life insurance can be compared with christianity...
read the rest to find out why. there.. that's the topic of this entry. i hope i sparked your interest to read more and ALL of it. just... take 5 minutes out of your busy little schedule and read it ok?



well, i've been meaning to write something here for a while, but i didn't want to write about "how my day went" and i hadn't thought of something worthwhile to type out. i've actually tried very hard to think up something to write, other than the usual topic about relationships or friendships. so i've come up with the topic of....

life insurance.

read more if you care to, i'll try to make it as exciting as possible for those who tend to shut off their minds at any hint of the financial planning topic. my dad's one of them. but i'm pretty passionate about this so i'd appreciate it if you would.

whenever i hear the words "tax return" or "roth IRA" or "401K" or "life/health insurance" come out of my mom's mouth i start realizing i find something else so much more interesting. usually i start listening to the lyrics of the song currently on the radio. this is because my mom usually brings up this topic while me or my dad are driving. it's much harder for us to run away that way. can't just causally unbuckle the seat belt, open the door, and fling ourselves onto oncoming traffic.

my mom's the financial person in our family. taxes? morgages? checks? it's all in my mom's league of things. i'm pretty scared of something happening to her. if she all of a sudden disappeared, i think our money would disappear too. my dad's pretty much a dud in this area. my mom keeps on saying how good financial planning involves putting money into life insurance because you don't pay taxes when you get money back out. instead of stocks and bonds or bank accounts, the money you put into life insurance stays tax free. she talks about how white people are the best people to sell life insurance to. once they think it's a good idea, they go for it. she says chinese people make her fed up. they say "well... welll.... well..." too much or want to compare with 20 other companies for the "best bargain" before making their decision. or they're just too stubborn to understand.

i think today i realized what kind of line of work my mom does. in a way, she's a upperclass saleswoman, but instead of selling useless gadgets or $100 knives, she's trying to sell knowledge. by getting her license, she discovered ways to beat the system. the system of taxes, and how to find the fortune the government tries to keep people from getting. and so whenever she makes appointments with people, she tries to tell people ways THEY can beat the system but with most people (most asians that is...) they act all stubborn and listen with half an ear.

my mom was telling me the top excuses she hears:
1) well i'm not planning on dying anytime soon (most young people say this)
2) i'm not worth anything to get life insurance
3) just dont' need it

i'm sure there are more, but i'll just talk about these issues.
first off, it's ridiculous to say you're not planning on dying anytime soon. it's like saying "today, i am not going to buckle my seat belt because i don't plan on getting into an accident". tell that to the EMTs when they put you on the stretcher when they pick you up from the middle of the road after smashing through the windshield. you don't plan to get cancer the next day, or diabetes or whatever else. but the minute you get diagnosed with something, BAM life insurance isn't an option anymore. once these agencies see a blotch on your medical records, they don't want to give you insurance anymore, or jack up the price. pretty sucky, but that's how they work. the cost of life insurance goes up the older you get too. say you, the 20 year old, wants half a mil dollars in life insurance. a 50 year old wants the same amount as you do. the insurance agency will let you, the 20 year old, pay less of a premium than that 50 year old. why? because he's closer to death than you are. say you and the older guy die in two years. if your premium was $1 each month and his was $10, your family will get half a million at your expense of $24 while the guy's family will get half a million at his expense of $240. and that's if that guy had a perfect health record.

now say you think you're not worth anything to your family. you don't make enough money to even be worth a quarter of a million. it doesn't matter. the income you make goes into roth IRA savings. that's what you're worth. the life insurance is for yourself, the extra stuff you give to your family after you die. i have a feeling i'm starting to not make sense. so i'm abandoning this method of proving those excuses wrong and just giving you the facts.

you can put a portion of your income into roth IRA. you put money into that each month for a good portion of your life, and get it back when you turn about 65. the money you put in probably doubles or triples by itself and you get loads and loads to swim in after you retire. the money you finally get back has to be taxed on though. sucks right? your stinkin money has to be taken away by the government. life insurance doesn't get taxed on. the amount of insurance you want, say 1 mil, goes to your family as 100 percent one million dollars. the government doesn't get a single cent. and you know what? you didn't even have to pay the insurance agency one million to get the one million for your family. you only maybe paid a total of $50,000 depending on how young you started buying life insurance.

