What do we miss when we miss the understanding of language? My wife and I just recently returned from southern Italy after not being able to travel for the last two years due to the pandemic and it’s the little subtleties sometimes that can make people misunderstand what you’re saying. In Italy, for instance, if you want one of something you don’t go 1 and then 2 and then 3 from your index finger, you begin with your thumb. I want 1 (hold up thumb), 2 (pointer finger), or 3 (middle finger). So, if you just use the wrong fingers, you might get more or less because of the misunderstanding of language.
How many times have you gone in to a sandwich shop and ordered a panini? That’s actually incorrect in Italy. In Italy, if you are ordering what you believe to be a single sandwich, you are not ordering a “panini”, you are ordering a “panino”. That is the singular; panini means sandwiches (plural). “I would like to order a panini”. Okay, you want a bunch of sandwiches?
The same thing goes with a cappuccino. There’s nothing better than a cappuccino in the morning, but a “cappuccino” is one. If you want to order two cappuccinos, first of all its “due… cappucini”. Remember, cappucini, panini, panino, or cappuccino.
Why am I talking about the language of Italy today? Because all of us use certain languages in our jobs. There are engineers that use certain languages and certain words that are not going to be understood by me or probably by you. The same thing goes when we are referring to the life insurance asset. Most people say “I have term insurance” or “I have whole life insurance” and in both cases the person often believes that they do have term insurance, but they don’t understand the contractual language. I’ve spoken with people that believe they have whole life insurance that should last the whole of their lives, but instead it’s some other kind of version that doesn’t play out the way that whole life insurance does. They believe it’s permanent insurance, but it’s not; they might have a universal life policy, a variable life policy, a multi-funded life insurance policy, or an equity-indexed life insurance policy that has all of these different levers and such that the insurance company can control, but it’s not actual whole life, which has the iron-clad guarantees.
Here's the important thing to note; there is specialty language in the financial decisions that we make in our life. Just like there’s specialty language when we are trying to order just a cappuccino, or for yourself and your spouse a “due cappucini”, or if I’m ordering a sandwich; do I really want a panini where I’m going to be ordering sandwiches, or do I want a panino where I’m ordering one single sandwich.
Don’t allow your life to be controlled by miscommunication. To learn more about the life insurance asset, take a moment and order my book online, Investment’s Don’t Hug: Embracing the Life Insurance Asset, or if you would like to work with me and my team and to find out more about my book, simple go to my website, without the apostrophe, www.investmentsdonthug.com.
