Time is money is the phrase we hear, but time is your health. Busy people have a difficult time balancing work, family and fitness. We tend to dedicate so much to our career and to others that we often times don't focus on our own health. This book is a guide for the busy person. It is written in an easy read/ quick read format and is full of great tips and tactics to get fit and healthy when your lifestyle is full of travel, hotels, office time, and a busy household. Master Troy takes a difficult concern that we all have and gives us simple resources to solve our health and fitness issues. This book is full of wonderful comments and tips from many professionals on how they handle fitness with their busy life, and also features great resources to save you time and get you fit and healthy. This resource is designed for you, by people just like you who don't have a lot of "Extra" time in their day.

Running an insurance agency requires many skills. Questions arise such as "How do I hire the right people that complement my operation? How can I streamline my agency so that we maximize the potential of every person in the agency? How do I market and brand my agency?" These are only a few of the questions that every business owner must answer in order to run an efficient agency. This book covers the business aspect of running an agency, maximizing profit, and improving customer service. Whether you are new to the industry or have been an agent for decades, this book will evoke thought-provoking perspectives and vision that will make a positive impact on your agency operation.

If an elephant sits on you, are you covered? You may laugh, but the question is based on a true story. An American couple was on safari in Africa when the husband walked too close to an elephant while taking a photo. The elephant unexpectedly sat down on the man and killed him. None of us know when disaster may strike, whether it's a house fire, a car accident, or an elephant sitting on you. But you can protect yourself and your loved ones from life's worst case scenarios by securing the right insurance coverage for your situation. In If an Elephant Sits on You, Are You Covered? top insurance agent Bart Baker walks you through the steps to safeguard the people and things you love from unforeseen catastrophes. Using his acclaimed Gap Elimination Process, Baker guides you through the nuts and bolts of eight key insurance categories: homeowners, auto, umbrella, life, long-term care, disability, natural disasters, and collectibles. Filled with engaging stories, inspiring experiences, and sound advice, this book shows you how to build a matrix of security around the things that matter most in your life. Practical tips and questions also guide you in making wise choices for maximum protection in the most cost-effective ways. Finally, suggestions on how to choose insurance agents support you in securing the best agent for your unique insurance needs. With this book, you have a powerful tool for protecting you and your loved ones from unexpected disaster. You have a way to avoid elephants."

Nonfinancial Defined Contribution (NDC) schemes are now in their teens. The new pension concept was born in the early 1990s, implemented from the mid-1990s in Italy, Latvia, Poland and Sweden, legislated most recently in Norway and Egypt and serves as inspiration for other reform countries. This innovative unfunded individual account scheme created high hopes at a time when the world seemed to have been locked into a stalemate between piecemeal reforms of ailing traditional defined benefit schemes and introducing pre-funded financial account schemes. The experiences and conceptual issues of NDC in its childhood were reviewed in a prior anthology (Holzmann and Palmer, 2006). This new anthology published in 2 volumes serves to review its adolescence and with the aim of contributing to a successful adulthood. Volume 1 on Lessons, Issues, Implementation includes a detailed analysis of the experience and the key policy lessons in the old and new pilot countries and general thoughts around the implementation of NDCs in other countries, including Chile, Greece and China. Volume 2 on Gender, Politics, Financial Stability includes deeper and new analyses of these issues that found limited or no attention in the 2006 publication. The key policy conclusions include: (i) NDC schemes work well (as documented by the experience of Italy, Latvia, Poland and Sweden during the crisis) but there is room to make them work even better; (ii) Go for an immediate transition to the new scheme to avoid future problems; (iii) Identify the legacy costs and their explicit financing during the transition as they will hit you otherwise soon; (iv) Adopt an explicit stabilizing mechanism to guarantee solvency; (v) Establish a reserve fund to guarantee liquidity; (vi) Elaborate an explicit mechanism to share the systemic longevity risk; and, last but not least; (vii) Address the gender implications of NDC with deeper analysis and open political discourse.

