Gary Taffet: When Purchasing Life Insurance, Discernment Is Key

Life insurance coverage is a significant purchase; not only does it represent a major financial commitment, but, because life insurance is used to protect family members from economic hardship, it is imperative for individuals to obtain high-quality coverage. As such, many individuals are prone to seeking out advice before committing to a particular life insurance plan. According to a recent article from Business 2 Community, however, the quality of life insurance advice can vary greatly -- and it is essential for individuals to make certain that they are only listening to informed and unbiased counsel. This stance has won a comment from Gary Taffet.

Gary Taffet has worked in insurance brokerage and employee benefits administration for years, and currently serves with the New Jersey-based Reliance Insurance Group. Taffet has issued a new statement to the press, in which he offers his own thoughts on the Business 2 Community article, and the need for proper guidance when shopping for life coverage. "Independent insurance agents with vast professional experience make the best life insurance advisors," states Gary Taffet. "Each client is unique. An independent insurance advisor has a fiduciary obligation to provide the best possible recommendations. These valued and trusted professionals are providing unbiased and knowledgeable advice. And that is the most crucial role of any insurance agent."

Gary Taffet's advice for individuals to obtain proper counsel from independent insurance agents dovetails with the Business 2 Community article, which cautions against leaning on the advice of those who have little life insurance experience -- in particular, family members and friends. The article notes that there is nothing at all wrong with seeking insight from friends and loved ones, but cautions individuals to remember that, in most cases, these friends and family members are not life insurance professionals.

The Business 2 Community article continues by noting the crucial distinction between captive agents and independent agents. A captive agent is generally only able to refer clients to a single life insurance carrier, whereas an independent agent is able to provide a range of options. Because the independent agent has greater liberty to endorse different products and services, the independent agent is ultimately better able to meet the particular needs of any given client -- a point affirmed by Gary Taffet.
Ultimately, the article shares the view held by Gary Taffet -- that for individuals seeking the best possible life insurance coverage, speaking with an experienced and independent agent is ultimately the most prudent course of action.

Pan-American Life Insurance Group Names Two New Board Members

Today, Pan-American Life Insurance Group (PALIG), a leading provider of insurance and financial services throughout the Americas, announced the appointments of Jerry Carlisle and Wendell Mottley to the company's Board of Directors.

Jerry Carlisle is a financial consultant for the insurance and oil and gas industries, as well as the public sector.  He is an adjunct professor in the College of Business at Tulane University, and previously served as Deputy Inspector General, Audit & Review with the Office of Inspector General for the City of New Orleans.  For nearly 20 years Carlisle served in various financial management positions with The Louisiana Land and Exploration Company, including as Vice President, Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, prior to his retirement in March 1997.   Carlisle is deeply involved in the New Orleans business community, and has served on a number of Boards and committees including with the Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, Vistage International and Energy Partners, Ltd.  Carlisle earned a B.S. in Accounting from Mississippi State University and a Master of Business Administration from Loyola University.

Through December 2011, Wendell Mottley served as Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Credit Suisse in New York.  Mottley served as Finance Minister of Trinidad & Tobago between 1991 and 1995.  Most recently, he was named Chairman of the Trinidad & Tobago Unit Trust Corporation.  Mottley earned Economics degrees from Yale and Cambridge Universities.  Additionally, he won 2 Olympic Track and Field medals in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

"We are very pleased with the addition of Jerry and Wendell to our Board of Directors, as their experience will continue to strengthen the diverse and expert understanding necessary to reinforce our leadership position in the Americas," said Jose S. Suquet, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of Pan-American Life Insurance Group.  "Jerry's vast hands-on experience in financial management, accounting and audit will be a valuable addition to our Audit Committee.  The company's growth trend extends into the Caribbean region – an area of focus and significant impact to Pan-American Life's success - just two months following the completion of the MetLife Alico/Algico assets acquisition in 13 Caribbean countries. Wendell's distinguished reputation and his keen understanding of the region, including the investment and regulatory frameworks, will be vital to the Group's expansion to the Caribbean."

Life-saving drug not administered by two NI health trusts

Two of NI's health trusts have not distributed a potentially life-saving drug, despite it being available to them since July 2012.

Naloxone temporarily reverses the effects of heroin overdose, allowing more time for emergency treatment.

The Public Health Agency bought 500 packs of the drug, at a cost of £8,345, and made it available in July 2012.

But neither the Belfast Trust nor the South-Eastern Trust have distributed it to addicts at risk of overdose as yet.

Naloxone saves lives and it's the most simple drug to use. The longer they take to drag their heels with Naloxone the more people are going to die.”

