that you, too, are ephemeral compared to the rocks and the trees.

If we don’t keep that lizard on a leash, our minds will very quickly have us living under a bridge with no health insurance, all alone, and ignored by our kids. None of that is actually true, nor has it likely ever been true. But it feels like it could be true and that will scare us into remaining paralyzed and not taking steps in any direction. So we never try to make the relationship better, but we never leave either.

The answer seems to be yes, indeed. For every extra year a young person was exposed to TV in his first 15 years, we see a 4 percent increase in the number of property-crime arrests later in life and a 2 percent increase in violent-crime arrests.

Our data offer no firm answers. The effect is largest for children who had extra TV exposure from birth to age four. Since most four-year-olds weren’t watching violent shows, it’s hard to argue that content was the problem. It may be that kids who watched a lot of TV never got properly socialized, or never learned to entertain themselves. Perhaps TV made the have-nots want the things the haves had, even if it meant stealing them. Or maybe it had nothing to do with the kids at all; maybe Mom and Dad became derelict when they discovered that watching TV was a lot more entertaining than taking care of the kids.

Six critical questions to ask your Guy 1. How are you paid? Fee-only advisers receive no compensation from the sale of investment products. All others do. You can’t count on an adviser who gets a significant portion of their pay in sales commissions. Period. Leave if they are not fee-only. 2. Do you have any conflicts of interest that influence the advice you provide? Financial advisers who are registered representatives get paid to sell insurance or annuity products promoted by their brokers. Ask how they choose the investments they recommend. Ask them directly how they are paid. 3. Will my assets be housed with an independent custodian—that is, a bank that is not selling the investment products? “Yes” is the only acceptable answer here.

him about the proposed change in name. He thought it sounded like nonsense then and hadn’t changed his mind yet. ‘To answer your question though, I think it will depend on how many other crimes they are able to sew up with this discovery. All the different piles of goods in there might each represent a separate reported theft. They could clear a list of crimes and, if they are finding fingerprints or other physical evidence, they might be able to catch multiple criminals. They’ll be trying to find Karl Tarkovsky, but I doubt he’s in the country. I reckon he took the van full of Stilton and fled, getting across the channel before anyone even had a chance to report the van stolen, let alone the cheese.’ ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Dave agreed. ‘It’s a shame for the festival. And for the dairy, but they’ll recover sure enough. The insurance will pay for it and it’s not like suppliers can go elsewhere to get it. Stilton isn’t Stilton if it’s made by anyone else,’ the security guard said knowingly. He lapsed into silence and neither man spoke for a moment. It became an awkward silence after about ten seconds, at which point Dave said, ‘Well, must be off. Goodnight.’ ‘Goodnight,’ Albert called after the man as he vanished into the dark again. It was good of him to check on Oxford, especially given the day he’d had. Albert watched the police working in the lockup for a few seconds as he continued to chew over the misalignment of clues in his head. The counterfeit note didn’t fit. In fact, the only way he could make it fit, was to assume it appeared in Karl’s room out of pure coincidence, and he didn’t like that at all. Unable to shift the feeling that he was blind to the truth, he turned around and started back towards the pub. Perhaps a gin and tonic to help him sleep was in order. The imagined taste hastened his steps, but he might have walked faster yet had he known what waited for him in the bar.

