Confessions of a CPA: The Truth About Life Insurance

One of the most thorough, if not THE MOST THOROUGH, book about utilizing Permanent Life Insurance as your own bank to finance everything throughout your life. I believe a correctly structured permanent life insurance policy is a vital part of your investment portfolio and has the ability to do many jobs for you, NOT ONLY FOR just providing income to your loved ones when you pass away. This book teaches you how to capture all the money that slips through our fingers throughout our whole working life and use it to be tax efficient, growth efficient, income and asset protective (when you pass away, early or late in life), and the ability to be your own bank by financing your purchases through yourself so you can build your own wealth instead of building all the Banks' wealth. A MUST, MUST READ!!! Bryan is right, not everyone does this because they don't know it exists. But those who do know it exists, DO USE IT! If you understand financial principles like opportunity cost, Rule of 72 (Compound interest and HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO START INVESTING AS YOUNG AS POSSIBLE ANNNNND NOT NOT NOT DISTURBING THE GROWTH OF YOUR PRINCIPLE), multi-tasking your money, then this is the book for you!! And even if you don't understand those principles, READ IT ANYWAYS! This book was very entertaining to read, to me. It wasn't "Dry" at all to me. Bryan used very realistic examples and was very clear about everything he said, so that people would not misinterpret what he's trying to explain. I recommend this to all people, investors (novice-experts), friends, family, insurance agents, anyone who wants to understand insurance more and the benefits of it.

Bryan Bloom really does a great job writing a great book geared for consumers on the under-reported benefits of cash value life insurance. It's nice to have a CPA report on these benefits (other than Ed Slott, CPA of course). I do find it an interesting phenomenon that you can't find a single government source OR insurance company sponsored source of all this information. (I think there's either some law against it OR insurance companies are hiding these benefits to avoid being targeted by Congress as they were in the 80's with TAMRA, TEFRA, and DEFRA.) This book is a decent compilation of many of these benefits. It *may* not be the most detailed book for agents. The book doesn't go into enough detail for agents to understand how illustrations work and the formula behind cash value life insurance. (Here it is: "Net death benefit = cash values + net amount at risk - any outstanding loans".) However, it wasn't necessarily written for agents, but consumers. Regardless of that, it's a great book and a fantastic introduction to the advanced uses of cash value life insurance! I recommend it highly!

Good life insurance 101, both term and permanent, explained in simple terms. The content is comparatively balanced and honest, to be written by someone who sells permanent life insurance. However, some exaggerations and half-truths do occur (industry-wide problem). Topic-wise the book can be split in 2 main parts: 1) Life Insurance Basics (chapters 1->6) Unlike other authors, Bloom highlights the importance of the death benefit, including some high-level coverage guidelines. Finally, a credible example of true cost of term life insurance; however, no parallel cost analysis for permanent life insurance is included. When describing whole-life insurance basics, the author could do a better job on emphasizing the risk of having to add significant funds to the contract every year for 30 years. Crystal-clear explanation on types of permanent life insurance, their funding limits and policy riders. 2) How Permanent Life Insurance Works – Whole Life emphasis (chapters 7->12) The author highlights Uninterrupted Compound Interest and Unstructured Loan features but does not address cost vs benefit to implement through permanent life insurance. I had an aha! moment when reading about the relationship between death benefit, cash surrender value and policy loans. Some helpful nuggets of wisdom about funding an insurance policy are shared. The illustration about retirement income is sound and the comparison to the 4% nest egg approach, intriguing. The 2nd half of chapter 12 was unnecessarily convoluted. While the content and tone is generally balanced and honest, the author misses adjusting figures for inflation, potentially misleading readers with overstated comparisons, although this is an industry-wide problem. There are a couple of half-truths in examples used, which rests some credibility to an otherwise sound piece of work.

I really appreciate Bryan Bloom for writing this book, which in my opinion, is simply written, and addresses the very basics of permanent dividend-paying life insurance in a creative and entertaining writing style. After 39 years in the insurance and financial services industry, all 3 of his books are still teaching me facts about PLI that I wasn't altogether aware of. Having also read a very interesting and apparently well-thought-out critique of Bryan's book by a "fellow CPA", I couldn't help but read between this person's lines, finding them insulting. brash, slanderous, and inflammatory, no matter how eloquent his writing style may be. So to this CPA I say, until you know a cash value policy inside out, be careful on your next review, not to come off like a paid sponsor/critic by well-known all-knowing anti-cash value life insurance radio gurus. Bryan Bloom is too much of a gentleman, let alone a Christian man, to reply to your somewhat educated but completely rude and obnoxious written remarks. BTW, your General Liability Insurance policy excludes deliberate acts of libel. I congratulate you, Bryan, and your highly-skilled insurance and finance knowledge. Keep on keeping on, brother. Our industry needs more professionals like you.

I didn’t realise until I bought it that it applies to the American tax system not UK :( A CPA is only in America. In UK it is a Chartered Accountant.

Definitely one of my favorite books, you have to read it if you want to learn more about the potential and power of a well-designed whole life insurance policy. Only regret is that it took me so long before I finally decided to read it.

If you never consider permanent life insurance as part of your financial plan, you should use this book as a guide. It's mostly reader friendly except for the charts with numbers, which take time to absorb.