Celebrity scam
I suffer from a hyperactive mind which interrupts my sleep on a regular basis and during one of my sleep breaks this I was confronted again with Alex Trebek hawking Colonial Penn Life Insurance. He is only second to that damn pillow guy for middle of the night intrusions.
I have long wondered what the catch was and so on this night I set out to find the answer.
The claim repeated over and over is that no matter your age up to 85 or physical condition you can buy life insurance for a guaranteed low price of $9.95/unit/month---which will never go up.
Let me clarify that I have no life insurance, no intention of buying any and as such have no skin in this game---this was purely an academic pursuit (albeit admittedly not high academics).
I found that my thought that a unit of insurance equaled $1000 of coverage was not the case--that value is not codified and while it has some general use for more reputable companies it has no connection to what is being sold by Colonial Penn.
In fact, the gimmick is that a unit for CP varies depending on age, sex, and location. The value of a unit is a bit illusive but seems to vary between $406 and about $1700. There is also a cap of 8 units--or in the worst case limits coverage to $3408 at a cost of $79.84/month ($958.08/year). Hardly a mega sum to send you on your way. One might think, even at that, if you check out soon enough it might not be too bad--nope--that won't (or should I say wouldn't 
) work either. If you die within the first two years the deal is off---your beneficiary might, at some point, be refunded your premiums but the policy is void.
Maybe I'll buy a $99 pillow---or maybe not!
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
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