The forest, I believe, will stay with Bert as he ages. It is a deep terrain, a place of unending variance and subtle meaning. It is a complete sensory environment, whispering with sounds that nourish rather than enervate, with scents that carry information more significant than 'nasty' or 'nice.' It is different each time you meet it, changing with the seasons, the weather the life cycles of its inhabitants. It is marked by history and mythologies; stories effortlessly spin from its depths. It is safe from the spite of suburban playgrounds, and dangerous in a way that insurance won't indemnify. Dig beneath its soil, and you will uncover layers of life: the frail networks of mycelia, the burrows of animals, the roots of trees. Bring questions into this space and you will receive a reply, though not an answer. Deep terrain offers up multiplicity, forked paths, symbolic meaning. It schools you in compromise, in shifting interpretation. It will mute your rationality and make you believe in magic. It removes time from the clock face and revelas the greater truth of its operation, its circularity and its vastness. It will show you rocks of unfathmoable age and bursts of life so ephemeral that they are barely there. It will show you the crawl of geological ages, the gradual change of the seasons, and the countless micro-seasons that happen across the year. It will demand your knowledge: the kind of knowledge that comes with study. Know it--name it--and it will reward you only with more layers of detail, more frustrating revelations of your own ignorance. A deep terrain is a life's work. It will beguile, nourish, and sustain you through decades, only to finally prove to you, too, are ephemeral compared to the rocks and the trees.

am not a consultant; I am an insurant. I don’t tell people what to do. I just ask them the hard questions that they need to answer to decide what to do for themselves.

Sticking with the $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, MMT would have us begin by asking if it would be safe for Congress to authorize $2 trillion in new spending without offsets. A careful analysis of the economy’s existing (and anticipated) slack would guide lawmakers in making that determination. If the CBO and other independent analysts concluded it would risk pushing inflation above some desired inflation rate, then lawmakers could begin to assemble a menu of options to identify the most effective ways to mitigate that risk. Perhaps one-third, one-half, or three-fourths of the spending would need to be offset. It’s also possible that none would require offsets. Or perhaps the economy is so close to its full employment potential that PAYGO is the right policy. The point is, Congress should work backward to arrive at the answer rather than beginning with the presumption that every new dollar of spending needs to be fully offset. That helps to protect us from unwarranted tax increases and undesired inflation. It also ensures that there is always a check on any new spending. The best way to fight inflation is before it happens. In one sense, we have gotten lucky. Congress routinely makes large fiscal commitments without pausing to evaluate inflation risks. It can add hundreds of billions of dollars to the defense budget or pass tax cuts that add trillions to the fiscal deficit over time, and for the most part, we come out unscathed—at least in terms of inflation. That’s because there’s normally enough slack to absorb bigger deficits. Although excess capacity has served as a sort of insurance policy against a Congress that ignores inflation risk, maintaining idle resources comes at a price. It depresses our collective well-being by depriving us of the array of things we could have enjoyed if we had put our resources to good use. MMT aims to change that. MMT is about harnessing the power of the public purse to build an economy that lives up to its full potential while maintaining appropriate checks on that power. No one would think of Spider-Man as a superhero if he refused to use his powers to protect and serve. With great power comes great responsibility. The power of the purse belongs to all of us. It is wielded by democratically elected members of Congress, but we should think of it as a power that exists to serve us all. Overspending is an abuse of power, but so is refusing to act when more can be done to elevate the human condition without risking inflation.

To answer this question with some kind of scientific certainty, what you’d really like to do is conduct an experiment. Pretend you could randomly select a group of states and command each of them to release 10,000 prisoners. At the same time, you could randomly select a different group of states and have them lock up 10,000 people, misdemeanor offenders perhaps, who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to prison. Now sit back, wait a few years, and measure the crime rate in those two sets of states. Voilà! You’ve just run the kind of randomized, controlled experiment that lets you determine the relationship between variables. Unfortunately, the governors of those random states probably wouldn’t take too kindly to your experiment. Nor would the people you sent to prison in some states or the next-door neighbors of the prisoners you freed in others. So your chances of actually conducting this experiment are zero. That’s why researchers often rely on what is known as a natural experiment, a set of conditions that mimic the experiment you want to conduct but, for whatever reason, cannot. In this instance, what you want is a radical change in the prison population of various states for reasons that have nothing to do with the amount of crime in those states.

