What's Wrong with Your Life Insurance

A standard ``cash value'' life insurance policy will pay its prescribed death benefit in any year the prescribed premium is paid up, and the premium usually is reduced eventually to zero by an ever-increasing annual ``dividend.'' Nevertheless, in this updated version of a controversial 1963 title, Dacey ( How to Avoid Probate! ) denounces the insurance industry as a whole for misusing policyholders' money. Huge surpluses from lapsed policies, investments and favorable mortality experience, argues the author, finance exorbitant executive salaries and agent compensation. He sees deception everywhere in the modern insurance world of policies combining mortality charges with a savings/investment program. The variety of such formulas is almost infinite, their complexity confusing to the prospect they are meant to fool (and to the reader), as Dacey demonstrates exhaustively. His uncomplicated advice: ``Buy cheaper term-insurance and invest the difference.'' (Aug.)