Some of us remember the era of super skinny models that were chosen over their thicker counterparts. This lead to protests by women size 12 and up that they were discriminated against. Their outcries led to the fashion craze for the heftier sister, which meant modeling jobs as well as styles for them. Today, in the battle between the skinny and the curvaceous, there’s more at stake than discrimination based on weight. Health, longevity, and quality of life are the key words attached to the concerns of the medical community and insurance companies for their overweight patients and clients.

America is homeland to more obese people than any other nation in the civilized world. The states with the highest rankings of obesity are Mississippi, West Virginia and Alabama. People who are overweight can cost their insurance companies a lot of money. State sponsored Medicaid agencies tend to exhaust a hefty amount of tax dollars on their clients who battle with obesity.

If it were just about love handles, potbellies and thighs that rub together, it would remain a personal fight between the individual and their bathroom scale. When health problems associated with obesity are added to the mix, everyone is affected.

Friends and relatives who are obese are more likely to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and or high blood sugar. People with out of control eating habits and sedentary lifestyles are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke and diabetes than their slimmer counterparts. They tend to cost insurance companies more for doctor visits, prescriptions and hospital stays. This causes everyone’s insurance premiums to increase. Taxpayers foot the bill for Medicaid recipients that have medical problems associated with weight.

One plot – Alabama – has taken the initiative and implemented what they hope to be a solution to the obesity problem among their employees. State employees are asked to get physically fit by 2010 or face paying $750 in surcharges on their health insurance, starting in 2011. The state is insisting employees with weight problems see a doctor and enroll in a wellness program.

One such wellness program, launched by the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Alabama Health Association, is called Scale Encourage Alabama. In its third year, Scale Back Alabama began on January 10^th this year. Hundreds of teams of four people across the state signed up to participate in the wellness program. The team members weigh in once a week. They diet and exercise together for 10 weeks while keeping track of their achievements. There are weigh in sites throughout the state. Barber’s Dairy and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama sponsor Scale Back Alabama. The goal for the 2009 Scale Back participants is to lose 500,000 pounds collectively. That’s a 150% increase over last year’s goal of 200,000 pounds.

Recently, I ate lunch with my friend who is participating with three other people in the Scale Back Alabama challenge. We ate at the local university cafeteria, where there weren’t many entrees or sides designed for weight watchers. She’d already lost six pounds since the challenge started. I have to say the friend overcame temptation to indulge in pizza, cheeseburgers and french fries, unlike me. I never said I was Scaling Back. She ate mostly from the salad bar. She left the table without guilt and a smidgen of pride: she had not let her team down.

Cash prizes are awarded to the teams who’ve shed the most pounds. But the greatest rewards come from reclaiming health, raising quality of life, and even extending life.

Not to mention, looking spectacular in a pair of those skinny jeans that’s been hidden in the closet for almost five years.

Some information for this article taken from “Now We Can All Get Help With That Original Year’s Resolution” by Rep. Locy Baker, Abbeville Herald, Jan. 8, 2009

If you live in Canada and you are thinking about purchasing insurance cover you have to decide between getting a term or a whole life policy. This can be a tough choice and you have to do some serious research and compare the offers of insurers in Canada. Whatever you decide you will make a very wise decision because you realized by now the misfortune you would have exposed your family to if something happened to you and you do not have protection. Many people do not realize how necessary this is and just ignore it until the inevitable happens.
There are a lot of strong assurance companies in Canada that offer magnificent competitive premiums and benefits for different types of policy. Term life is contracted for a fixed term and you will have to pay a fixed premium, usually smaller than the premiums for the whole life cover. Also you can get this kind of policy for a short term, for example a year. The whole life policy has higher premiums but it guarantees the benefit for your entire life and it is preferred by people who already paid most of their debts and don`t have to seize care of a child anymore. This type of policy is usually requested more as the premiums are lower and it is more flexible. The cost of the premium at most insurance companies in Canada usually depends on the length of the term.
If you live in Toronto or Ontario you can check out the offers available directly at the headquarters of the following insurers in Canada: SunLife Financial, Manu Financial, Foresters, Equitable Company of Canada (just in Ontario), CanadaLife or BMO Assurance Company. In Quebec you have Desjardins Financial Security and Standard. In Regina and Saskatchewan you have Co-operators Company.
When you want to purchase cover the surest way you can do it is to contact an independent broker or agent, which works with all of the above Life Insurance Companies in Canada and knows how they operate and the type of policies they offer. This consultant can give you valuable advice and information you would have found after long hours of research. You will save time and most probably a lot of money. Making a wrong decision will cost you a lot in the long term. After you have purchased the perfect product be sure to pay your premiums in time to always be covered.

