New data from industry-funded research firm Limra has revealed that nearly a third of U.S. households have no life insurance coverage. According to the firm, this is the highest percentage of households going without insurance in five decades.

Millions Are Uninsured

The report found that about 35 million (about 30 percent) U.S. households are without both their own life insurance policies and a policy covered under their employer-sponsored plans. This number is up from 24 million (or 22 percent of households) in 2004.

With only slightly over two-thirds of households having coverage, the percentage is a considerable drop from the over 80 percent of households that held coverage in 1960.

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A couple of weeks ago, I came across an article by Dr J (though twitter) on the Feline Body Mass Index. It’s the same concept as the human BMI measurement where you look at a person’s weight and height and work out the percentage of body mass made up of fat.

Being the math geek in me, the article had a formula for calculating a cat’s body mass index so I thought I’d give it a whirl for my two 1 year old indoor cats, Rocket and Rosie (who will forever be known as The Kittens in our household).

Here’s your cat’s FBMI calculation:

While your cat is in a standing position, with the legs perpendicular to the ground and the head upright (good luck with that!):

  1. Measure the circumference of your cat’s rib cage. (The leve

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It’s been almost a year since personal finance startup Mint.com was acquired by Intuit, who this weekend will officially shut down Quicken Online and direct its users to Mint.com. Quicken Online will be shuttered on Sunday, August 29, according to a note on the product’s login screen. It will be replaced with Mint.com, where users will need to set up a new account if they do not already have one. Quicken Online users will be able to manually import certain account data into Mint.com by adding Quicken Online as an account in Mint. Quicken also encourages existing customers to export their Quicken Online data as a CSV file for backup purposes. All Read all post…

It’s time to hit the school books again for America’s youth. Only this September, there’s a tougher economics lesson on the chalk board: How to manage the tighter budgets of today’s chilly financial climate. Between pens and notebooks, backpacks and electronics and back-to-school clothing, the average family is expected to spend $606 per student this year according to the National Retail Federation. That’s a higher number compared to last year’s average of $549, even though the economic indicators have flat-lined.

This year’s economics homework  is all about supply and demand. So here’s your

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Cross-selling can seem daunting, but the benefits from selling multiple policies to your customers are worth the effort. And it can be relatively easy, since you’ve already sold something to your existing customers.

The most obvious benefit is profit; two policies are better than one. But that’s not the only reason to cross-sell. It also gives you the opportunity to diversify your clientele in all the types of insurance you sell. You’ll be building a new line of revenue that can either replace or supplement an existing line. And b

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