Joanne Brannigan
Naloxone steering group
The BBC has learned that in 2011, the latest year for which figures are currently available, 17 people died of a heroin overdose in Northern Ireland.

Naloxone comes in a pack containing the drug in syringes and the packs were supplied by the PHA to local health trusts.

The packs were then to be given out by the trusts to medical professionals, staff from homeless organisations, pharmacists, drug users and their carers.

Victoria Creasy from the PHA said they wanted to get the drug out "all across Northern Ireland".

"We don't want people to take a heroin overdose, but it is there if that happens to save their life."

So far, the Northern Trust has distributed 63 of the 130 packs they received, while both the Western and Southern Trusts have handed out small numbers of Naloxone packs.

The Belfast Trust received 150 packs of the drug, while the South-Eastern Trust received 100 packs.

Neither trust has yet distributed any to addicts or those living or working with them.

However, the Prison Service, in which healthcare is overseen by the South-Eastern Trust, has distributed 35 packs of the drug to prisoners judged to be at risk of overdose on release.

According to the PHA, about 210 people have also received training in how to administer the drug.

Joanne Brannigan sits on the Naloxone steering group, made up of representatives from the PHA, the trust's addiction teams, the Health and Social Care Board and others.

She claims that lives may have been lost because the drug has not been made widely available.

"Naloxone saves lives and it's the most simple drug to use," she said.

"The longer they take to drag their heels with Naloxone the more people are going to die."

In a statement to the BBC, the Belfast Trust said that they had "established a care pathway" and hoped to be able to distribute the drug shortly.

The South-Eastern Trust also provided a statement in which they said that they are about to commence training to enable the drug to be administered and that they anticipate dispensing 25 packs of Naloxone through their Community Addictions Team in March 2013.

They said that, as prison health was "much smaller with different governance arrangements" they were able to implement distribution to prisoners more quickly.

Ang Lee wins second directing Oscar for "Life of Pi"

Taiwanese-born Ang Lee won his second Oscar for Best Directing on Sunday for "Life of Pi," the adaption of Yann Martel's fantasy adventure novel about an Indian boy who survives a shipwreck but is stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger.

"Life of Pi" was nominated for 11 Oscars - including Best Picture - and also won for Cinematography, Original Score and Visual Effects. Starring newcomer Suraj Sharma, the film was lauded by critics for Lee's ability to bring the complex book to life.

"Thank you movie god," Lee said to a big laugh from the audience.
"I really need to share this with all 3,000 - everybody who worked with me on 'Life of Pi'," he said.

Lee won in a year in which the director's race was one of the most controversial for its exclusions, most notably Ben Affleck, the director of "Argo" who picked up the top award from his peers at the Directors Guild and a slew of other awards.

Lee, 58, won his first Academy Award in 2006 for directing "Brokeback Mountain," the story of a complex love affair between two men.
He began directing Chinese-language films and has made 13 films in a diverse career. Those films have included the special effects-laden "Hulk" based on a Marvel comic Book and the adaption of Jane Austen's classic, "Sense and Sensibility."

His 2000 Chinese-language film "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger," won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was a surprise hit with worldwide ticket sales of $213.5 million.

Lee came to Hollywood's attention after directing three Chinese-language films, including "The Wedding Banquet" in 1993, nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Lee cast Sharma, then a 17-year old student, for the role of a young Pi Patel in 2010 after 3,000 young men auditioned for the lead role.

After his family goes down in the giant ship, Pi spends most of the film on the lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, trying to avoid being consumed by the 450-pound (200-kg) tiger, a premise that Lee pulled off with heavy reliance on special effects and a digital tiger. The ocean scenes were filmed in a 1.7-million-gallon (6.4-million-liter) tank.

Movie reviewer critic Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 stars, calling it "a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery."
President Barack Obama also gave "Life of Pi" a thumbs up in an interview with People Magazine, saying the film "was good - because we had read that book together."

Work, Life, and the Attempt to Do it All

At one time, the concept of "work-life balance" seemed to promise a holy grail for meeting the demands of modern life. But that ideal of having it all, particularly for women, for whom the pressures of family responsibilities still loom largest, has been increasingly, and publicly, denounced. "There's no such thing as work-life balance," Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said last year in the AOL/PBS video series MAKERS: Women Who Make America. Sandberg said she would pump breast milk during conference calls and dismiss the wooshing noise as a jackhammer outside. "There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance," she said. A few months later, in Anne-Marie Slaughter's tell-all for the Atlantic, she described leaving her "foreign-policy dream job" to tend to her family, particularly a troubled son whom her hectic schedule only permitted seeing on weekends.