The Economy is Improving and These Eight Solid Stocks Will be the Best to Own in 2006

I leafed through Kiplinger’s today and found an article by Jeffery R. Kosnett titled “Stocks to own in 2006”. There was a  subtitle that said “Our Picks are Riding the Improved Economy”. Unprejudiced a little two page article with about three to four paragraphs on each stock but it was enough to pique my curiosity. Kosnett is highly qualified to be making these picks; he is senior editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and specializes in writing about investments, economics and financial planning issues. Mr. Kosnett graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and has completed a fellowship in management at Carnegie-Mellon University. Out of all the stocks out there….. What is there about these eight stocks that drew Jeff Kosnett to them?

Aetna Inc.
His first pick is for Aetna (AET at $90). I am particularly irritated by the concepts of managed care (and my doctor is also) but I can’t argue with how the growth opportunities for health insurance providers look, and Aetna is the third largest of the managed care entities. But that isn’t the whole story for Aetna either. The company started by organizing an annuity fund to sell health insurance and grew from there. The history of the company is a elegant straight forward growth story from the beginning. The guiding executives kept an eye on changing times and changing needs and tweaked the strategy of the company at all the right times and in all the lawful places. Today the company is looking ahead to the effect of health savings accounts, Medicare’s drug program, and high deductible grievous premium insurance plans to ensure the continued growth of the profit picture. Aetna, Inc. provides health care, dental, pharmacy, group life, disability, and long-term care insurance in the United States. It operates in three segments: Health Care, Group Insurance, and Large Case Pensions. Kosnett points out that the client base grew a healthy six percent in 2005 and that the company carefully controls the ratio of claims to premiums. From the patients and the doctor’s point of thought that can be a very difficult thing but for the investor it makes very good sense because the claims for an insurance company are the expenses that effect the gains or losses in the profit column. It is rarely safe to invest based on your emotions. The fact that I do not like the concept of Health Maintenance Organizations does not effect my ability to see the value inherent in the ratios of Aetna Inc.

American Philosophize
Kosnett’s second pick did surprise me (AXP at $50). I likely would not have picked Amex because of the splitting off of the fund management and financial planning arm of the business. But sometimes the best thing for a company to do is look at their best money maker and get rid of the part of the business that they are not as good at.  Where I come from that might be called cutting your losses. That strategy is what American Express has done. They went back to their core business which is a world–class credit card business. Because Amex cardholders really don’t leave home without it, and spend thousands of dollars more every year than bankcard users do, it makes Amex much more profitable than the competition. Reorganization should never be considered lightly and is always cause for investor concern but in this instance Kosnett suggests it should lead to a higher return on equity. (The return on equity ratio is the measure of the average amount of money coming back from “money that was spent to execute money”).

General Electric
Sometimes when financial analysts are assessing a company they find that the executive personnel are what make the company valuable. This is called human equity, staff equity, or sometimes managerial equity. Kosnett believes the dip by half in stock value that GE took after Jack Welch left was a result of losing this considerable human equity that was Jack. Although seeing a long time ample conglomerate like GE lift a downturn can be scary, the news is looking suited again now (GE, $35). GE has health-care, train transportation, air industry, water and industrial machinery divisions which are all showing growth. Because GE is a multinational corporation it makes sense for the financial analyst to look at figures both in the US and abroad. The earnings growth rate is above the 10% mark and Kosnett thinks it will stay there for years. For investors interested in collecting yield as well as stock appreciation benefits the yield is 2.6%.

Granite Construction
Investing in public works construction right now is a good consume because Congress passed a six year, $286 billion highway funding bill. Granite (GVA, $36) has projects in 25 states and likely will expand. It is a petite early to tell if hurricanes from the overly active 2005 hurricane season will directly benefit this company; but it will position Granite to take up the slack on more local projects as other construction companies head for the Gulf. When we look at the order backlog records (which have doubled in the past three years), and the fact that Granite also owns sand and gravel mines and manufactures asphalt we inaugurate to study the extent of the demand for GVA product. The stock sells for 18 times the projected earnings for 2006 of $1.98 per share. A little tip about looking at companies and projecting future performance is to remember the human factor. If the employees are gay and supportive the company is in a good place at the Human Resources department. This cannot be achieved if there is distress at the top because pressure will be felt at all levels when a company gets into bad financial straights. A sweet and telling note about Granite is that it has been named to Fortune’s list of 100 best companies to work for.