Are you the Risk Manager or Patrol Director of a ski resort? Are you confronted with how to lead the competition; provide a safe environment, manage risk and improve your customer's experience. The Smartphone Medic gives you a strategy by which you can improve aspects of your operation, cultivate a strong ethic around safety and risk management, minimise costs of insurance premiums, and harness the power of technology, thus reducing the impact of accidents and incidents on the ski field. Through a variety of case studies, facts, ideas and practical solutions, you will learn how to lead the competition, and improve your customers' experiences. You will also be introduced to Medic52, a smartphone application designed for easy use in challenging conditions. By improving data capture, risk management and patient handling, this app will revolutionise accident management, giving the opportunity for snow safety professionals to make our sport safer. Duncan Isaksen-Loxton, is an Australian ski patroller, Surf Lifesaver, and IT consultant, The Smartphone Medic blends his experience as a first responder with his in-depth knowledge of technology to provide realistic, everyday solutions to improving on-field care.

"Insurance is often confused with risk management, yet it simply finances part of the risk with another entity, i.e. the insurance company. In reality, it is up to the organization's executive team to proactively manage risks." - Ed Kempkey You don't need a full time risk manager to gain the benefits these best practices offer. Balancing Risk exposes five myths that often prevent organizations from implementing risk management programs, and provides straightforward concepts and metholodologies upon which to build your plan. The step-by-step process includes examples you can follow as well as a simple system to easily document and measure your success. - Increase operational effectiveness and efficiency - Enhance the identification of opportunities and threats - Establish a reliable basis for decision making and planning - Improve stakeholder confidence and trust

Insurance plays a positive role in economic development, but some of its traditional products are inhibiting in some cultural settings. 'Takaful and Mutual Insurance: Alternative Approaches to Managing Risks' explains the development of a hybrid model. Takaful (which means 'cooperative') is intended to deal with three prohibited or haram practices under Islam: the payment of interest (riba), the existence of uncertainty in a transaction (gharar), and gambling (maysir). The primary intent of this relatively recent entry to world insurance markets is to provide a core service to Muslims and others who have religious or ethical objections to conventional commercial insurance models. A secondary intent is to develop a model that deals with the capital challenges that have faced mutual insurers in the West and the subsequent decline of the mutual business model. Two realities-the uneven approaches to takaful and the economic potential that its availability is releasing-mean that it is especially important to facilitate debates that promote an understanding of takaful. This book-while not attempting to take on a role belonging to sharia lawyers and regulators in Islamic countries-provides a comprehensive overview of mutual insurance structures, including Christian and Jewish examples as well as other hybrid models, to provide a broad overview of the universe of operating models and to present ideas for moving forward. It also explores avenues for further opportunities, including the application of takaful to microinsurance markets in emerging countries with large Muslim populations. Takaful and Mutual Insurance: Alternative Approaches to Managing Risks seeks to increase the understanding, appreciation, and discussion of the challenges and solutions needed for the active development and implementation of takaful.

A condensed version of Jon's original book, HOW TO WIN THE HEALTH CARE GAME, this work offers notes and highlights for a quick study of the fundamentals for efficient purchase of health insurance that maximizes savings.

The government of the Republic of Congo is taking a system approach to reorganizing its health system. It is endeavoring to create a political, juridical, and regulatory environment to foster the development of its health care services under government leadership working with the private sector.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the most significant overhaul to health care industry in decades. It includes unprecedented reforms to the American health care system. The implementation of this new health care law, otherwise known as Obamacare is at the height of concern for many who still don't understand its implications. Among the sea of new information to sift through, there are also misconceptions about the expectations and implementations of this law. Whether you need health coverage or have it already you may be concerned about the new regulations and how they will affect you. Many low to middle income Americans will have access to more affordable health insurance but those making above 400% of the federal poverty will likely pay more. Although the law has been rolled out over several years, the most notable changes take effect in January of 2014. Included in these changes are rights and protections for you, the consumer. These protections, do not apply to every insurance policy equally. This guide is designed to help you navigate the changes in policies and the new requirements for individuals and businesses. We'll explain the changes being implemented and you'll discover if you qualify for reduced premiums, what will happen if you select not to purchase health care, and how to make compare plans and policies in your state.

