# 91 When and Why You Should Use Life Insurance: Interview With Rajiv Rebello

Life insurance gets a BAD wrap. Financial planners can't stand it. Investment managers can't stand it. The general population, like Suze Orman et al, can't stand it. With all these people who can't stand life insurance, how in the world does it still exist? Because it's a GREAT product, when used correctly! Life insurance is one of those products that when operating on full throttle should not be overlooked because the benefits are huge. First and foremost are the obvious benefits: You can create a sizable, tax-free estate, with pennies on the dollar. There is NO other product available out there that has the same ability. Nothing. Obviously, in this case, the insured needs to die before the estate is created and that stinks. But that's just one of the benefits of life insurance. Cash value in life insurance grows TAX FREE. You have access to that cash POTENTIALLY tax free. (There are many pitfalls to consider before taking a loan against your policy, just be advised). You can fund your insurance with an unlimited amount of cash. You can assign the policy to someone else too in order to get it out of your estate. You can name a charitable entity the beneficiary. The list of benefits of life insurance go on and on. Yet, everyone says "I don't need/want/believe in life insurance. So don't talk to me about it!" And then they huff off back to the Boglehead blog telling the world to buy term and invest the rest. But they are missing out on what could enhance their overall net worth, retirement plan and estate, if they just took the time to understand more about it. Now, I don't blame the mass consumer for their hesitance to discuss life insurance. After all, agents are notorious for beating you down over and over just so you'll say yes to get them to leave you alone. Remember the life insurance agent from the movie Groundhog Day??? Secondly, a lot of consumers HAVE been abused by not only the sales practices of life insurance agents but the fact the products are underperforming and thus going to expire before the insured does. This ticks me off, immensely actually. When was the last time your insurance agent or company sent you an IN FORCE ILLUSTRATION??? Oh, I'll answer that question. NEVER! Do you even know what an in-force illustration is? Nope. Well if you have a cash value life insurance policy, you should know this by heart. But you don't because the insurance industry simply can't help but shooting themselves in the foot by keeping an unsuspecting consumer base unaware of the buzzsaw they are going to run into. And yet, assuredly, when people awake to the horrors of their underperforming policies and scream for help from the regulators the insurance companies will then and only then comply with what should be a standard business practice, that of informing their clients about what their clients have with them!!! :( But, even with all this being true, life insurance offers wonderful opportunities for those who are aware of how to use it correctly and what to do in order to use it correctly. In this episode I interview Rajiv Rebello, Founder of Colva Insurance Services https://colvaservices.com/ I had come across an article Rajiv did in the Nerd's Eye View blog that Michael Kitces runs. You can read the article here. https://bit.ly/2PWFPS2 It is, without question, the best article on properly using life insurance I've ever read and I learned a TON. Turns out Rajiv is an actuary by trade. So, he knows how to crunch the numbers to make sure the policies that the consumer buy operate on full capacity, not just for the insurance company, but for the consumer as well. In fact, once you read Rajiv's article and listen to this blog, I highly suspect you'll be interested in seeing how YOU can use life insurance in your financial planning as well.