Ingersoll Rand
Ingersoll is incorporated in Bermuda and is not associated with the sinking US automobile market. The machinery it manufactures is independent of the vagaries of style changes and consumer trends. Ingersoll (IR, $39) does design machinery for widely diverse markets such as industrial (supermarket size) freezers, road repair equipment, and major industrial security systems. Kosnett points out in his article for Kiplinger that most of Ingersoll’s business units are expanding by “double-digit percentages” and that profits are rising faster than sales. The published goal is to enact a profit growth of 12% to 15% which will likely expand the Price to Earnings Ratio. Because the P/E ratio is a market value ratio that analysts use to gauge the future prospects of a company it demonstrates growth expectations. It does not take much of a jump to see connections with the rebuilding of the gulf in this company’s future.

Medtronic
Medtronic (MDT,$57) is a medical device manufacturing powerhouse whose stock is selling at 24 times the expected earnings per share that analysts are expecting over the next fiscal year. Because the price to invest looks so good (and of course medical equipment is a growing market) the earnings growth will likely reach around 20% in the 2006 season. It makes sense when the CEO (Art Collins) describes the outlook for Medtronic in terms of a pipeline of new products and notes that it is “the deepest it’s ever been”. Collins cites developments in the treatment of back wound, spinal injuries, diabetes and obesity; the products in these areas are highly valued by consumers. Medtronic can be distantly compared to Johnson and Johnson in the health care sector and though it is only about 1/3 the size of the giant Johnson and Johnson it is the closest rival to them. That tells the savvy analyst that Medtronic has the potential to maintain faster growth. Medtronic does business in more than 120 countries with world headquarters located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and regional headquarters in Switzerland and Japan; their reported revenue for the fiscal year that ended April 2005 was a sweet $10.055 billion.

Microsoft
Microsoft (MSFT, $27) used to be the poster child for prototypical growth stock. This is no longer true but even though the shares are off a disappointing 47% from their all time high in late 1999 the profits continue to grow. Key unusual products (the X-box 360, the Windows vista operating system, and a new version of Microsoft Office) are the engines driving the profit machine. It also helps a lot that the expensive legal wrangling with the SEC is finally at an end. Analysts are projecting a healthy 13% earnings growth for 2006 which shows up as the best since the year 2000. While we all know that performance is historical and does not represent the future possibilities: it is a pretty safe thing to go with the stocks in a company with what Kosnett calls the “iron clad balance sheet” which includes a sweet $4.00 per share in cash.

UPS
All of the business of the future will depend on shipping things. The company that manages that in the most timely efficient and safe manner will be on top in shipping industry growth. Earnings are expected to grow about 13% in 2006. Globalization, outsourcing and online commerce may be considered major problems in some sectors but it is what paves the way for UPS. The expanding economy means more things must be shipped and as the economy goes increasingly global UPS is ready to fulfill that shipping need with a fleet of dedicated trucks and airplanes. A trailer load of packages from the East Coast can arrive on the West Coast in a time frame ranging from 54 to 64 hours. The cost of fuel is not a factor for the company because they can collect surcharges to hide that unstable expense.

Financial analysts assess the viability and probabilities for a firm based on a number of measurable factors. Probably the most significant and noteworthy assessment tool is the exercise of financial ratio analysis. Comparing and interpreting raw financial data gives the analyst the ability to identify strengths and weaknesses of the company. There are other factors that must be looked at as well and some of those factors are nearly invisible, are very subjective, or are based on long years of experience. When the savvy investor looks at companies like Microsoft and General Electric they don’t just look at the numerical data, they look at the personalities at the top. The personalities at the top of these eight companies have experience, education, passion, and persistence written large in their biographies.

While I may not have picked Aetna based on my aversion to HMO’s in general, or Granite Construction based on my lack of interest in construction topics I am still convinced that these are among the top picks for stocks to buy this year and to occupy onto for the long run. It is, after all, not about emotion, or personal experience with the specific field; but the careful analysis of numbers, trends, markets, business environments and personalities at the helm that build these the right choices for 2006.