Save $3,000 every year on the insurance you really need. Use our "tricks of the trade" to beat your agent's rates. Create a Wealth ReserveTM to self-insure small risks. Accumulate $100,000 in 15 years to protect your assets. Never pay retail again Your financial professionals-agents, advisors, brokers, managers-have been ripping you off for years. In the 21st century, you can purchase all your financial needs at a substantial discount, some to 60%. We will show you how to buy value-quality at the right price. You are already paying more premium for insurance than you need to. You are paying for things in your policy you don't even need. You are probably using companies that are in business to serve their agents and their stockholders more than to serve you. When you use our suggestions and start saving $3,000 every year, you can start building your Wealth ReserveTM.. This fund can help you save even more by using the strategy most businesses use to save on insurance. They self-insure some of their risks and save big. Most businesses pay less for their insurance needs by using their own interest-earning accounts to pay for losses, if they occur. You can do the same with your Wealth ReserveTM. Like most businesses, you can develop your own "lifestyle" security. Instead of paying for insurance you don't need, you tailor it to your way of living. For instance, you probably pay for a death benefit in your car insurance policy. If you already own low-cost term, you don't need to pay the high rates from your auto carrier.

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program provides benefits to insured workers with disabilities under the full retirement age and their dependants based on an individual worker's earnings and work history in covered employment. Recently, some Members of Congress and the public have expressed concern over the financial sustainability of the SSDI program. This book provides an overview of reform proposals designed to mitigate the growth in SSDI rolls. Most of the proposals discussed in this book focus on reducing the inflow (incidence) of new beneficiaries into the program. The authors also focus on information on two components of federal disability benefits, those provided through the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs, policy options for the social security disability insurance program and provide a testimony of David C Stapleton on securing the future of the social security disability program.

Born into a humble family in Bogota, Colombia, Gonzalo Jimenez has always been motivated by his desire to be more and do more. After coming to the United States as a teenager, Gonzalo used his creativity and staunch work ethic to continue his education and start a new life in a new country. Today-still a humble man-Gonzalo is blessed with a beautiful family and one of the most successful insurance agencies in the state of Texas. Meaningful is the story of a simple man who followed his passion to build his ideal life. That life not only includes a successful career, but is a life rich with music, family and friends. Read along as Gonzalo shares his story and his heart-how he overcame adversity and conquered challenges to forge his own path and create his own future-a life filled with music, family and friends.

This applied study addresses the large flood exposures of Central Europe and proposes efficient financial and risk transfer mechanisms to mitigate fiscal losses from such natural catastrophes. In 2010 the V-4 Visegrad countries (i.e., Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) demonstrated their historical vulnerability to floods - Poland suffered $3.2 billion in flood related losses, comparable to it $3.5 billion of losses in 1997. Flood modeling analysis of the V-4 shows that a disaster event with a 5 percent probability in any given year can lead to economic losses in these countries of between 0.6 percent to 1.9 percent of GDP, as well as between 2.2 percent to 10.7 percent of government revenues. Larger events could quadruple such losses. The European Union Solidarity Fund is available as a mechanism for disasters but it comes into effect at only very high levels of losses, does not provide sufficient funding, and is not speedy. An insurance-like mechanism for National Governments can be tailored for country-portfolio needs for buildings, properties and critical infrastructure. By virtue of the broad territorial scope, fiscal support should use mechanisms that provide payments triggered by physical flood measurements in selected areas (rather than site-by-site losses as in the traditional insurance industry). A multi-country mechanism for insurance pooling of risks to protect infrastructure can also provide major cost efficiencies for all governments, using parametric-or index contracts. Savings from pooling can range from 25 to 33 percent of the financing costs that each country would otherwise have paid on its own. There are several instruments and options for both insurance, and debt financed mechanisms for funding catastrophes. All instruments can be analyzed based on equivalencies in terms of market spreads. A hybrid-like instrument, the catastrophe bond, is really a risk transfer instrument but structured as a debt security. The V-4 countries should therefore begin to set up the financial mechanisms to prevent major fiscal losses from future catastrophic floods and avoid fiscal disruptions when these occur. The instruments proposed can be market tested and supplemented with exacting studies on hydrology and topography used to fine tune the loss estimations per event and where property and infrastructure are exposed.|Kill the Messenger is perhaps the most thorough and authoritative work in defense of educational testing ever written. Phelps points out that much research conducted by education insiders on the topic is based on ideological preference or profound self-interest. It is not surprising that they arrive at emphatically anti-testing conclusions. Much, if not most, of this hostile research is passed on to the public by journalists as if it were neutral, objective, and independent. This volume explains and refutes many of the common criticisms of testing; describes testing opponents strategies, through case studies of Texas and the SAT; illustrates the profound media bias against testing; acknowledges testings limitations, and suggests how it can be improved; and finally, outlines the consequences of losing the war on standardized testing.