Whole life insurance is looking more attractive, because if you do it just right, you can borrow from yourself to fund the larger expected purchases in life, not to mention leave a little something around for burial expenses and whatnot. It is also, legally, a bit safer than savings accounts, trading accounts, and all the other things recent events with MF Global have shown us are no longer safe. Unfortunately, insurance companies don't look so attractive; aren't they exposed to sovereign debt and all these dirty assets which should have been sold at fire sale auctions in 2008? They've got to invest in something. Usually that something is whatever is considered the safest- an safest seems to be whatever is backed by government. That ship is going down.
Meanwhile, it is becoming more obvious that safest means physical commodities and the ability to defend them. Realistically it is hard for individuals to do such things. We have to buy whatever it is we are going to buy and hope we don't become a target for either the government or thieves. But I can see a company being able to engage in a larger scale buying and warehousing of the sort of commodities that tend to do well as fiat currencies collapse. In this way, the policy holders could feel safe, rather than wonder whether or not the funds will just be seized without notice. They could be seized, but we'd have the advance notice of tanks rolling in the streets.
The dividends provided to policyholders (mutual companies are owned by the policyholders) ought to be of particular interest if things go as I think they may. There may even come a point where no one wants the policies to be denominated in dollars anyway. Why buy thousands of worthless dollars with perfectly good gold?
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