It is never easy for a single mother to think about how their children will survive if something were to happen to the mother. The younger they are, the more difficult it is to fathom what could possibly happen. However, when we consider the terrorism that is rampant in the world, and the crime and violence occurring in the cities and towns in the U.S., it is not too hard to imagine.

Sadly, most single mothers, or parents, for that matter do not consider buying life insurance to preserve their income in the event of their untimely death. The average income of a single mother is $23,000 and if she has more than one child, it may be difficult for her to consider including a life insurance premium her budget. If the father is involved in the children’s lives, the single mother may think that life insurance is not necessary, as the father would probably assume responsibility of the children.

This may be true in some cases, but in many of the families, the father may not be capable or willing to assume responsibility for the children. In that case, it is imperative that the mothers investigate the possibility of purchasing life insurance to assist the person who would be responsible enough to care for the children. It would provide the needed financial assistance for the guardian to help support the children.

In the northeast, the cost to raise a child to age eighteen is approximately $455,000, which computes to $25,277 per year. This does not include the cost of a college education, which would be an additional $19,000 to $35,000 per year, depending on whether the child plans to attend a state school or an out-of-state school. The mother needs at least $600,000 per child of life insurance!

It is clear from considering the high costs to raise a child and send him to college that life insurance is necessary to cover these costs and to keep the children protected in the event of the untimely death of the mother. The amount of life insurance would seem pretty high, but it would meet the needs of the children. In reality, some single mothers may not be able to afford to purchase this amount of insurance. However, any amount that they could purchase would help the family.

Here is a situation where low cost term insurance would meet the need and would be a cost effective way of providing the coverage for the family. Term insurance would cover the family for only a certain amount of years. There would be no cash value, and the coverage would terminate when the mother would no longer need the coverage. Single mothers interested in more information about this should talk to their life insurance representative or feel free to contact me on the contact form of this blog.

If you are a federal employee, it is important to understand your benefits package to ensure that your income is adequately protected in the event that something should happen to you.

The U.S. government does a very good job of compensating those who work for the federal government. However, as with other employee benefit plans at some of the private sector businesses, the benefits available to employees do not adequately cover the family in time of need. That is why it is important to review the benefits packages and determine if there is a need for more coverage.

For instance, closely examining the FEGLI (Federal Employees Guaranteed Life Insurance) program, there are four major areas where the benefits are deficient.

1. The FEGLI program is a term insurance program only. There is no cash value available to the employee to borrow against for emergency needs. Term insurance is pure insurance in which a death benefit is available to the family in the event of death to the breadwinner. There is no cash value which accumulates in the policy.

2. Under the FEGLI program, the life insurance only covers the employee and his family only during the time that the employee is employed for the federal government or the face amount will reduce tremendously upon retirement.

Term insurance covers the family in the event of death of the breadwinner, but only during a specified period of time. Generally, the policy will cover the family for 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 years, depending on which insurance company the family elects to sell them a life insurance policy. An insurance agent will recommend term insurance to cover short term needs, such as a mortgage which will be paid over a 30 year period.

3. Federal employees will find that their premiums for their life insurance will increase with age and salary increases, but the coverage decreases. This is called increasing premium term insurance, which becomes very expensive in later years, when there is more of a need for life insurance.

4. In the event that the employee becomes disabled, he/she may not be able to continue paying for life insurance, since the employee is not collecting wages.

I cam across this comment on a blog paost which illustrates why federal employees need a periodic review of their policies:

“My mother worked for the Federal government for over 30 years and had the FEGLI plan and passed away and my sister and I will be splitting a little over 5,000 dollars. When my father (mom was divorced) passed his insurance was with the state and my brother and I split over 50,000 dollars. What’s wrong with this picture?? Our government is so screwed up and you know that all those senators, etc. won’t have that cheap of insurance and we are paying for it. My mom worked hard those 30 years and sure didn’t get all the perks and paid vacations.” madashe*l, from Life Insurance: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”

These are problems which the employee must resolve in order for the family to be financially protected in the event of his/her death. Boston Mutual offers solutions to these problems with products which are specifically designed to meet the needs of federal state, municipal, and postal workers. For a free booklet explaining your options, please use the contact form to request the FREE brochure,

Legacy Life Select: Permanent Life Insurance for Federal, State, Municipal, and Postal Workers.