so you ask, "then how do these life insurance agencies make a profit if you pay small cash for a big return?" there are two forms of insurance. short term and long term. short term is usually for older people. it's for people who turned old before they realized the importance of buying insurance while they were young. by that time, long term insurance is too expensive for them so they opt for short term. usually short term insurance comes in multiples of 20 years. so you pay for insurance in case you die within those 20 years. if you die in 21 years, then you don't get the money. kind of a gambling method, but i guess that's what you get for not buying it earlier. some people however, do take the morbid way and kill themselves to make sure their family gets the money. usually they do it soon so they don't have to pay the insurance agency as much money (ex: only paying 2 years worth of premiums instead of 19 years). the insurance agencies actually recently changed a rule regarding when you could claim your insurance. instead of waiting 1 year after buying it, you must wait 2 years. this is because people who've already planned on killing themselves after purchasing the insurance, always tried to do it immediately.

long term insurance is what i've got. you keep it for life no matter when you die. and since i'm on the lower spectrum of age years, i can pay a lower premium. there are two forms of long term insurance. one form is when the premium increases as your age increases. but the amount of life insurance you have also increases so by the time you die, the return you get covers the amount of premium you put down over the years. the other form of insurance is for more conservative people. the premium you start off paying is the premium you pay for life, but the return is lower. my mom compared long term life insurance with car insurance. people have to pay for that right? it's a requirement. you pay insurance for a car that you maybe keep for fifteen years and after that car is gone and you didn't have any accidents whatsoever, that insurance you paid disappears. but see, you win with life insurance. you HAVE to die sometime. so your life insurance won't ever cheat you out of money. so all that money you put in? you'll get it all back and much more when you pass away.

and then there's also joint insurance... where both you and your spouse have to die before getting the money. that stuff comes in permanent long term insurance, but the premium is lower because the money the insurance agency gives out only comes after two people die. but that shouldn't be of relevance to you as of right now.

so you say "well, i'm pretty young right now, in my teens to twenties, why start paying insurance premium right now? i'll end up giving away more money than if i wait a coupla more years down the road". like i said, you don't PLAN on dying, or getting cancer or psychological problems or heart problems etc etc. once you get that, you can kiss health and life insurance goodbye. my mom's coworker's daughter died last year. she was 28. she developed cancer when she was 23 and battled it for five years. i bet you when she was 22 she didn't think she'd be the lucky one to get cancer. did she buy life insurance by the time she turned 23? i didn't ask my mom. she was pregnant when she was diagnosed though. nice little motherless five year old kid to leave behind with or without money from dear mom.

ok i'm starting to sound pretty morbid with my sarcasm. that was all sarcasm by the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

here's the connection i made. my mom is living life armed with the knowledge of life insurance. christians are armed with the knowledge of God. no matter how many appointments or lunches either make with ignorant people, if these people are stubborn, nothing my mom or christians say will matter. they'll just go on through life missing out. maybe some of these people say
"meh, whatever... i'll just do it later. i got the rest of my life to tackle this issue, i'm too busy now to deal with it right now"

but like i say again and again, maybe your last movie with your girl/boy/best friend was tonight and tomorrow you'll make headline news. and then people who own xangas will write about how much they'll miss you, but your christian friends will think about how you won't be up in heaven to greet them at the gates when they make their way up there in due time. and what if you were the sole wage earner of the family? i bet your family would feel pretty screwed with you gone. no half million dollars to leave to them to help them on with life without you. my mom's not a christian. i bet when she hears that you passed away, she doesn't think about the heaven business. but she is very aware of life insurance. i bet she thinks about that aspect of what you leave behind. i'm sorry if you think money is important to me. like someone said to me very recently, she hates money but can't help loving it. money gets you things. and you can try to be as unmaterialistic as you can, but you can't deny that you need it.

