Not Sistine – But Pretty Cool June 17, 2009March 15, 2017 SISTINE CHAPEL John Kasley: “This is pretty remarkable, especially zooming in on details. It helps if you can picture Yourself in a long red robes with a cape, perhaps a gold chain around the neck or waist, and satin slippers. The room really needs the sound of taffeta or watered silk.” ☞ Not sure what watered silk is, but we are advised, “Click the right side end button to enlarge the image to full screen. Go slowly with the mouse, the computer takes awhile to keep up with your commands. Click on the displayed arrow keys to move around the chapel. Don’t forget to look at the ceiling.” John Kasley: “Correction. That’s not the Sistine Chapel after all. It’s Marian Kirche in Vienna. Still pretty, though.” HIT BY A BUS? NO PROBLEM! This new service – legacylocker.com – promises to send your loved ones pre-written letters or videos and see that your various passwords get passed on to those you want to have them. Might be easier just to leave a big envelope in your top desk drawer; but still something some may want to consider. UNIVERSAL LIFE I have long been a voice in the chorus that warns against investing via life insurance. If you need life insurance, sings that chorus, buy inexpensive term insurance – which is easy to comparison shop for based on price – and “invest the difference” (i.e., what you save by going the plain vanilla low-cost route) . . . in an IRA, perhaps, or some other way. Insurance salesfolk have long sung a different tune . . . with good intentions, it should be said, but under the spell of the much larger commissions they get if they sell you Whole Life or one of its fancier cousins. One reason to avoid the Whole family is the possibility that you will, for whatever reason, let your policy lapse in the first year or two, as a significant proportion of whole-life buyers always have . . . thereby forfeiting all that extra money you paid in sales commissions. But even if you do pay faithfully, guess what? It turns out that the footnotes sales people rarely emphasize (“these are illustrations only; things may not go so well”) can come back to bite you. To wit (or perhaps to woe): Mary E. Cease: “When my husband retired 12 years ago, we were advised to take his pension on his life expectancy only and to buy an insurance policy to cover me. This we did; in fact, we were sold two policies: a Whole Life Policy and a Universal Life Policy. We have paid our premiums on time ever since. Thus, I was totally surprised to receive a ‘Notice of Insufficient Cash Value and Pending Lapse’ this month on the Universal policy. I had noticed the decline in cash value over the last few years, attributable to the low interest rates, but I had not been concerned as we did not intend to cash it in. Now we are told that to reinstate the policy for another 10 years at my husband’s current age (75) will cost more than 4 times what we have been paying! Yikes! Seems this Universal Life has morphed into a Term Life Policy! We need your help to make this known to other unsuspecting people!” SIMPLE WISDOM “If you’re against gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.” – Whoopi Goldberg