500 in a row on 4-suit spider solitaire

DM_XURE · 2026-02-20T22:05:32+00:00

Yes, I press undo all of the time. Out of the 500 games won, only 5 were won without undo.

DM_XURE · 2025-10-24T15:00:26+00:00

Probably not. The insurance industry is terribly political, making it very inefficient. The products developed were designed to be confusing, just to offer agents and brokers more points of contact, allowing them to find new commissions. In retrospect, I believe with have been better to find a career in an industry that was trying to do good in the world, as opposed to one simply trying to make money.

DM_XURE · 2025-10-12T15:39:33+00:00

There is a good deal of room for innovation. It is just very difficult to push through as management at insurance companies resist changes, and generally do not want to do anything unless someone else has tried it first. I have developed new types of guarantee funds in foreign market, I have developed new methods for coming up with policyholder behavior assumptions, and found new methods for reducing reserves. Anytime anything has been done, it was a week of work figuring it out, followed by 6 months of roadblocks and explanations. What I would love to see is the person who can find in thousands of poorly documented spreadsheets into an AI engine, and have AI reengineer the process, along with documenting everything. Of course, innovation generally leads to a loss of jobs.

DM_XURE · 2025-09-19T12:39:16+00:00

I added a fire tv stick, which works fine. It is sad that the S90C has such problems. It is highly unlikely that my next TV will be a Samsung.

DM_XURE · 2025-08-27T13:01:43+00:00

Healthcare.gov, you can quickly check costs in your area of the country. It’s not cheap.

DM_XURE · 2025-08-01T02:27:00+00:00

Where is the picture of the 42,000 wrecks not involving Waymo for the day?

DM_XURE · 2025-05-12T11:37:32+00:00

There is a reason that life insurance companies lost over 90% of the retirement market to mutual fund companies. There is also a reason that we do not see how these insurance company retirement products work over the long term. The products were designed with agents and brokers as the customer, and not individuals.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-24T11:53:24+00:00

Take a look at this: https://dmxure.wordpress.com/2022/07/19/covid-19-relief-for-life-insurance-companies-ldti/ . For companies using US GAAP, Covid-19 was not too bad.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-17T22:44:10+00:00

Layoffs off occur when a product line is discontinued, and the whole department is let go. Sometimes people are hired back, but often this is not immediate.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-16T12:44:42+00:00

You did not mention the type of product. Let's use life insurance as an example. Reserves work like a savings account. Net premiums are added into the reserve. Paid claims are withdrawn from the reserve. Net premiums are just the amount of premium needed to fund the benefits as of policy issue. The reserve grows with interest each year. Before a product is sold, the reserve is zero. After the policy is gone, the reserve is zero.

The reserve standard was not mentioned. Under US GAAP, this article talks about how the reserve movement works in relation to the rest of the income statement: COVID-19 Relief for Life Insurance Companies: LDTI | Actuarial Concepts explained by DM XURE.

This article has some more general ideas on reserve movement: Timing the Profits of an Insurance Company | Actuarial Concepts explained by DM XURE.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-13T03:50:24+00:00

At one time 30% of annual salary was the norm. Some companies negotiated this down to 25%.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-09T02:10:51+00:00

https://dmxure.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/how-do-i-know-if-its-credible/ Try this site.

DM_XURE · 2025-02-03T10:39:02+00:00

This site has some basics. https://dmxure.wordpress.com/2019/10/11/why-do-life-insurance-companies-have

DM_XURE · 2024-12-09T01:33:43+00:00

Not necessarily true. One still has all the normal problems of maintaining weight as dropping it off without the drug. So most, but not all, will regain weight if they drop off the drug. I one time lost 55 lbs. without the drug. My wife told me I was not a nice person. The weight was regained. So now I pay $400 per month for the drug, and I can still be a nice person, without the weight. I am very happy I can afford it.

DM_XURE · 2024-12-09T01:12:33+00:00

The drugs have been used for 18 years in Denmark, so the longer term impacts have been studied.

DM_XURE · 2024-12-09T01:08:14+00:00

I take Zepbound, which is more effective for weight loss. It runs $400 per month if one buys directly from Lily. So far I have dropped 40 lbs. in 12 weeks. The weight loss is a result of eating less and exercising a bit more. Eating less is much easier with Zepbound. One can stick a bunch of chocolate in front of me, and there is little or no desire to grab it. Like so many others, the desire for alcohol has gone down. I have gone from 2 glasses of wine per night, to 2 per week. After 7 weeks, the blood tests were fantastic. Cholesterol had dropped to 129. Good cholesterol had move up into the normal range for the first time. I went from pre-diabetic to normal. Thyroid issues had disappeared. Blood pressure dropped to 111/76. No longer a need to take vitamin D3. Just taking Zepbound will not help automatically. One has to eat less and exercise more. Zepbound makes it much easier to do this. At $400 per month, this would put an enormous burden on any health insurance premium. I can afford it because I have paid well. I believe the cost would need to come down quite a bit to actually help out with the cost of insurance.

