How To Get Rid Of The Insurance Agent!

The Insurance Industry promises many things. All those delightful, costly, lengthy insurance commercials promise you the best of education, terrific pensions that takes care of the world tour, lovely sea-front mansions, huge cars, etc etc. And they all make you believe just taking an insurance would get you those! You know where the money for all these ads come from? Of course your auto insurance quote, your life insurance quote and all the terrific insurance quotes you get and the many policies you have taken! Know what, you may not really need more insurance (i mean risk coverage by that, not investments, though insurance companies tend to mix both and absolutely misconfuddle you!). But would your agent take that. No. You will be convinced and then convinced some more that you absolutely need that policy. So how do you get rid of these pesky perseverent species?

Here are some surefire ways to keep them away.

- Tell them you are at the hospital, and could they please come over with the best life insurance quote. And then ring them back again the next day. That surely will give them a taste of their own medicine.

- You car just had an accident and you want someone/anyone to come over and clear up the mess. Most of them dont want to take ANY responsibility.

- Ditto the procedure for house insurance

- Tell them you are out of a job and could they help enhance the credit limits

- Convey conspiratorially you have a diamond mine in your backyard and could they come and survey it and then get it insured. If nothing, your garden may get dug up!

Warning and P.S. - i have nothing against insurance people. And you do need insurance. Just make sure you only cover as much as you need and as much as you can afford! Also insurance is "sold" not "bought", the poor guys are just doing their job, for a living!

Marriage Anniversary Gifts

Wedding anniversary gifts started with the idea of putting a value on each year of marriage completed. So if it is a challenge for you to come up with a wedding anniversary gift every year, the work is already cut out for you by tradition! What's really interesting is that there is a specific gift associated with each marriage anniversary.

While each of us know the traditional anniversaries, silver, golden, diamond, etc, each of these commodity is actually the gift that the man bestows on his wife. A silver garland for 25 years, a gold ornament for 50 years is the idea. At the lower end of the wedding spectrum, one year of marriage deserves a gift of paper and five years qualifies for wood. Its older the better, like wine!

Traditional wedding anniversaries gifting started in Central Europe anound mid 19th century. There was a specific gift associated upto fifth anniversary and then every five years. The American National Retail Jeweller Association in all its smartness issued a list in 1937 in what can be termed as contemporary wedding anniversary gift list. This list includes a spefic gift upto 15th year and then every fifth year. Trust them to have added ten more years of compulsory gifting!



Learn more about wedding gifts, anniversaries, history of wedding anniversary gifts both modern and contemporary here.


http://marriage.about.com/od/anniversariescelebrations/a/annivhistory.htm

http://www.anniversaryideas.co.uk/traditional_history.asp

Socially Responsible Mutual Funds

Socially Responsible, "Green" Mutual Funds or simply "Do Good" Mutual Funds seem to have caught the popular imagination. With everyone from Al Gore to top companies "doing good" to save the World, Md. Yunus winning the nobel prize for his work in micro-credit, being ""socially reponsible" while catering to investment needs has gone mainstream. While previously preferred only by a few, they have entered the social consciousness of an average investor.

So what is a "socially responsible" fund? In a nutshell, its a scheme of a mutual fund that invests only in companies based on their social ethics, the environment policies followed by them, their corporate governance and business ethics. These schemes are researched and rated on the above basis and then their balance sheet and market performance is taken into account. Maybe the investor will get 5% or so lower return than the best diversified fund but the satisfaction will be there that the investor's return is not adulterated by greed!

Check out this article for more on these funds.

http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/104001/The-New-Do-Gooders?mod=retirement-IRA