These stories sparked plenty of buzz about work-life balance. But they are just examples of a conundrum that affects us all. Given today's tethers of technology, we remain "on call," even as we struggle to slay the eternal to-do list.

"We end up caught in the cycle of responsiveness," says Leslie Perlow, a Harvard Business School professor and author of Sleeping With Your Smartphone: How to Break the 24/7 Habit and Change the Way You Work. "The more we do it, the more others expect it of us, the more we do it. And what is happening is there is no longer any pressure for work to be confined to normal work hours. Rather, people realize they can find each other any time and so there is no pressure to plan and prioritize," she says. Ultimately, the constant connectedness is "undermining the predictability and control we have of our lives and more surprisingly the work process itself."
So, how do we get our lives back?

We have to redraw the boundaries destroyed by technology and the global economy, explains Cali Williams Yost, CEO of Flex+Strategy Group and Work+Life Fit, which help businesses and individuals, respectively, find room for both. But rather than strive for balance, which sets up an elusive ideal of neatly splitting time between work and home, find a personal prescription to make your work and life fit. Yost's book, Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, released last month, outlines four lessons derived from people who manage life with relative ease. They succeed, she says, by aligning their work and personal calendars for better planning, routinely reflecting on what they are and aren't accomplishing, taking steps to then "close the gap," and, finally, celebrating their achievements, she says. "They don't focus on what they don't get done."

Consider your to-do list a "source of inspiration," and then put priorities on your calendar, Yost says. For example, on a given day, you might want to accomplish the following: complete a work project, make a healthy family dinner, return the long-overdue phone call to whomever, swing by the mall to buy a birthday gift, and make the morning yoga class so you're pumped enough to meet the aforementioned tasks. You might prioritize the family dinner and work project, but buy the birthday gift online and do yoga at home with a top-notch DVD.

Ang Lee’s Life of Pi: Storm and Fang, Water and Wonder

An Indian boy and a Bengal tiger: a tale familiar to children a century ago from Rudyard Kipling’s story of Mowgli and Shere Khan in Jungle Book and, with more unfortunate racial stereotyping, in Helen Bannerman’s The Story of Little Black Sambo. Call the boy Pi and the Bengal tiger Richard Parker, trap them on a small lifeboat in unchartered Pacific waters, set up a boy-vs.-beast battle for territory and survival, and you have the essence of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002. No question, it’s a (literally) ripping yarn, full of desperation, heroism and a certain spectral awe. But the story poses unusual challenges to the director of a live-action movie.

Ang Lee has often bucked long odds in his films. The Taiwan-born American director mastered the nuances of 19th-century English manners in Sense and Sensibility, set martial-artist adversaries to dancing on tree tops in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and sold the mainstream audience on the love story of two cowboys in Brokeback Mountain. This time, Lee sets out to astound the viewer with the hitherto untapped properties of 3-D. Pi builds on the triumphant innovations in James Cameron’s Avatar, and the advances in motion-capture technology evident in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, to create a tactile, spectacular world of wonder.

A techno-brat like Robert Zemeckis might have been attracted to this tale of the teenage Pi (Suraj Sharma), the only human survivor of a shipwreck that took the lives of his family, stranded on an immense ocean in a confined space with a wild creature who could kill him with one swipe of a paw. Zemeckis has used motion-capture for children’s fables (The Polar Express) and Dark Age dramas (Beowulf), and in his last live-action film, Cast Away, put Tom Hanks through an ordeal of desert-island isolation.

But Lee, in a quieter way, is just as headstrong a pioneer. To tell him that a film project is impossible is just a way of getting him interested in it. Having come to the University of Illinois for college, and settling in New York City, Lee plunged himself into an alien culture for a series of social comedies about good manners (Sense and Sensibility), gay manners (The Wedding Banquet), awkward manners (The Ice Storm) and no manners at all (Taking Woodstock). Plus two Westerns (Ride with the Devil, Brokeback Mountain), a Chinese-language exercise in erotics (Lust, Caution) and a Marvel comics movie (the lumbering Hulk).

Making a film about a teenager who is Noah, Robinson Crusoe and Siegfried (without Roy), and who encounters all manner of sea life, plus an orangutan, a hyena and about a million meerkats, and whose mortal enemy and sole companion is an adult tiger, had a uniquely high degree of difficulty. A decade ago, a Life of Pi movie could not have been imagined, let alone realized — unless Lee had employed a severely sedated tiger, or summoned an endless supply of lookalike actors to play Pi and replace the ones whom a more energetic beast would have clawed or devoured. Now, thanks to advances in technique and a new generation of artist-tinkerers, it can be done.