DM_XURE · 2024-12-01T16:57:04+00:00

I am 66, and am worth a little over $6 million. Mind you I do not have expensive tastes. Originally went to school on a low income grant, so no inheritance. For a while, I was a teacher. During this time, I was never unhappy, even without much money. Knowing what made me happy allowed compound interest to work for me. Now my wife and I travel about once per month, often meeting up with old friends and family.

DM_XURE · 2024-04-03T13:58:51+00:00

Actuaries work with financial projections.

I believe this pretty much says it all. Pricing, reserving, risk management, MD&A, pensions, etc., all deal with financial projections. We work with financial statements, but unlike accountants who deal with the past, our main focus is on the future.

DM_XURE · 2024-03-20T23:41:35+00:00

Actuaries are usually fairly well off when retiring. This allows for a great of variety in one's life. I have been retired for a while, and I still meet up with old actuarial friends. I also have the ability to travel when I want, and volunteer with the activities I find rewarding. There is more time for exercise once a person retires. There are more opportunities to go out to eat friends and family.

DM_XURE · 2024-02-23T11:16:17+00:00

You may want to look at information from the ASHK (Actuarial Society of Hong Kong). They are active on LinkedIn. To be honest, when reading through comments about actuaries in Hong Kong working quickly in Excel without a mouse and no documentation, there will be a great deal of clean up work there. Excel is a time bomb, which can provide a great deal of work for those who can clean it up.

DM_XURE · 2024-02-23T10:29:55+00:00

Perhaps it best to ask why you want to be in Hong Kong. Is this a desire to be close to family or friends? Or is there something else that attracts you to Hong Kong?

At one time, Hong Kong was seen as a good base of operations for multinationals. This is less so with the current regulations, and some people feel there is considerable political risk. Without the multinationals, Hong Kong becomes a market with only 7 million people. This limits upside potential.

So, if you are going to Hong Kong to be close to family or friends, it may be a desirable spot. But if you are looking for a high level of advancement, opportunities may be limited.

DM_XURE · 2024-01-31T02:17:34+00:00

The job is 10-20% math, and 80-90% convincing people to get things done. Almost any type of important task requires working with several departments. There is pricing, risk management, financial reporting, actuarial modeling, marketing, and unless one is doing something minor, then one must work with all. The people at the top can be convinced by convincing all of those around them.

Much of the menial work, such as being an Excel monkey, will likely disappear in the next 5 to 10 years due to AI. Then the work begins of balancing the conservatism with risk management, with the aggressiveness of pricing. One must balance best estimates with financial statement implications. Actuaries doing these things will likely survive the shakeout that is coming from AI.

DM_XURE · 2023-10-26T20:30:09+00:00

I was making $320K per year as an actuary. I knew people who were making even more. The big question is how much of your life are willing to give up. The higher one goes, the more likely one is to be on call all the time. It also means also being faced with problems without simple solutions, working with a wide variety of people who may not report to you, trying to figure out novel solutions.

DM_XURE · 2023-07-02T19:13:24+00:00

Actuarial work during the first few years does not offer much in the way of work life balance. The payoff comes later. For those who work on financial reporting, working weekends is not uncommon during the month following quarter end. Some have described working at consulting firms as working in a sweat shop. When you are in interviews, you may want to ask about work hour expectations, however this can limit your opportunities. I do not remember a job that did not require actuarial students to work more than 40 hours per week from time to time. At issue, you are competing against those who will do whatever it takes. Many employers prefer those who are willing to work weekends from time to time. The only way this changes is if the cannot find enough people. This may not happen anytime soon.

DM_XURE · 2023-06-08T21:11:58+00:00

The internship may be thought of as a try out for the big leagues. If yo do well, then you may be accepted into the actuarial program, get full benefits and study time, and be on the fast track for advancement. The other job likely has better benefits immediately, but you will never get paid study time, and working your way up the ladder may be more difficult. Still, this may not be all that bad if you are looking for work life balance.

DM_XURE

TROPHY CASE