and maybe your christian friends kick themselves where it hurts when you die because your nonchristian self was too stubborn to realize how great it would be to become christian. how big the return would be. i asked my mom today if she ever felt frustrated to have her possible chinese clients go "erm... ah... well.... nah..." and end up throwing the information back in her face. she didn't answer me directly. she just said "well... there's really nothing you can do." i bet christians feel the same way whenever someone does the same thing or "hates" christians or calls christians hypocrites or refuses to do anything remotely relating to christianity. but see, even though my mom's possible clients are sometimes her friends, most times they're strangers. so she cares but doesn't care THAT much. christians are different though. because christianity is different in that sense. when you miss out, you miss out BIG. so when even strangers keep saying no, no, no, christians feel a twinge of pain. and it just tears christians up when someone close to them won't open up to God. a friend of mine's been praying for her dad for years and years, maybe even more years (i've only known her for two years so maybe it's even more more years). that's quite a lot of pain to inflict on your friend when all they want you to do is join them in finding something better than what this world has to offer you.

so say you end up dying as a nonchristian and without life insurance. ooh that's gotta suck. you end up in hell and your family ends up in hell with all the funeral stuff they do for you, and trying to pick up life again with you gone. but who am i to talk right? if you don't believe in christianity, you shouldn't believe in heaven and hell right? or do you? lots of people believe in the concept of heaven and hell but don't take that extra step to believe and love God. interesting. but for those who don't believe in the whole shebang of christianity, including heaven and hell, how do you know it doesn't exist? why not check it out instead of covering your ears and going "lalalalalalala i'm not listening i'm not listening"?



i can't help thinking about the movie bruce almightly. i love that movie. if not for the message, you should at least go for the laughter. i dunno, maybe some devout christians think it was a bad movie but i for one loved it. there's this one scene that keeps on playing in my head as i wrote this entry. it's when bruce's girlfriend doesn't love him anymore and bruce, impowered with God's powers, tries everything he can think of to show her signs to love him again. no dice. a very sad bruce talks to the real God and asks, "how can you make someone love you without affecting free will???" and God says, "welcome to my world. if you ever get the answer to that, come and tell me"

how can you make someone see something so great by not affecting their free will? it's such a great idea to become christian, to get life insurance (the first one is obviously a more important thing to do compared to the second).
(by the way, if you DON'T ever want to become christian and want to stay as materialistic as possible, then life insurance is the way to go. i'm serious. everyone should get life insurance.) these two things... are a win-win situation. especially when you're young. you get lower premiums for life insurance, and more one-on-one time with God than if you were to realize this stuff later on in life. for insured christians, every passing minute is another minute knowing you're being taken care of, watched out for. knowing your family's being watched out for. can't you see that??

it's 2.40 am, time for bed. dad pulled the wireless plug again.

updating again...
keep on commenting on that other entry if you want though, this one isn't supposed to overshadow the last...

this morning i tried to sleep in. yeah yeah, so i'm bad, i tried to skip church because i was tired but i figured, if i was going to end up sleeping in church anyways, why bother getting out of bed and driving 20 mi to sleep sitting upright?

my mom came in and was like "you're not going to church?" and after i mumbled a "no", she left only to come back at 10 to wake me up. what the... i had planned to wake up at 11-12. apparently today is "qing ming jie" on the lunar calender, the day you're supposed to go to the cemetery to take care of the graves of your family-- it's an asian thing.

truthfully i didn't want to go. i love my grandma a LOT and i miss her but in my mind this morning i was thinking about how to get out of going. if i couldn't stay in bed, i was thinking maybe i could somehow leave for church and not have to go. i guess the mentality of "the lesser of two evils" even though neither is evil. well, i suppose anything trying to wake you up is evil when you're stuck in the middle of the dream-awake state.

i did eventually drag myself out of bed and i went with my family to visit my grandma. on the way over i thought it was interesting how my mom didn't mention anything about this holiday, especially important to her cause it was her mom's grave site we were going to. if i had gone to church, i would have never known today was "qing ming jie" because i don't know the lunar calender (which is based on the moon cycles).

i was thinking if i would remember this holiday when i grew up. when my mom wasn't around to remind me. today also happens to be palm sunday. how do i know? because the calender on my desk says so. it doesn't say its "qing ming jie" though. would i just forget this holiday completely? i think the younger generations are slowly forgetting this holiday. it becomes less and less important to go visit the departed. hm.

when we arrived at the cemetery, there were actually two other families. asian. i think they were speaking cantonese. but they were doing all the stuff you were supposed to do for this holiday, burn incense and paper money. there were no young people. maybe their kids are off living somewhere else. i hope that's the case, instead of being at home in bed cause their parents couldn't make them get up.