Life of Pi, from a script by David Magee, isn’t all storm-and-fang; it has recognizable Ang Lee elements. The tensions in a loving family, familiar from Sense and Sensibility, are reprised here in the relationship of young Pi (played at age 12 by Ayush Tandon) to his father (Adil Hussain), who owns a zoo in the Indian city of Pondicherry, and mother (Indian indie icon Tabu). The prickly love stories at the heart of The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution get a more tender, tentative play in the friendship of young Pi and a girl (Shravanthi Sainath) he meets at a dance class.

When Pi’s father is obliged to sell the Pondicherry zoo, he books his family and the animals on a Japanese cargo ship headed for Canada; the storm that sinks the ship, kills his parents and disperses the creatures — another amazing sequence — launches Pi on cross-Pacific journey that lasts seven months. That trek has its analog in Lee’s own itinerary, which has taken him from Taiwan to the U.S. to Britain and finally back to his homeland, where he built a huge tank for the sea scenes. Pi’s quest, which tests his spirit no less than his resolve, will lead him through three religions and a climactic enlightenment — all of which the adult Pi (Irrfan Khan) describes to a skeptical Canadian writer (Rafe Spall). Those present-day scenes are the movie’s only sign of clumsiness, though Khan, so impressive as the displaced widower Sunil in season three of In Treatment, tells the tale with a poised poignance. (Spall replaced Tobey Maguire, who had starred in The Ice Storm and Ride With the Devil, when the director decided that rapport was lacking.)

To prepare for this daunting endeavor — a no-star production whose budget crept toward $100 million — Lee created a 70-minute “pre-viz” of the movie’s central section on the life raft (we can’t wait to see it as an extra on the Life of Pi DVD), then led a team of visual-effects artists to bring the tiger to vivid life on the boat. On the set, of course, there was no tiger, just as, in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, there were no apes, just digital sorcery. Yet the creature is as mean, majestic and as palpable as the one painted by Henri Rousseau in Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) — a title that applies equally here.

The difference is that, in Life of Pi, it’s the audience that’s likely to be slack-jawed. On Lee’s Pacific, the surface is a shimmering mirror; it reflects the sky so clearly that Pi seems to be both underwater and above the clouds. At times Lee follows the hallucinations of the malnourished boy — as in an underwater montage, where fish form a mosaic of his faraway girlfriend’s face. The cinematography of Claudio Miranda (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has the pellucid immediacy of a fever dream. Instead of the ecstatic soaring of the cross-species lovers in Avatar, this dream or nightmare is taking place in the remotest part of what we call Earth. We see dire and divine events unfold through Pi’s troubled spirit and, at times, through the eye of the tiger.

To compare Life of Pi with Avatar is not to suggest that the Lee movie will challenge the Cameron for all-time box office supremacy. But Pi is a poem of emotional immediacy — and a giant leap forward, outward and upward in expanding the resources of the evolving medium of movies. Magical realism was rarely so magical and never before so real.

Life insurance from marriage into midlife

Sliding out of your 20s and into your 30s means you're probably about to face some serious life changes. For many people, the next couple of decades are a time to focus on family, whether that means starting a new one or expanding the one you already have.

As your life moves on, your life insurance needs will, too. Here are the life insurance issues you may encounter at the mile markers people reach in their 30s and 40s.

Parenthood
As you add members to your clan, you'll also need to add life insurance to ensure your babies are taken care of if something happens to you or your spouse. For new parents, figuring out how much coverage you'll need isn't easy and means figuring what your family's future costs might be, says Glenn E. Stevick Jr., an adjunct professor of insurance at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

"When (new parents) think about life insurance, most people kind of focus on what we call 'final expenses.' What does it take to bury me or cremate me, pay off my debts, and so on?" he explains.

But what parents typically forget, he says, are the major bills the family will encounter in the future, such as the cost of sending the children to college. You need enough life insurance so the family would be able to cover these sorts of expenses if a breadwinner dies.

Most new parents in their 30s will need "somewhere between 15 to 20 times their income" in life insurance coverage, says Onofrio Cirianni, a partner with New York-based EisnerAmper Financial and Insurance Services LLC. People in their 40s will need 10 to 15 times their income, he says.

Employers provide many families with a head start toward their life insurance needs. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 73 percent of full-time workers in the private sector are eligible for some life insurance benefits through their company.

To do a comprehensive analysis of your family's potential expenses in the future and determine how much coverage you need beyond your employer-sponsored life insurance, Cirianni recommends enlisting the help of an insurance agent or financial planner.

Remarriage
Most people get married in their 20s, but it's not uncommon to walk down the aisle again in your 30s or later. A survey released in 2011 by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that the median age for second marriage is about 36 for men and 33 for women.

