Are you thinking about purchasing a life insurance policy? Here are five different personal uses for life insurance to consider.

1. Survivor protection – This is probably the most common use for life insurance. In addition to other needs, life insurance provides the money needed for both funeral and living expenses (i.e. income replacement).
2. Estate creation – You can create an estate with relatively little money in the event of a premature death.
3. Cash accumulation – Cash accumulation typically begins in year 3 and can become significant over time.
4. Liquidity – Cash loans can be obtained by using the policy as collateral (assuming it has cash value).
5. Estate conversion – Life insurance can help offset the costs of federal or state estate taxes.

Asking for help is a good thing, especially in the workplace where the stakes can sometimes be high.

Jodi Glickman Brown offers tips on how to ask for help the right way. Tip #1: Do your homework first. Start with what you know.

She has two more tips here…

Marc Benioff’s new book describes how he took Salesforce.com from idea to $1 billion in less than a decade.

Now, in an interview with BusinessWeek,  he provides seven tips on how to shape and articulate your vision.

Read the interview here…

Twitter – Facebook – LinkedIn – How to impress your boss with social media…

If you’re posting during work hours, here are some tips to make sure that your boss is impressed and to stand out as a star employee.

Read more…

Do you use multiple Google products (e.g. Gmail, Google Voice, Google Latitude, etc.) and wonder what information Google is storing in your account?

Google Dashboard now provides an account summary of all the data stored in each of the Google products you use.

The Dashboard also provides direct account links to help you manage data settings for each account.

Visit http://www.google.com/dashboard for more information.

An interesting question on health insurance mandates – Does the U.S. Constitution allow the government to require uninsured Americans to buy medical insurance or impose a tax penalty if they refuse?

Both the House and Senate health bills would mandate the purchase of health insurance to help subsidize the program and offset the cost of adverse selection.

Does Congress have the authority?

Read more here…

Gizmodo provides an in depth look at the new Microsoft Courier user interface and it looks incredible.

…just don’t end up in the ER.

(May 11, 2009 - Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Europe)

Individual mandates would help offset the costs associated with adverse selection.

In health insurance, adverse selection is the tendency of poorer risks to want insurance more often that standard risks (i.e. sick individuals are more likely than healthy to seek out insurance coverage.)

Under a purely voluntary system, most healthy individuals would likely not choose to obtain coverage.  The individuals most likely to enroll (subsidized insurance or otherwise) would be those who are older and/or who are less healthy than average.  People value insurance more if they plan or expect to use it, and are more likely to participate.

Without mandates, adverse selection would most certainly drive up costs for insurers and as a result, premiums would rise sharply.

Individual mandates are an attempt to offset some of the costs associated with adverse selection.

Read more here:

Do Individual Mandates Matter?

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, average family premiums have gone from$6,438 in 2000 to $13,375 in 2009.

In 2008, Ohio employee premium contribution for family coverage was 23 percent or $2,916, leaving the employer with a $9,764 premium bill.

Source: The Kaiser Family Foundation

Where are costs going? According to a Kaiser Family Foundation projection, average premiums for family coverage could range from $24,180 to $30,803 by 2019.

Note: Health insurance premiums projected for 2010-2019 assuming (1) that the average growth in premiums between 1999 and 2009 (8.7%) continues or (2) that the average growth in premiums between 2004 and 2009 (6.1%) continues. Source: Kaiser Family Foundations projections based on data from Kaiser/HRET Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Benefits, 1999-2009.

Taken from “Pulling it Together”: Simple Arithmetic – The Kaiser Foundation