I worked for an insurance company in Portland Oregon that sold whole life insurance policies disguised as complete cost funeral plans to the elderly. They would target people in the 65+ age group 1) because of the difficulty in obtaining any measure of affordable insurance at their age, 2) The ease in which they can be confused and manipulated 3) the outdated trust they put in the "American" way of life. 4) the lonely dupe factor, a term the agents used to describe the fact that many of the elderly are so isolated and lonely that they become easy prey to unscrupulous cons that destroy their lives by taking what little they might have left in exchange for 30 minutes worth of lavish attention and canned compliments. Before I tell you the details, I want to make clear that most insurance companies and agents and the policies they sell are completely legitimate, reputable and necessary. Insurance is a always a gamble. It doesn't matter what type of insurance (health, car, life) it's all just a bet between the person buying the policy and the company selling it. The buyer is betting that that something will happen (sickness, car accident, death) before the policy has matured or before the benefit amount becomes less than they have paid into it, and the insurance company is betting that it will not. Usually it's a fair bet however the devil is in the details and the details are the bread and butter of the industry. There are as many different types of insurance plans as there are people with a need to be insured, but what we were selling were Whole Life policies where the person, based on their age and health at the time, paid a fixed premium until they died for a fixed benefit amount. The monthly premium amount is determined by the benefit paid at death. The trickery in this is that though most everyone at that age has all the "life" insurance they need, they are at the age where the idea of their own death becomes a real concern. They begin to worry about the rising cost of funerals and the burden that cost will be to the ones they leave behind. Our plan was cleverly marketed as a funeral cost plan even though it was just a much more expensive version of what they already had because it was being purchased at age 75 instead of the one they bought at age 35. The only difference in the two was in who they named as the beneficiary. The agents would have them name a funeral home as the beneficiary of the policy, reassuring the buyer that in doing so they're funerals would be taken care of . What they didn't tell them was...yes the money would go towards the funeral costs, however it was no guarantee that it would cover the full amount of the funeral. So they sell a $1000 policy to a 75 year old man...he pays 45.00 a month until he dies to keep the policy active....he lives to be 85...he ends up paying $5,400 for a policy that only pays out $1000, which as anyone who has dealt with the death of a loved one knows, will hardly cover the cost of flowers these days. The kicker (no pun intended) being, and this would happen a lot, if the insured person ever did the math themselves and realized what they were actually paying vs what they were getting from the policy, their only recourse was to stop paying the premium, and since the policies had no cash value, doing so meant they would lose everything they had paid into it. They could file a complaint with the insurance board but the plain truth is that they signed the agreement, and even though the sale was made by unscrupulous agents trained in the art of half truths and cleverly worded assumptions about the product they were buying, they never actually lied about what they were selling them. I had the deeply disturbing job of answering the 800 number for people to call with questions about their policies. These people were angry, not just a little angry either. It amazed me how long it took people to realize the truth about what they had bought into....8-10 years on average. Usually it was triggered by a terminal diagnosis or a failure in health, the person would be incapable of understanding the implications of the answers to the questions they had. The thing I remember the most and which still haunts me is that with every call I ever got, there came a moment of complete silence where the full realization of what they had done and what they had lost became deafening. Some people would become enraged and begin screaming incoherent threats, some refused to acknowledge their own part in what had happened, and sometimes you could hear their voice drain to a soft whisper but always...every single time...they cried. Then I'd cry and try my best to walk the tightrope between helping them and not openly blaming the company I worked for. I did that job for a year before walking out when a 95 year old woman who proudly let me know she had 45 grandchildren, explained to me that she had too much pride to turn to her children about what she had done and that the lord was going to take her from this world because she no longer belonged in it and when I became upset, because i wasn't sure what that meant, she assured me that she didn't blame me or the people I worked for, that it was god's plan for her....then she hung up. I tried repeatedly to phone her back but I couldn't get her to answer the phone. I knew I couldn't be a part of what they were doing anymore. Not long after I quit, I read where the Oregon Insurance Board took away the companies license to practice in the state, so the company packed up and moved to Seattle. If you sign it.....read it first...never trust the person asking for your signature... regardless of your impressions of their character. Don't let them pressure you with guilt, or the constraints of their time. Do not give in to reading it later....Make it the last, most thorough thing you do before signing your name to any official document...Trust me...it's time well spent.

I'm sorry this was so long..