Life insurance needs are different for those in second marriages, especially when stepchildren are involved, says Sonali Virendra, a vice president with New York Life Insurance Co. In addition to examining each spouse's income, assets and debts, couples also must factor in alimony and child support payments they may be making or receiving, and coordinate with their exes to ensure that all children are adequately covered.

"If you have a family that's now a blended family, you need to now redo (a life insurance analysis) you may have already done in the past," Virendra notes.

Aging
Another major life insurance concern facing those in their 30s and 40s is time. Those who are eyeing life insurance, whether to cover a new baby or protect a new spouse, should do so as soon as possible to get the best rates, says Cirianni.

"Unlike investing, insurance always requires someone to be underwritten, and you have to qualify for it," he explains. "There's no better time to look at what amount of coverages you're eligible for than when you're young and healthy."

In most cases, life insurance premiums rise steadily as policyholders age. Plus, the older you get, the more likely you are to develop a condition that could spike your premiums dramatically or even render you ineligible for life insurance altogether, Cirianni says. Conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular issues, high cholesterol and abnormal liver function can increase your insurance rates by up to 50 percent.

"It's really unfortunate because where there may have been an opportunity to set up coverage earlier in life, they (now) may be stuck with a higher premium," he says.

To sidestep higher life insurance charges as you progress through your 40s and 50s, Cirianni says to start the needs-analysis process early and maintain healthy habits.

Danica at a Key Career Moment After Life Changes

For so long, Danica Patrick was just a pretty girl in a fast car surrounded by a crack marketing staff who parlayed a few golden moments on the track into worldwide fame.

Her sexy Super Bowl ads and the revealing magazine shoots quickly outnumbered her actual career accomplishments. They still do, and she routinely takes Twitter broadsides from a fan base that has resented her since she first dabbled in NASCAR three years ago. Her fiercely competitive nature and desire to keep her personal life private created the perception she is cold, standoffish,

Patrick has never flinched, and she's not flinching now on the doorstep of the biggest moment of her NASCAR career. She learned long ago to not care what people think about her, to tune out the critics and plug away at her race craft and at building the Danica empire.

All of that should help her in the pressure cooker of Daytona this week. After all, she's used to the spotlight more than almost any driver in history.

She already has a major accomplishment to tuck in her belt: She is the first woman in history to win the pole at NASCAR's top level. That it came at the Daytona 500, "The Great American Race," is somehow fitting because it is Patrick. The face of auto racing to many casual fans is now going to be the face of NASCAR every day this week leading into Sunday's season-opener.

Cricket-Kaneria's appeal against life ban to resume in April

Banned leg-spinner Danish Kaneria's appeal against a life ban will resume on April 22 after it was adjourned by an England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) disciplinary panel in December, the Pakistani player's brother said on Sunday.

The hearing on Dec. 10 had to be adjourned after chief witness and Kaneria's former Essex county team mate, Mervyn Westfield, failed to show up.

Kaneria was banned for life from playing in Britain after the ECB's disciplinary panel ruled last June that he had been involved in spot-fixing.

The 32-year-old, who played 61 tests, was branded a "grave danger" to the game by the ECB who found him guilty of encouraging or attempting to encourage Westfield to underperform in a match in 2009.

"Danish is still in London and he will now decide whether to return to Pakistan or stay there till his appeal is heard," Vicky Kaneria told Reuters.

"Danish wants the appeal hearing to be heard so that he can prove he is innocent."
The ECB could not be reached for comment.

The leg-spinner, who has been suspended by the Pakista Cricket Board (PCB) pending the outcome of the appeal hearing, said he wanted Westfield to appear before the five-man ECB panel.


Westfield was handed a four-month prison sentence last February after pleading guilty in court to spot fixing in a match between his Essex side and Durham in September 2009.

Lincoln Financial Group Offers 2013 Product Trends Impacting Life Insurance and Annuity Markets

Financial security with flexibility, an evolving combination/Long Term Care (LTC) product market, risk managed strategies, and tax deferrals are some of the trends that Mark Konen, President of Lincoln Financial Group's Insurance and Retirement Solutions business, sees driving the individual life and annuities industries in 2013.

"With the realities of today's economic climate and our society's evolving demographics, we see continued interest in financial solutions that offer a level of predictability - whether that's in the form of a death benefit, a living benefit, asset protection, or the elimination of the 'use it or lose it' risk of some products," said Konen. "As the industry works to deliver on these consumer demands, we believe 2013 is primed to see the development of many unique solutions, while also seeing some once-popular products and features reemerge in cases of 'what's old is new again.'"