When people suffer from mental health issues, it is just the same as any other medical condition or disease that should be covered by all health insurance companies. However, this is not the case. Millions of people in America are afflicted with mental health problems every year, but only about one third of those Americans will get adequate insurance coverage for their mental health problems. Many Americans either don’t have insurance at all therefore can not seek treatment, or they do have coverage and are afraid that their mental illness will be recorded and flagged, so they do not seek treatment at all. There are some Americans that do not seek treatment for their mental illness simply because they are embarrassed.

When you are considering mental health insurance you should make sure that it covers the following, but is not limited to.

1. Therapist coverage- at least 20 to 30 visits per year

2. That it covers Anxiety

3. Depression- Manic Depressive

4. Schizophrenia

These are the most commonly covered mental health problems. Insurance companies do not shroud Drug and Alcohol treatment (call your carrier). Always remember that insurance companies no longer pay for mental health problems like they used to, so it is important for each individual to contact their insurance carrier to get out what is covered.

There also are state agencies that do assist with mental health coverage, you will need to bag in contact with your local Human Services Department for further information. Today there are 43 states that have passed legislations providing some sort of mental health coverage for their residents.

Here are some of the mental health plans that are in my spot of Kentucky. I have put in the information for a 40-year-old female, smoker with mental illness and I received prices from 4 carriers with 5 different plans. The four carriers were Anthem BC/BS, United Health Care, Humana, and Aetna and here are the plans.

1. Anthem Blue Access Value 2000- plan type PPO, $2,000 annual deductible, office vistit co-pay $30.00, co-insurance 30% with a monthly premium of $155.25.

2. Anthem Premier 100- plan type PPO, $2,500 annual deductible, co-insurance 0%, $30.00 office visit co-pay
with a monthly premium of $239.89.

3. Humana One-Monogram Total/7500 Plus Rx- plan type PPO, $7,500 annual deductible, $25.00 co-pay for
office visit until deductible has been met with a monthly premium of 96.85.

4. Aetna PPO 2500- plan type PPO, $2,500 annual deductible, 20% co-insurance, $30.00 office visit co-pay until
deductible has been met with a $197.00 monthly premium.

5. United Health One Co-Pay Select 80/2500- plan type is network, $2,500 annual deductible, 20% co-insurance,
and $35.00 office visit co-pay with a monthly premium of $218.59.

All of these health insurance plans offer mental health coverage, hospitalization, specialist and prescription coverage at affordable rates. Remember to do the research before you commit to purchasing health insurance.

References for this article came from ehealthinsurance.com and healthinsurance.com

Secondary health insurance can provide mountainous peace of mind, as it can, if picked correctly, fill in all the coverage gaps that your considerable insurer is sure to leave.

The number one mistake people make is to choose a secondary health insurance that covers the same thing. Then the insurance companies will coordinate to “sustain you from profiting” and you’ll raze up with the same gaps in coverage.

Here’s how to pick secondary health insurance.Things You’ll Need:

• Primary health insurance Agent phone numbers

1. Coordinate with your spouse to get the right secondary health insurance.

   First, coordinate with your spouse if you have one, and read over what each of your insurance policies cover. If you do not have a spouse with secondary health insurance that covers you, skip to step 2.

   Call your respective insurance agents and witness which policy will be considered the well-known, and get the details on the coverage gaps. Once you find which policy is the primary, the secondary person can change his or her insurance to fill in the gaps with his or her employer or agent.

2. Coordinate with your primary health insurance plan first before calling secondary health insurance companies.

   If you have no one to coordinate secondary health insurance policies with, and you are getting the secondary policy on your hold, first place a call to your principal insurer and find out what all the gaps are in your coverage.

   Secondary health insurance should cover all copays, deductibles, and partner pays of the primary insurance. If you have this information when you call secondary insurance plan agents, they can direct you to the proper gap covering plan.

3. Make secondary health insurance companies compete for your business.

   After coordinating with your primary insurer, be sure to compare all secondary health insurance plans available. Prices for insurance companies are set in stone (until the new health care belief passes), and the only design to get mountainous prices is to compare and haggle as much as you can with agents on the phone with detailed information about the competition.

   After you get your rate, don’t be afraid to switch if your insurance company tries anything slick. Good luck.