...the United States is the sickest of the rich. ... The United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as other capitalist countries on Level 4--around $9,400 compared to around $3,600--and for that money its citizens can expect lives that are three years shorter. the United States spends more per capita on health care than any other country in the world, but 39 countries have longer life expectancies. ...US citizens should be asking why they cannot achieve the same levels of health, for the same cost, as other capitalist countries that have similar resources. The answer is not difficult, by the way: it is the absence of the basic public health insurance that citizens of most other countries on Level 4 take for granted.

Just cover the basics like health insurance and then promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.

These are good people, they have great ideas. How come for the last 45 years wages have been stagnant for the middle class, how come we have the highest rate of childhood poverty, how come 45 million people still have student debt,how com 3 people own more wealth than the bottom half of america? And here is the answer. Nothing will change unless we have the guts to take on wall street, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the military industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry. If we don't have the guts to take them on we'll continue to have plans, we'll continue to have talks but the rich will get richer and everybody else will be struggling.

The Legal system can intimidate and overwhelm anyone, but we're here to help you find the answers and create the solutions you need. Based in Clones, Co. Monaghan I advise clients both locally and nationally on over a broad spectrum of legal disciplines including Civil and Criminal Litigation, Employment Law, Family Law, Probate and Succession Law, Conveyancing, and Insurance Indemnity matters.

In places where people would help their friends by testifying, they also report a willingness to (1) give their friends insider company information, (2) lie about a friend’s medical exam to lower his insurance rates, and (3) exaggerate the quality of the cuisine at a friend’s restaurant in a published review. In these places, the “right” answer is to help your friend. People aren’t trying to distinguish themselves as relentlessly honest individuals governed by impartial principles. Instead, they are deeply loyal to their friends and want to cement enduring relationships, even if this involves illegal actions. In these places, being nepotistic is often the morally correct thing to do. By contrast, in WEIRD societies, many people think badly of those who weight family and friends over impartial principles and anonymous criteria like qualifications, merit, or effort.

Then why did we sue for $50 million when the most we can get is only $1 million?” Another question with a long answer. First, it’s called making a statement. We’re angry and fighting back, and suing for $50 million sounds much more aggressive than a mere $1 million. Second, a quirk in this already screwed-up law prohibits the jurors from knowing about the $1 million cap. They can sit through a month of testimony, evaluate the evidence, deliberate thoughtfully, and return a proper verdict of, say, $5 to $10 million. Then they go home, and the next day the judge quietly reduces the verdict down to the cap. The newspaper might trumpet another big verdict, but the lawyers and judges (and insurance companies) know the truth.

The Financologist is a blog that focuses on topics about personal and business finance. Here you'll find plenty of information to help you make better financial decisions and improve your financial well-being. Whether it be budgeting, financial planning, insurance, we have answers for you. For those in a higher income level, financing your retirement using life insurance can be a terrific strategy for tax-free income at retirement. Contact us to see if you qualify. Phone: (888) 306-8895 Business email: mss@thefinancologist.com

But when it came to actual policy—when I asked GOP leaders what exactly they proposed to help drive down medical costs, protect people with preexisting conditions, and cover thirty million Americans who couldn’t otherwise get insurance—their answers were as threadbare as Chuck Grassley’s had been during his visit to the Oval months before. I’m

because you don’t. You couldn’t possibly see things the way I do. The answer is no, no insurance. Like most everybody else, I was living in denial. Isn’t that what you people call

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.

Our world is filled with factories. Factories that make widgets and insurance and Web sites, factories that make movies and take care of sick people and answer the telephone. These factories need workers. If you learn how to be one of these workers, if you pay attention in school, follow instructions, show up on time, and try hard, we will take care of you. You won't have to be brilliant or creative or take big risks. We will pay you a lot of money, give you health insurance, and offer you job security.