Among the 2013 trends that we may see:

Innovation and Non-Traditional Life Insurance Solutions

Today, three in ten American households are uninsured and half say they are underinsured1. Competing financial obligations, perceptions about life insurance costs, and lack of understanding about needs often prevent consumers from purchasing a policy. The low interest rate climate has further complicated the problem by making many forms of insurance more expensive / unattainable for the average American. To help bridge this gap between the public's need for life insurance and their ability to secure it, expect to see innovative life insurance alternatives emerge that go beyond the traditional offerings consumers have known. These innovations will balance financial planning needs, flexible coverage and cost efficiencies against the dynamics of today's economic climate.

Variable Universal Life Insurance

Once the industry's life insurance product of choice in the 1990s, Variable Universal Life (VUL) is primed for a comeback. By balancing death benefits with market-driven cash value potential, VUL products can help consumers financially protect their loved ones, while also providing a potential source of supplemental income to keep pace with life's changes. This combination of features in a single solution can be very compelling during these uncertain times. 

Life Combination Products: Flex Pay Premiums, Younger Clients, ABRs

With an estimated 70 percent of people turning age 65 expected to have a long-term care need2, life combination products continue to rise in popularity as alternatives to traditional standalone LTC solutions that carry a "use it or lose it" risk. As this trend continues, expect to see increasing interest in linked-benefit products with LTC riders offering premiums that can be paid over several years. Linked-benefit products with LTC riders have historically appealed to older clients with substantial savings and the ability to pay a lump sum. However, the option to spread premiums over time offers younger clients in their pre-retirement years and still accumulating assets, the opportunity to plan for and protect against the financial impact of a Long Term Care event.

As the combination space evolves, also expect to see increasing demand for life insurance solutions with Accelerated Benefit Riders (ABR). While linked-benefit products with LTC riders are designed for those clients primarily concerned with long term care, ABRs serve a growing market demand for clients who have a primary need for death benefit protection, but are also concerned about the impact that a permanent chronic or terminal illness may have on their financial well-being.

Annuities: Guaranteed Living Benefits, Risk Management Strategies, Tax Deferrals

Americans today face the strong possibility of outliving their retirement assets. This will continue to drive the popularity of Guaranteed Living Benefit (GLB) riders with annuities, as they provide clients a minimum guaranteed lifetime income stream that doesn't require them to give up control of their assets. With this trend, expect to see providers place added emphasis on risk management strategies built into the products and their benefits. These strategies are designed to reduce equity risk during volatile markets and lead to a more consistent pattern of returns. The goal is to protect clients' account values and encourage them to remain invested, which over time may increase the probability of growth for retirement income. These risk management strategies also enable companies to continue providing compelling GLBs.

With the recent changes to the tax landscape, particularly among the affluent population, also expect to see a renewed emphasis on the tax deferral aspect of annuities. Because annuity assets accumulate tax-deferred, there are no tax consequences until clients take money from their contract, often at lower tax rates occurring during retirement, making this annuity value proposition more attractive to clients in 2013.

Disclosure
Variable products are sold by prospectus, which contains the investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses of the variable product and its underlying investment options. Investors need to read the prospectus carefully before investing.

How To Master Your Life

The secrets to love, life and happiness can be unlocked with three simple words: Play. The. Sims.

It’s a game where you lead a person’s complete life with a mouse. Want to talk to that girl right there? Just click on her and pick something:

Left to their own devices, your Sim will do whatever they feel like, which is usually strikingly stupid. (In real life, that may sound familiar). You interrupt your Sim’s autopilot by giving them sage instructions, like “read a book” or “stare at that girl’s butt.”

Being successful at The Sims is very easy. It’s just like real life, except without a barrier between what you decide and what you do.

In the Sims, you immediately buy whatever lame fitness equipment you can afford. If you can’t afford anything, go run in the park. Each day you tell your Sim to spend a spare minute exercising, and although progress is slow, you see their bars slowly inch up. Success is guaranteed.

In real life, you think about getting fit. You’re not sure what to buy. Can you really afford the ‘right’ equipment? You read reviews. Do you have enough time? You ask questions on Quora. Maybe you buy something. You don’t know how to use it. Maybe you use it a couple times. You don’t see any results. You talk and think and share and do anything but exercise.

The first lesson from The Sims is good decisions require little thought. To get fit: exercise. To be smarter: read. To eat healthier: cook. Such mechanics are elementary to a child playing the game, but when leading your own life, your mischievous mind paralyses you with too much thinking. Stop holding out for perfect decisions. Pick. Act.

You can solve half the hassles of humanity this way. “I like this girl, how do I get her to like me?” Just click on her and pick something.