Sometimes I think I should never have opened up and shared my personal life with so many people. I’m very quiet and reserved, but when I write, everything has a procedure of rushing out of me, especially when I’m stressed. The last seven months have been incredibly stressful for my family, as many of you already know. My four-year-old daughter, Audrey, was diagnosed with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on September 1, 2009. A couple of days ago, I wrote a St. Patrick’s Day rant, in which I mentioned that I’m a little annoyed with our health insurance company. Actually I wrote, “I consider I might have a pre-existing condition in my ass that they need to investigate” (and it still makes me laugh!).

Since then, a lot of my readers have expressed concern, and some of you have even offered to organize fundraisers for Audrey. Thank you; that’s very kind, but at this time, it’s not necessary.

What’s it like, when a family member has cancer and the health insurance claims start piling up? Here’s my own legend…

What’s it like? It’s a nightmare! Maybe if you’re insanely organized you’ll be able to keep track of all the paperwork. But if you’re not insanely organized—if, like me, you have a tendency to stuff papers into one big folder—you might have some problems. Almost every day, I accept new papers for my collection, from either Audrey’s hospital or our health insurance company.

Here’s a issue quote from one of the letters from our hospital (I must have at least thirty of these, and that’s not an exaggeration): “Your insurance company has informed us that they are having difficulty processing the claim for AUDREY. They may be doing a pre-existing condition investigation. Your insurance needs to verify whether or not there was another group health view or policy in do for AUDREY before your current policy came into effect. If there was prior coverage, your insurance company needs a copy of the Statement of Creditable Coverage from your prior health plan(s).”

I’ve sent them our statements of creditable coverage. Twice. I’ve sent them to our hospital. Twice. Our insurance company can do all the investigating they want. What they’ll discover is this: from birth to age four, Audrey was a healthy, healthy child. Prior to her leukemia diagnosis, she’d had one ear infection and one other instance of fever, caused by seasonal allergies. That’s it! Because we haven’t been with our current health insurance company for over a year, every single claim, it seems, is suspect.

And then there are the letters from our health insurance company, requesting additional information for this and that—information that they should already have well documented. They need to know the “first date of illness/injury.” (Duh! Can’t they follow the saunter of claims succor to that fateful chest X-ray on August 31, 2009? ) They need to know the “referring physician’s name and address” and some sort of ID number. It’s really confusing, because a lot of these letters say “Copy, No Action Required” at the top, even though action is required.

And then we get the forms that summarize the claims—what our insurance paid, how much money we saved by being one of their valuable customers, how much we owe. Some of these forms say we owe $0, which sounds really good. But then, when we read the fine print, we eye that, oops, our health insurance company didn’t actually process the claim because they requested additional information and never got it!

Why can’t they call me if it’s so damn important? It’s not like they have to shout their social security number and date of birth into some lousy voice-recognition program to come by to the main menu, where the pleasant direct tells them “all customer service representatives are busy, but please stay on the line, your call is important to us; your estimated wait time is [switch to robot voice] twenty-three minutes” and then blasts them with madness-inducing piano music, every time they call me. Don’t I wish!

That’s why, just a few weeks ago, we got a bunch of bills that totaled $2000 for the chemo that was
delivered to our house in October and November. The memo on all of these bills stated “pre-existing condition,” which is total b.s. So we had to call to try to figure out why the hell our insurance hadn’t paid these people, and it was a big mess, and the third customer service representative I spoke to (from the company that sent the bill) actually made me cry. Now all the claims are being resubmitted to our insurance–properly, I hope. And our social worker and nurse practitioner are helping us with all the stinkin’ forms requesting additional information.

So, add all this nonsense on top of the hard work of caring for two kids, one of whom has spent 22 days in the hospital in the last six months and goes to clinic for chemo treatments once a week, and you may start to wonder how we “keep it all together.”

The Wonderful News

Audrey’s doing well. That’s what keeps me going. She’s been in remission since October, and she’s about five weeks away from starting the final “Maintenance” phase of treatment (in Maintenance, which will continue until January 2012, she’ll have chemo once a month rather than once a week; her hair will grow back; life will be a lot more “normal”).

