Life insurance is sexy again?

Life insurance was considered a kind of investment drudge most of the years I covered personal finance for The Kansas City Star. Markets were booming and you could make buckets of money investing in tech stocks and such.

No more. If ever. Insurance giant Prudential kicked out some new research this week that shows the recession has raised investors opinion of life insurance quite a bit since those days. Two thirds of us think it's a safe financial product and half of us now like it better than the stuff we lost money on, Pru reports. At this point, we'd probably like change we find on the sidewalk better than what we lost money on before, but I get the reasoning. In times like these, you can even borrow against whole life policies like one I bought to convert my GI life insurance to a commercial policy when I left the Army.

The Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group, recently published a quick rundown of what you'll find in the market if you are looking for some of the security that coverage provides. The trick to buying well is figuring out first what you want coverage to do for you, then finding a plan that fits that wish.

Look at whole life policies if you like the idea of building a conservative stash of cash while buying insurance coverage to provide your family income if you die, say advocates such as John Girouard, in Bethesda, MD. Those are more expensive than other choices, but that's manageable if you are young enough. Check out term insurance if you're looking for economical coverage, but be aware of its limitations too. You get no money back if you outlive the policy. Happy hunting.

Here's a farm program where we can all make money

A secret from a past life caught up with me today. I discovered that the University of Idaho Extension Service is launching a new free financial planning course online. Big whoop, you say.

Not many people realize that the U.S. Agriculture Department and a network of state colleges and universities that form what's known as the Cooperative Extension System offers top flight, free do-it-yourself financial planning online. Extension is a free, national non-degree educational network organized more than a century ago to show farmers ways to raise bigger crops and healthier animals.

Extension was just getting into financial planning about the time I switched from being a farm and agribusiness reporter to covering personal finance. The two disciplines aren't that different. People I meet in either one have lots to do and not enough time or money to do it. I just don't use the word bushels as much as I once did.

Rutgers - yes, it is still a farm school - did some of the early work and produced a classic curriculum that is yours for the click of a mouse.

How do you save for an apocalypse?

Many people believe the world as we know it will end Dec. 21, 2012. Many more don't.

And predictably perhaps, the idea has spawned a slew of books, movies and other enterprises keyed to the event. There are even T-shirts designed for the occasion. I haven't seen any word yet on what might happen to Christmas shopping.

The potential end of the world makes for some interesting financial planning questions too. Planners conservatively try to help us stretch our money into our age 90s or older. But if we only need to hold out three more years, the calculations are different. About two out of three households don't have a financial plan, Financial-planning.com reported recently. It would be ironic if they don't need one.

Seven in 10 Americans worry they don't have enough money saved for retirement, Bankrate.com found in one of its surveys. And thanks to the near apocalypse that hit our savings these last two years, more of us are getting serious about saving.

After all, 2012 may turn out as normal as Y2k. And FEMA will be on it.

Free advice and real value

Sometimes free help seems worth what you pay for it. One exception - and a real value if you are in the market- begins later this week. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors on Aug. 7 is launching a series of free webinars designed to help us mere mortals get a grip on our personal finances.

NAPFA, as the organization is known, is an association of fee-only planners and one of many groups advocating stronger consumer safeguards in the profession. Members in the webinars starting Friday will be offering 40-minute courses in a variety of subjects you might be talking about around the kitchen table, plus 20 minutes of interactive questions and answers, the group promises. Sessions also will be archived if you can't tune in live.

Other financial planners groups have long offered free online help for consumers too. More recently, some new groups have launched as well. Kiplinger.com checks out three of them here.

And yes, some budgeting will be required if you aren't doing that already. A relatively new website, www.mint.com, that helps with budgeting has been getting good reviews from users.

There also are scams to guard against, of course. eHow.com offers a half dozen basic tips for reducing potential exposure to those, but at least one of the tips - don't use credit cards - has limited value, I think. Planning your spending and being very wary of stuff you don't understand seems a more useful approach to me.

Good luck out there.

Michael Jackson's financial Thriller still climbing the charts

Michael Jackson has long been a source of awe and wonder for financial planning types.

Anyone would be who, as The New York Times reported a while back, builds an estimated fortune of $500 million, then runs it into the ground by outspending income by maybe $20 million to $30 million a year until some serious head-scratching by big banks and private equity companies is needed to figure it out.

Now another chapter is opening. Hours after Jackson was stricken - and even before his death was confirmed - online prices for his memorabilia began jumping. Tee shirt hawkers seized opportunities too.

But the big money may still be ahead. Celebrities, and particularly pop and film stars, often continue making money after their deaths. Elvis led a list of 20 that Forbes compiled a few years ago. Observers of the glitterati have been speculating for years how Jackson might compare.

Given both the complexity of Jackson's financial affairs and an astonishing array of memorabilia that may be poised to hit the market, the only sure prediction seems to be that the headlines will be breathless.

There are lessons for us mere mortals in all this too.

Income must exceed outgo or upkeep will be our downfall, an old saying goes. We get that. We're all somewhere in the same boat Jackson was before his death. We simply see fewer zeroes on the loan statements and payment checks we deal with.

And many of our financial lives will continue after our deaths too. We have spouses to provide for, kids to put through college or grandkids, maybe a business to pass on or a good cause we'd like to help. Fewer than half of us have made any plans to do any of that, estate planners estimate. More than 75 percent of us worry how our families will fare financially if we were to die now, the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education calculates.

Both are easy fixes. Start now.

Smarter personal finance experts than me....

Smarter personal finance experts than me will be on the phone next week to answer just about any question you want to ask them.

A Friday, Jan. 30, free financial call-in staged by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, the national fee-only financial planners group known as NAPFA, and Kiplinger Inc., the financial news letter publisher, will not include all the experts who are smarter than me. Some days that crowd could rival the numbers in Washington for the inauguration.

But there will be some pretty good people on the line at 1-888-919-2345 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central time that Friday to help you through your knottiest tangles.

If you aren't able to call just then, or you worry about the boss finding you tieing up company phones while you try to keep your own personal recession from becoming a depression, there are some good Web sites to check out later.

Along with the NAPFA and Kiplinger sites, a partial list of some I check includes The Motley Fool, which covers dismal without being devastated; MSN Money, which can be a spectacular portfolio tracker; Bankrate.com, which packs a wide variety of useable personal finance news among the banking stuff, and Forbes.com, which usually has more readable analyses than many other places I see.

So, who've I missed?