“But what do I say?” Anything moves you closer to your goal. Pick something. “But she might not like me!” Right now, she doesn’t even know you. Fix that. Pick something. “But what would we name our future kids?”

Thinking isn’t inherently bad of course, but save the deep stuff for writing your novel and designing a nuclear powered washing machine. If you’re not clicking your mouse much, you’re probably not playing the game very well.

The second lesson from The Sims is to nurture your state.

If your Sim is tired, desperate for company, or wetting themselves, they won’t get much done. A decent player keeps an eye on these bars and never lets them slide too far; the exceptional player builds a life that takes care of them automatically.

And so it is in real life. If you’ve found yourself having a crappy pointless argument, chances are you were a bad mix of tired, stressed, or hungry at the time. If you want to be your wittiest, smartest, and most resilient, you’d better take consistently good care of yourself. The best way to be consistently awesome is to be in a consistently good state.

The third lesson from The Sims is to build selected skills.

Almost every action your Sim can take makes them better at something. Some skills are easier to gain, depending on your natural strengths, but you can get impressively decent at just about anything with time.

You don’t live forever though, so to get great at something means saying no to something else. You must pick and focus. Fully developed strengths tend to make your weaknesses redundant. Woody Allen would not be better off if he had spent less time writing and more time at the gym.

The final lesson from The Sims is the game is indifferent.

There’s no winning The Sims. Everyone dies. There’s no high score. You live your life how you want, and you alone judge what to make of it as it rolls by. This may sound familiar.

But that doesn’t make life pointless; it makes life anything you choose it to be. If you want to live yours free from regret: keep your state high. Focus your time into a few select skills. But most importantly of all: go ahead and click on something.

Life Healing Center Introduces First-Ever Inpatient Care for Partners of Sex Addicts

Life Healing Center, a comprehensive behavioral health and addiction treatment facility located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will soon introduce a first-of-its-kind residential care treatment program for partners of sex addicts, the "ALMA" program. The inaugural session of ALMA will run from March 10-22, 2013. The two-week ALMA program will be separate and distinct from Life Healing Center's existing 35-day sex addiction treatment program.

"We are very proud to announce this exclusive new program that addresses the underserved needs of partners of sex addicts," said Mary Young, Executive Director of Life Healing Center. "As a pioneer in the field of sex addiction treatment, we felt a special responsibility to introduce this very necessary aspect of treatment for the sake of the spouses and significant others of our clients and non-clients alike."
Developed by Life Healing Center Clinical Director, Dr. Kenneth M. Adams, Ph.D., CSAT (Certified Sex Addiction Therapist), ALMA is a therapeutic, residential program designed to begin or continue the healing process for spouses or partners of sex addicts. The program is especially helpful for those in acute distress or others who are burdened by longer-term chronic distress, says Dr. Adams. The program is facilitated in a "respectful, caring, and validating atmosphere," and completely separated from clients in Life Healing Center's sex addiction treatment program.

"Partners and spouses of sex addicts are traumatized by the discovery, deceit, denial, and disclosure of a secret sexual life that has violated the implicit or explicit trust in the partnership or marriage," said Dr. Adams. "In addition, they often have been 'gas-lighted' by being told that they were crazy, too jealous, and somehow responsible. Often times, the partners feel it is their fault. They are left confused, shamed, hurt, angry, self-critical, and anxious."

ALMA is designed specifically for spouses to 1) provide support and relief from emotional pain, 2) validate feelings and experiences as credible, 3) assist in reclaiming their reality, judgment and power, and 4) start a self-care plan with "non-negotiables" for any future involvement in an ongoing relationship.
ALMA is offered once per month on the serene healing grounds of Life Healing Center. By assuring that the program has the same participants for the entire two weeks, clients are able to bond to one another and are protected from being re-traumatized by new testimonials of betrayal. Additional supportive therapies such as yoga, psychodrama and art therapy are available to support the recovery and healing process.

Therapists involved in the ALMA program work closely with referring therapists before, during, and at discharge of the client's stay to assure that the healing process is integrated with outpatient work.
Dr. Adams will be discussing the program at the International Institute for Trauma and Addiction Professionals (IITAP) Symposium in Scottsdale on Friday, February 15th. To register for this portion of the Symposium, or for more information, contact Life Healing Center at (800) 949-7406.

This year, Life Healing Center is celebrating its 20th anniversary providing treatment of trauma and addictions. It launched the first gender-specific residential programming for sex, love and relationship addiction in 2007. Life Healing Center offers clients an individualized treatment experience to address issues such as trauma, PTSD, substance abuse, grief/bereavement, love/sex addiction, dissociative disorders and codependency. The Center's therapeutic model combines individual and group therapy and a 12-Step philosophy with holistic, mind-body-spirit elements such as fitness and meditation. The unique Life Healing Center experience can be attributed to its highly qualified staff, a specialized approach to wellness and recovery, and the serene natural environment of the foothills of New Mexico.