Audrey’s oncologist is extraordinary. Our hospital, Children’s Mercy, is extraordinary. They offer financial assistance, so we applied and were approved for a very generous discount for all the services Audrey receives there, at least through the end of this year. The good news is, we’re not starving. We’re not drowning in debt, like so many other families who’ve been hit with unexpected medical expenses. Our health insurance company has paid a LOT of money to our hospital and to the doctors who’ve cared for Audrey, and we have financial assistance to befriend us with most of Audrey’s medical bills. I’m very, very grateful.

We’ve learned to pay attention to all the letters and forms, annoying as they are. If our health insurance company wants the same information, submitted over and over and over again, fine, we’ll give it to them. I can’t fair ignore it all and lift they’re going to pay everything they’re supposed to pay. Sometimes we have to nudge them along. We can’t expect special treatment just because we have a sick child. We should be glad we have health insurance, period. I am contented!

My Opinion on Health Insurance Reform

In case you’re wondering, I do support the unusual health insurance reform bill. I’ve even written to my representative, Dennis Moore, about it—something I’ve never done before—because I’m concerned that, unless something changes, my daughter, as a cancer survivor, will have trouble getting affordable health insurance in the future. And what if, God forbid, my husband loses his job and we lose the coverage we have just now, while Audrey’s still in the middle of treatment? It’s terrifying to even consider.

I can’t serve but mediate of all the people in this country who don’t have health insurance, who are one tumor or one car accident away from financial ruin. I believe the current health insurance reform bill is a step in the right direction. I’m not particularly attached to my private health insurance company, and I will continue to hope that I live to see the day when universal healthcare is a reality in America. The health insurance hassles I’ve personally experienced are minor compared to some of the correct horror stories.

Until you or someone close to you has experienced a serious illness or injury, until you’ve opened a hospital bill for $50,000, you may not realize how insecure or inadequate your health insurance coverage is. The way I understand it, health insurance reform will put an end to a lot of the truly despicable practices that health insurance companies have been allowed to pick up away with, up to this point (for example, denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage when you get sick).

Thank you for reading and thank you for caring.

Sounds too good to be true huh? Well it’s not. The catch, it has to be a certain type of spam. It can’t be those international lottery frauds. The Diminutive Business Knowledge Center converts each email and snail mail packet you send them into points that convert into gift cards.

The Small Business Knowledge Center is not looking for Catalogs, sale papers, coupons, stock market information, credit lines, and ways to bag fast cash through email.

The Diminutive Business Knowledge Center is looking for Newsletters/member communications, alerts, explanation of benefits, benefit guides, postcards, kits, or letters trying to acquire you as a customer. Basically, any types of correspondence from any of the following types of companies or carriers: Health Insurance Carriers ( Aetna, BlueCross BlueShield, UnitedHealthcare, etc.), Medicare Advantage, Medicare Supplements (Humana, CIGNA, etc.), Life insurance Carriers (The Hartford, John Hancock, New York Life, etc.), Financial Service Providers: 401K, Mutual Funds, IRA, Rollovers (Edward Jones, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, Prudential, etc.).

Minute Business Knowledge Center also known as SBKC will send you prepaid addressed packets to send your snail mail directly to them.

Your identity is protected 100%. All materials are shredded and recycled. A points progress system is established to earn top retail gift certificates. I bet you are wondering what the Diminutive Business Knowledge Center does with the information. Their Insurance and Financial Services clients use this information as a competitive intelligence and product development tool.

If you are involved in joining, simply go to http://www.sbkcenter.com/consumer_panelist_pop.php and follow the easy instructions on their website to enroll. Which is ran by Nicole Hermon.

You will receive a monthly mailing with updates of your points balance. Each month they do something special, this month of August, they are offering double points for the following:

AAA, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Countrywide, Discover, FingerHut, GMAC, HSBC, Sears, Sun Trust, US Bank, Wachovia, WaMu, Wells Fargo (among lots of others).

Points range from 2 to 100. If you send in a newsletter from you insurance company, that is worth more points than a credit card solicitation or an insurance email.

Mostly anything that is put out by a company because you are a member or have an account with them is worth more points than the generic emails.

TIPS: If you aren’t getting enough spam, simply go to Google and look up insurance mailing lists, health care mailing lists, as well as any of the above already mentioned company’s mailing lists. Be sure to confirm you’re joining of their mailing list so you can forward it on to be credited for it.

Ask your friends and family members to forward on debt, loan, and insurance emails if they don’t want to join themselves.

Be sure to go through those bulk mailings of ads you get and pull out those insurance letters to send off to the Small Business Knowledge Center.