Still, most people don't have much money. So finding ways to come out a couple of thousand dollars ahead every year still matters.

I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.

Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.

Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage (including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.

Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run.

In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.