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A History of Blood – Vol. 2, Chapter 13

After moving to Tampa it dawned on me that I would need a new business plan. While my old business plan focused on a hyperlocal marketing strategy, my new business plan focuses more on travel, quiet luxury, and the lifestyle of a successful insurance agent.

If my life was a movie

If my life was a movie there are really only three possible plot lines: my wife’s birthday, our wedding and or our anniversary, and the annual conference, highlighting the difference between the conference and my everyday life.

The annual conference takes place once a year in Vegas, and is the type of event that it’s worth renting a super car for. The reason being is simple, a huge networking and marketing opportunity where most of the agents committed to the business will gather, and the super car allows for a spectacular first impression.

Renting a McLaren 720S costs about $2,000 per day. Renting it for the conference has the added benefit of being a business expense, but I suppose you could say the same thing about renting the car or any other day, especially the conference just has the added benefit of being the most visible while still being the most relevant.

On the topic of relevance

On the topic of relevance, the cost of my own insurance is going to increase in a few weeks due to my birthday, so I’ll have to rerun this illustration. Everything else about it is perfect— the amount, the medical exam, the non-tobacco, the cash dividend, and most importantly, the fact that the premium is paid up after 20 years. I really wanted to get the policy in force before my 34th birthday but the move to Tampa made it impossible. Anyways.

By the time I publish this article I’ll have to rerun this annuity illustration as well but the numbers are also perfect. It took awhile, but I’m happy I got the numbers right. $200 a month for retirement and $139 for insurance for a total of $339. The initial purchase on the annuity is set to $1,000 to maximize the first year bonus rate, but I may put more into it if I earn a commission check in the meantime.

Based on the above, after 20 years, I’ll have $84,000 in permanent life insurance and about $74,477 in an annuity. What I’ll do after that is start funding the annuity using the money I was using on the life insurance, and I’ll do that pretty much until I retire, so instead of putting $200 a month I’ll be putting $339 a month for the last few years.

In 20 years, I’ll be 55 which will still be 10-15 years away from retirement, so that extra $16,700~ (plus the interest it accrues) will make a pretty solid difference. In addition, continuing to work will increase my social security, so it shouldn’t be too outlandish to be making $4,000 a month between my social security (which adjusts for inflation) and whatever amount I can afford to put into the annuity.

Earnings Record

I received a lot of criticism online for posting my earnings which is kind of wild. I genuinely don’t have the time to go through all the comments because they seem to be missing the point; I’m not here to impress people with the amount of money I make, I’m just here to keep track of my own career while being transparent. Just because my career as a whole began in 2014 doesn’t mean I was an Insurance Agent my whole career (a friendly reminder I legitimately served active duty in the military) and part of the reason I left the military is because I decided to seriously become a Chartered Life Underwriter, that is to say I decided to specialize in life insurance and annuities.

My decision to become a CLU began in September 2023 when I interviewed at Northwestern Mutual.

At the time, I was still working with PHP (my current brokerage) but I was still open to learning more about the industry and potentially partnering up with other companies, especially if it meant I could learn and earn at the same time. I’ll do a full article about my time there on a different day, I just wanted to highlight how they were the catalyst for my career decision.

I got my first resident license a little over a year after that interview. I had actually completed my first pre-licensing in January 2024 but it took me a full year to find the time to schedule the exam and the money to pay for the license, the same way I’m struggling to get the money to transfer my license from Maryland to Florida.

I think what makes my story so unique is that my financial struggles are pretty transparent. If I had more money, I could afford to maintain a haircut and my work uniforms but instead it’s a struggle. Honestly, the struggle is mostly due to the way my family doesn’t understand what I do or why I do it. My wife isn’t really interested, my mom isn’t really interested, and my grandma doesn’t speak any English. I don’t think it’s worth it to try to get my mother or my wife interested, and I don’t really have the time to learn Haitian Creole, despite how much I want to.