Please copy and paste the title into the contact form.

The Destiny Children’s choir will be visiting with us on July 20, 2015.  At that time, they will give a workshop on choral singing and African drumming.  They will then give a performance at night for the community.   We expect 200 children to be attending the camp and 200 guest for the performance.

We would like your company to be a sponsor for our events and we would be grateful for your support.

We have three levels of sponsorship for a brochure design:

Level 1 advertising -$25.00 business card size ad – Your logo and business name will be prominently displayed on our brochure.

Level 2 advertising – $50.00 quarter page size ad– Your logo and business name will be prominently displayed on our brochure.

Level 3 advertising – $100 –  one half page size ad – Your logo and business name will be prominently displayed on our brochure.

Level 4 advertising – 175.00 – full page ad.

Thank you for you kind consideration of this request.  If you would like to be a sponsor, please fill in your donation in the link at the event site.

Sincerely,

Gail E. Cavanaugh

“To protect cardholder data, the PCI Data Security Standard

Compliance¹³ was created in 2006.  This organization requires merchants and other organizations to follow certain guidelines in collecting and storing, processing or transmitting cardholder information.

This is an ongoing process which involves:

1.  Assessing cardholder data and the business owner’s IT assets and business proves to ensure there are no vulnerabilities in the storing of cardholder data.  There are training videos¹⁴ to help the small merchant to understand his/her responsibilities;
2. Remediation in not storing cardholder data unless it is absolutely necessary;
3. Reporting, which involves compiling and submitting compliance records and reports to the banks and card brands with which the business is authorized to do business.”

The book is available free on Amazon.  Get your copy today!

The book is also available at your local library on e-Zone. Newport, Middletown, and Portsmouth, Rhode Island libraries have e-Zone installed on their websites.

We have a new decision in the Affordable Care Act which is precedent setting and will be very advantageous for many people in the United States who previously lacked medical insurance. But, how long will this law be in effect and how likely is it to be overturned?

This is an important question because there is a presidential election coming soon and the Republicans are not happy about the Supreme Court’s decision to allow subsidies for the poor and middle class applicants for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

There are only two ways to negate this decision. Congress would have to amend the Constitution, which would require a three quarters vote from Congress to overturn it. In the past, it has been very challenging, to say the least, to attain a three quarters vote from Congress. In other words, three quarters of the Senators and House of Representatives had to agree that a change needed to take place. It is unlikely the Congress would reach this agreement because so many of the Democrats were supportive of President Obama’s recommendations on the changes in health care.

For the most part, most of the Republicans in Congress are opposed to the Affordable Care Act, while the Democrats are in support of it. It is unlikely, though not impossible, for this law to be amended by Congress at this early stage. There would have to be a good reason for it to be detrimental to the enrollees in the program. There has not been enough time to allow Congress to observe whether or not the law is working for the citizens. In the past, it has taken years for a Supreme Court ruling to be overturned. For example, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the case of Lochner v. New York (1905) that placing limits on the number of hours a baker could work was unconstitutional. It was overturned in 1937, a total of thirty – two years later.

The case involving Austin v. Michigan State Chamber of Commerce (1990), preventing corporations from making campaign contributions and purchasing political advertising from their general funds was overturned in 2010. However, the Oregon v. Mitchell (1970), overturned just a few months later in 1971, was the fastest constitutional amendment ever overturned.