*scratches head*

it's neat how there were other asians out this morning doing the same stuff. i felt more... unified (how ironic) and connected to them since they were out there.

i guess if you look at this holiday from a different standpoint, it's kind of stupid to have it. if you look at it like it's valentine's day. commerically, valentine's day is the day you're supposed to show your loved one you love them. but a lot of people dislike this holiday because they don't understand why this one day stands out from all the rest, when you're supposed to show your love all year round. this applies to the departed too. if you really loved them and continue to love them, then you should be going to visit their resting place more than just "qing ming jie", birthdays, and anniversaries. maybe this holiday is an excuse for many people. in the back of their mind they know they should go visit but they'll think "oh, qing ming jie is coming up in 3 weeks, i'll just go then instead of today because i'm busy". sorta like v-day maybe? i dunno.

oh yeah, i remember some reasons why i don't like visiting my grandma somtimes. my mom gets in these sad moods and then i feel unhappy and sad because she's acting like that. and also, whenever i go, i'm reminded that my grandma was buddhist and everyone who isn't christian is supposed to go to hell- according to christians, and that makes me really REALLY angry. she was one of the best people i could have in my life and there is no freaking way she went to hell.

read at your leisure. it's a long one.

tonight as i was sitting at the dinner table, i started thinking about the reasons why korean people always talk to each other in korean, and chinese people don't.

in fact, chinese people rarely talk chinese at all, except when they do it to joke around or make fun of koreans always talking to each other in korean. chinese people never seriously have a serious conversation with each other in that language.

first off, i think one of the reasons contributing to this is because most chinese people just can't speak chinese very well. when we DO attempt to talk, it's a mixture of broken chinese and "what's the word for ____?". few chinese people can really confidently speak a string of words, few american-born ones that is. the chinese people who have this ability to speak are generally fobs and most those people just kind of migrate towards each other. koreans on the other hand, are different. most koreans are fobs anyways so there really is no difference between knowing american koreans or fob koreans cause they're all mixed into one big spicy bowl. a korean is a korean. meanwhile, if you know a chinese, you've got the fobs (most often TAs) and you've got the abcs, and you've got the ericas (the coolest ones, such as myself).

in addition to these three categories for chinese people, there are several others you have to factor in. frankly, there are just too many different kinds of chinese people. in terms of language, you've got the taiwanese, the mandarin, the cantonese, and all the other millions of dialects. then you've got the loyalties... the taiwanese, the mainland, the hong kongs, am i missing anything? among the mainland, there are strong ties to the various provinces and some of the big cities. accents are running free all over the place. it's a bit harder for chinese people to feel unified.

one thing that DOES unify chinese people are the nice innocent teasings chinese people have to grow up with (this line is chock full of sarcasm). when someone says chink, that refers to ALL chinese people. now, i also know koreans have racist names but in terms of the "making fun of" phrases, it's hard for me to think of any. koreans out there, help me if you know of any. there are tons of teasings out there for chinese though. some that particularly stick out in my memory are:

-"chinese japanese knocked knees look at these"~ first heard by a little elementary school black girl who rode my bus
-you're chinese = you must be smart
-when people go around putting their fingers to the corners of they're eyes and making them mere slits because by golly, that's what chinese people really look like. i know that's what I look like.
-some little kid at the ymca who had never met a chinese person followed me around the first week i was a counselor and kept on bowing to me with clasped hands. kept on asking me if i knew karate.
-from elementary school up until the end of middle school (not high school cause enloe was filled to the brim with asians), whenever a random asian lady would walk into school, random kids and even my friends would say "hey, is that your mom?" "hey erica, your aunt's here." "hey she looks like you, is she your sister?"