Another thing I get criticism for is working with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I should scan and publish my Priesthood Certificate the same way I did my insurance license but I don’t want to make it seem like I’m “bragging” about being a Priest, especially since the Aaronic is considered the “lower” Priesthood. I attended service at my local ward today and I think it’ll be awhile before I’m able to obtain the Melchizedek Priesthood, although I think that’s a good thing.

I never got to thank the gentleman whom gave me the Haitian Creole book (among the other books he gave me) and while I haven’t had as much time to study due to work I still learned a few things, or rather a single sentence that I use a lot:

M se Senyè Bondye

There are also a few sections that I think are notable, but the addition of Haitian Creole to my foreign language studies which already included Hebrew makes things super complicated, although Haitian Creole is much easier to learn and is a bit more culturally relevant since I have multiple family members who speak it.

Before I get off topic

I became a Priest on June 8, 2025 which is extremely relevant to the story. At that time, I was working with Jaime Allison Morgan whom was my partner in the insurance business, and we worked together from January 11, 2025 (the time I got my license) until August 25, 2025 (the time she died).

It was during this that time frame that I made $29,563 as an Insurance Agent, which is the most I’ve made in a year (while paying taxes) which is significant because it means while I made just shy of $30,000 for the year, I was on pace to make $44,344~, but after the shock of Jaime’s death I decided to take some time away from the insurance space and focus on getting a better understanding of my Priesthood, which eventually prompted me to move to Tampa before getting back to work as an Insurance Agent, formally starting to work again in February.

If I work the full year, I should still make more than last year. The difference is that I want to keep extremely detailed track of my business; especially when compared to 2025 when I was being somewhat restricted due to the work environment so hostile that a person actually died.

When I attended Sunday School yesterday (as I was invited) there was a person whom spoke for about an hour (apparently he was the President of something) and he droned on and on about how his god is all love, and how we should “be cheerful!” but I couldn’t really relate to the message whatsoever.

Maybe it’s my line of work; maybe it’s the fact I talk about death and taxes all the time, maybe it’s my own personal religious views.

The spirit of repentance is somber; I am of the opinion that emotions, in general, are better restrained and that there is an art of expressionism. I would go further to argue that that same art is what attracted my wife to me in the first place, as I wasn’t much more than a penniless artist when I met here. I’m by no means rich now, but at the very least, I’m somewhat more self-sustaining, somewhat more self-aware, and significantly more reserved in both my art and my personal relationships.

The nightmarish part of alcoholism (or addiction) is that it creates a split personality in the user (or abuser) that makes it both difficult for the person in question and for their loved ones. The reality is that the person, and the person under the influence are two different people.

My current annual salary is $37,440 but I should be able to increase that to $41,600 with or without commissions, but my goal is to make $50,000+ after commissions. It shouldn’t be too difficult, as long as I make it more about customer service than sales, putting a greater emphasis on building relationships, recruiting, and retention, more so than a high volume of sales.

By making more money, I’ll increase the amount I will earn in retirement through Social Security, and by purchasing an annuity, I’ll make sure that I have at least two streams of income. I’ll be sure to change the life insurance policy to a cash dividend as opposed to paid-up additions; while the extra insurance is nice, I personally prefer the extra income.

The idea of retirement really gives me something to work towards over the next 20-30 years. Having an annuity (that is not tied to my employer) be my primary retirement vehicle also gives me the flexibility of either changing employers, focusing on self-employment, or focusing on business development at any time.

What’s changed

When I originally started writing this article, I thought I would focus on the lifestyle of an agent, but to be honest I don’t actually think it’s that relevant. There are people whose entire business model revolves around promoting a luxury lifestyle and while I like the occasional luxury I think it’s more important to focus on the way the actual products improve the lives of those who purchase them, and the difference between agents in my organization versus agents in other ones.

In the year I’ve been licensed, I’ve ran into a few clients whom have passed away and unfortunately not had life insurance. I’ve ran into clients whom were “married without the license”, and I’ve seen the way it destroys the survivors finances. I’ve ran into a bunch of clients that retired but only had social security, and didn’t earn enough to do anything other than rely on their family or staff. There is a real horror to the insurance industry.