The Supreme Court can also overrule its own rulings when another case involving the same issues challenges the Supreme Court. There is usually a long period of time from when the Supreme Court rules on a case until the time that it is overturned. This has happened many times over the course of U.S. history.

In conclusion, it is difficult to say at this time whether or not the Supreme Court decision will be overruled, as we do not know how long it will take for the Republicans to initiate a change.

Needless to say, this infuriated the Republicans who took a stand against the Affordable Care Act at its inception. They argue that in the long run, the cost of health care would increase for the poor and middle class people and would render them unable to afford health care. These subsidies would be available for all applicants for health insurance regardless of whether they are purchasing in a state providing a state sponsored insurance marketplace or a state which opted not to form am insurance exchange.

If the Republicans want this decision overruled, it is going to take an amendment to the Constitution. The Republicans were not pleased with the Supreme Court ruling and accused the supreme court judges of “circumventing Congress and rewriting bad laws.” The Republicans have vowed to work on changing this recent ruling during the next election.

This is an important victory for poor and middle class families who do not have health insurance and for those who feared they would lose their health coverage after President Obama left office. An estimated six million people were at risk of losing their health insurance coverage.

Before Obamacare was enacted, fifty-seven percent of private insurance enrollees were uninsured. The states with the highest rates of uninsured enrollees were: Texas, Arizona, Montana, Arkansas, Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida, Louisiana, all with over twenty percent of their enrollees without health insurance. Despite the enactment of Obamacare, several states have not instituted an insurance exchange and have not expanded their Medicaid program. The states in red in the chart below have not expanded their Medicaid program.

From Wallethub

Some Rhode Island business owners may wonder why I wrote a second edition of a book on credit card processing, Retailers Guide to Merchant Services when I am trying to make a living selling life insurance. My response is that I look for opportunities to serve my customers and anyone seeking information on increasing their profits and saving money on expenses. When they can save money on expenses, it frees up money that they may need to protect their financial security.

I have noticed there is still some confusion over some of the issues involving credit card processing even after the new legislation which was enacted in 2009. The industry is always changing. At times, the new changes have caused confusion and controversy. However, our society has increased their use of credit cards and there does not seem to be an end in sight.

Over the years, credit cards have been in and out of the news as new thieves stole credit card information from naïve consumers, causing them to lose billions of dollars. Since credit cards have been processed on the Internet, the identities of billions of customers has been uncovered and shared with nefarious thieves whose only desire is to control massive amounts of wealth.

Even though the United States is responsible for only one quarter of the credit card transactions in the world, about one half of credit card fraud occurs in the U.S. Therefore, the banking industry is attempting to alleviate this problem with fraud by attempting to adapt new technology which would make credit card users less vulnerable to fraud. As a result, business owners must comply with the new EMV technology by October 15, 2015. The EMV technology will better protect the consumer and the business from credit card fraud and identity theft.

As of 2012, there were 26.2 billion transactions involving credit cards in the U.S. This resulted in a $2.48 trillion dollars in money spent. In 2003, there were only 19 billion transactions. Two thirds of all business and consumer purchases were made with credit cards in 2012.

As credit card use has increased substantially since 2009, it has resulted in an increase in credit card fraud at many of the major retailers. The EMV technology involves the replacement of many credit cards with the new chip technology which holds all of the data for the owner of the credit card to identify him/her. A chip will be installed onto credit cards and this will involve the use of a new credit card machine which will be able to read the chip on the card.

Many countries such as Europe, Canada, Latin America, and the Asia/Pacific region, are already using the EMV card and have experienced a significant reduction in the amount of credit card fraud. The U.S. is one the last countries to take the plunge. Therefore, we have much to gain in learning all about this new technology.

The substantial increase in credit cards is also an indication that the job market has improved and gasoline prices were lower at the end of 2014. Part of the reason for the increase in credit card use is the increase in on-line shopping which requires a credit card. Tuition costs and loans have also increased over the past year by $5.8 billion.