Imagine that you have to break someone’s arm. Right or left, doesn’t matter. The point is that you have to break it, because if you don’t…well, that doesn’t matter either. Let’s just say bad things will happen if you don’t. Now, my question goes like this: do you break the arm quickly — snap, whoops, sorry, here let me help you with that improvised splint — or do you drag the whole business out for a good eight minutes, every now and then increasing the pressure in the tiniest of increments, until the pain becomes pink and green and hot and cold and altogether howlingly unbearable? Well exactly. Of course. The right thing to do, the only thing to do, is to get it over with as quickly as possible. Break the arm, ply the brandy, be a good citizen. There can be no other answer. Unless. Unless unless unless. What if you were to hate the person on the other end of the arm? I mean really, really hate them. This was a thing I now had to consider. I say now, meaning then, meaning the moment I am describing; the moment fractionally, oh so bloody fractionally, before my wrist reached the back of my neck and my left humerus broke into at least two, very possibly more, floppily joined-together pieces. The arm we’ve been discussing, you see, is mine. It’s not an abstract, philosopher’s arm. The bone, the skin, the hairs, the small white scar on the point of the elbow, won from the corner of a storage heater at Gateshill Primary School — they all belong to me. And now is the moment when I must consider the possibility that the man standingbehind me, gripping my wrist and driving it up my spine with an almost sexual degree of care, hates me. I mean, really, really hates me. He is taking for ever. His name was Rayner. First name unknown. By me, at any rate, and therefore, presumably, by you too. I suppose someone, somewhere, must have known his first name — must have baptised him with it, called him down to breakfast with it, taught him how to spell it — and someone else must have shouted it across a bar with an offer of a drink, or murmured it during sex, or written it in a box on a life insurance application form. I know they must have done all these things. Just hard to picture, that’s all. Rayner, I estimated, was ten years older than me. Which was fine. Nothing wrong with that. I have good, warm, non-arm-breaking relationships with plenty of people who are ten years older than me. People who are ten years older than me are, by and large, admirable. But Rayner was also three inches taller than me, four stones heavier, and at least eight however-you-measure-violence units more violent. He was uglier than a car park, with a big, hairless skull that dipped and bulged like a balloon full of spanners, and his flattened, fighter’s nose, apparently drawn on his face by someone using their left hand, or perhaps even their left foot, spread out in a meandering, lopsided delta under the rough slab of his forehead.

It’s perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon, we buy another pair. We drive SUVs and believe the lie that they constitute a kind of life insurance, even when we’re upside down in them. And, worst of all, we don’t bat an eye when Ari Fleischer tells us to “be careful what you say,” even if we remember having been told somewhere back in school that America is the land of the free. We simply buy that one, too. Our schooling, as intended, has seen to it.

As an accomplished entrepreneur with a history that spans more than fourteen years, Annette Wise is constantly looking for ways to give back to her community. Using enterprising efforts, she qualified for $125,000 in startup funding to develop a specialized residential facility that allows developmentally disabled adults to live in the community after almost a lifetime of living in a state institution. In doing so, she has provided steady employment in her community for the last thirteen years. After dedicating years to her residential facility, Annette began to see clearly the difficulty business owners face in planning for retirement successfully. Searching high and low to find answers, she took control of financial uncertainty and in less than 2 years, she became a Full Life Agent, licensed Registered Representative, Investment Advisor Representative and Limited Principal. Her focus is on building an extensive list of clients that depend on her for smart retirement guidance, thorough college planning, detailed business continuation, and business exit strategies. Clients have come to rely on Annette for insight on tax advantaged savings and retirement options. Annette’s primary goal is to help her clients understand more than just concepts, but to easily understand how money works, the consequences of their decisions and how they work in conjunction with their desires and goal. Ever the curious soul who is always up for a challenge, Annette is routinely resourceful at finding sensible means to a sometimes-challenging end. She believes in infinite possibilities as well as in sharing her knowledge with others. She is the go-to source for “Smart Wealth Solutions.” Among Annette’s proudest accomplishments are her two wonderful sons, Michael III and Matthew. As a single mom, they have been her inspiration and joy. She is forever grateful to the greatest brothers in the world- Andrew and Anthony Wise, for assistance in grooming them into amazing young men.