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Cautionary tale about career choices — dodged a bullet on insurance ‘career’

Many years ago, a buddy of mine, who had absolutely no experience as an insurance agent, contacted me with the career choice or business of my dreams -- at least, that's what he said at the time.

He had joined a company known as Primerica. The company specialized in term insurance, that is, term life insurance. They also handled some mutual fund investing, I think (but I may be wrong about that), and they were poised to take the financial world by storm, my buddy said. Their fundamental concept was to sell people term life insurance instead of "whole life" insurance -- and since term insurance is almost always cheaper than whole life; the pitch was to save the people money on their insurance and encourage them to invest that money to grow their finances.

According to the system at the time, Primerica people (my buddy and I) received commissions and percentages of the commissions of those folks we recruited to be independent agents (us) with Primerica. In other words, this was an insurance/financial services based "multi-level marketing" business.

He and I tried the business a few months. He stuck with it a bit longer than I, and actually made some income. I, on the other hand, paid my own way through getting a state insurance license (training courses, test, the whole works) -- and NEVER successfully recruited a single agent in the months I spent working at it.

Like all multi-level marketing schemes, the failing point is always this: You only succeed if you ruthlessly cast aside any real friendships and human relationships and view every person you see, meet, and know as either 1) a potential customer, 2) a potential recruit, or preferably, 3) both a customer and a potential recruit. I simply cannot live my life that way, so such "businesses" have never worked for me.

I said all that because today I was reminded of Primerica in a news item I read on the Internet: A one-paragraph brief on CNN Money announced today that a major insurance rating service dropped Primerica Life Insurance Company's "financial strength rating" from "AA" to "AA-," which the paragraph said was a negative financial outlook.

I absolutely have no feelings or knowledge one way or the other about Primerica, as my dealings with the company were literally decades ago. The company has undoubtedly changed a lot since then, maybe for the better or maybe for the worse.

But when I saw that news, it brought back "negative" memories and made me think perhaps I made a wise career choice leaving when I did.
[tags]term life insurance, financial services, insurance news, just a guy who reads the papers[/tags]