Life Healing Center is a member of CRC Health Group, the most comprehensive network of specialized behavioral care services in the nation. CRC offers the largest array of personalized treatment options, allowing individuals, families and professionals to choose the most appropriate treatment setting for their behavioral, addiction, weight management and therapeutic education needs. CRC is committed to making its services widely and easily available while maintaining a passion for delivering advanced treatment. Since 1995, CRC programs have helped individuals and families reclaim and enrich their lives.

Skyfall,' 'Anna Karenina,' 'Life of Pi' win ADG Awards

"Anna Karenina,"' "Life of Pi" and "Skyfall"  won the 17th Art Directors Guild Awards in a feature film Saturday evening at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Sarah Greenwood won in the period film category for "Anna Karenina," while David Gropman won for fantasy film for "Life of Pi." Dennis Gassner won in the contemporary film category for "Skyfall."

On the television side, Gemma Jackson won the award for one-hour single-camera TV series for "The Ghost of Harrenhal" episode of "Game of Thrones," while Mark Worthington won the honor for television movie or miniseries for the "I Am Anne Frank, Part 2" installment of "American Horror Story: Asylum."

Judy Beck earned the ADG award for half-hour single-camera TV series for the pilot of "Girls,"and Keith Raywood, Eugene Lee, Akira Yoshimura, N. Joseph DeTullio won for multi-camera, variety or unscripted series for the Mick Jagger installment of "Saturday Night Live."

In the awards, music or game showcategory, John Myhre won for "The 84th Annual Academy Awards." Christopher Glass received the ADG award in the commercial, PSA, promo and music video category for the "Halo 4 Commissioning"' episode of "X-Box."

Herman Zimmerman, who didn't attend due to illness, received the lifetime achievement award, while the production designers behind the James Bond franchise including Sir Ken Adams, Peter Lamont, Allan Cameron and Dennis Gassner were honored for cinematic imagery. Hall of Fame inductees were Preston Ames, Richard MacDonald and Edward Stephenson.

Arts agenda: American art in Seoul, Cristina Iglesias, Newton and Rheims

Among upcoming art exhibitions, the National Museum of Korea puts on a display of 19th and 20th century American art, a career-spanning selection of Cristina Iglesias's work is installed in the Museo Renia Sofia in Madrid, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales presents the fashion photography of Helmut Newton alongside portraiture from Bettina Rheims.

Art Across America
February 5 - March 19
National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Korea
A survey of art spanning a century and a half of American history, from the Revolutionary period to World War II, with contributions from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Terra Foundation. Includes works by Charles Willson Peale, Mary Cassatt, Charles Demuth and Adolph Gottlieb.
museum.go.kr

Cristina Iglesias: Metonymy
February 6 - March 13
Museo Renia Sofia, Madrid, Spain
The work of prize-winning visual artist Iglesias is highlighted by a selection of over 50 pieces spanning her pensive, labyrinthine, thirty-year career; the Spaniard has become known for her fusion of architecture, sculpture, and installation.
museoreinasofia.es

The fashion of Helmut Newton and Bettina Rheims
February 9 - May 19
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Twenty examples of the emotive confidentiality conveyed by German-Australian fashion photographer Helmut Newton, alongside 30 or more from Bettina Rheims's evocative "Modern Lovers" series, make for a challenging and thought-provoking concept.
artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Picasso and Chicago and The Picasso Effect
February 20 - May 12, 2013
Art Institute of Chicago, USA
A Pablo double-header, the first celebrating 100 years since the Artic's national debut of Picasso's work, charting the Spaniard's career and the status of Chicago as a city of art over the same period; the second examines the artist's influences and his influence upon contemporaries and subsequent generations.
artic.edu

China's Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor's Legacy
February 22 - May 27
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA
A representative selection of ten figures from China's legendary 7,000 figure terracotta army, discovered in 1974, and here presented as part of an insight into the life and legacy of Emperor Qin Shihuang. There's also a "Lost Warrior" to find lurking on the streets around the Asian Art Museum's building.
terracotta-warriors.asianart.org

Barocci: Brilliance and Grace
February 27 - May 19
National Gallery, London
On display among 14 altarpieces created by 16th century Italian artist Federico Barocci will be his acclaimed "Entombment" and "Last Supper," in addition to various other drawings and sketches, together illustrating the Renaissance master's meticulous dedication to his art.