that last tick mark actually applies to koreans and chinese... and basically everyone who isn't white. i guess that was the most innocent inquiry but it still contributed. by golly people, all lees are NOT related to each other, the relatives i have do NOT include random people who walk around schools looking for their korean or japanese kids.

what also bothered me was the list of options i was given whenever a stranger wanted to know what i was. i guess chinese people have it easier since there are so many in the world. the automatic list... in order now, is: "hey are you chinese? japanese? korean?" i feel sorry for all the other asians, cause after that list has been depleted the question becomes "so... what are you?"

well, back to the topic.

i think what also contributes to the lack of the chinese language being spoken is lack of chinese pride. a korean friend says they have korean pride because their country had been oppressed for the longest time and maybe that's true. koreans have an excess amount of pride... it's almost too overwhelming. i think one of the reasons why chinese people don't have that much pride is because why WOULD you want to be chinese?

if you're chinese, you have to put up with those little tickmarks stated above. all the sterotypes are generated based on chinese people, cause i mean, america has a lot of chinese people. and chinese people have been around the longest. plenty of years for kiddies and adults to make up rubbish. one of my chinese friends said she hated being chinese cause people would make fun of her cause of her eyes. they asked her what was wrong with them. that just makes you WANNA hold onto your chinese pride doesn't it?

so i think all this stuff contributes to why chinese people generally do not talk to each other in chinese, and why koreans do. personally for me, my mom is REALLY chinese. she loves talking about the entire history of china. i'd like to think i have a decent amount of pride, but i don't go around jibbering in chinese. it's just not the cool thing to do... if you're chinese.

y'know what i realized? whenever i listen to music and the particular song is supposed to be labeled a "love song", i think of my closest friend and how the lyrics pertain to my friendship with that person. not lyrics talking about touchy feely stuff but just how great life is with that "significant other" in their lives. yeah. life is pretty great with a good friend by your side eh?

~~~~~

today i went to the bathroom and there was a girl standing in front of the mirror looking at herself. after i relieved myself i stepped out, washed my hands, and left. and that girl was still there. messing with her hair... or makeup or whatever she was doing. i didn't really notice exactly what she was doing, i glanced, went into the stall, came out and sanitized myself, glanced again, and left.

why DO girls spend so much time in front of the bathroom mirror? or any mirror for that matter? vainity? i dunno. i suppose not all girls do this but a LOT do it. but gosh... after girls dress they have to stand in front of the mirror to adjust their clothing and put on makeup when sometimes they don't need it and.... everything else they do that makes girls slower to get ready than guys.

most of the time when i wake up for class, i stumble into the bathroom and get all brushed and scrubbed up, stumble back out, sink in contacts, throw on t-shirt and jeans, eat and check the weather. then i get out the door and go to class. no mirror viewing whatsoever. when i leave the suite i think "d'oh... i dunno what i look like.. oh well". it doesn't seem all that important. but then, like some guys have pointed out, i tend to uh "dress like a guy" instead of dressing like a... girl? yes i'm probably a more extreme case, and maybe when i did dress up like a "proper" girl, i might take more time out of my morning to look into a mirror but by golly, girls are so vain.
you're so vaaaaain...

~~~~~

a coupla days ago i found out a friend of mine liked someone and i was pushing him to go after her. aww so cute! i could see them getting married and i was like "go after her!!!! before it's too late!!!" and he was like "i'm TRYING!!" and i was like "TRY HARDER!!!!!"

something i thought about after that conversation was that in college... marriage seems so much more closer to the present than it was before (duh). now when you go out with someone in college, the majority of of the minds have the mentality to find their potential dude or dudette, instead of just messing around. so if one guy really really likes a girl, he'd best get off his butt and go after her if he knows what's right. because if he doesn't, well some other guy'll go after her and she'll get all dreamy eyed on that second guy and that first guy will only be able to think about the "what if's" in life. it's a little bit like that movie sliding doors, one little brush-off event could change everything. it's a little bit scary dontcha think?