How Can We Really Know How Much We’re Worth?
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Recently, a man named LJ from Queer Exchange on Facebook tried to sell me life insurance under the guise of “financial planning”. This was my second experience with a life insurance scam. You might wonder how this happened to me twice—and I’m with you, it’s a doozy. But in order to explain how I got there, allow me to explain my history with life insurance—which goes back to 2016.
I saw an ad posted on the wall on Bagelsmith right across my friend’s cockroach infested apartment on Messerole St in Brooklyn at the end of March that peaked my interest. The ad was terribly vague. It said something to the effect of "Seeking a job? Now Hiring!" with a bunch of phone number tabs you could rip off at the bottom. I called the number on the tab, and was told to send an email in the voicemail. I exchanged some emails with a guy named Andrew who claimed he had an exciting opportunity for me in sales. Half-knowing it was a scam, I went to what appeared to be a very fancy office in Williamsburg to see what this opportunity was. It was one of those new, shiny offices where there's a barrage of conference rooms with glass windows and doors. Long story short, Andrew had the candor of a used car salesman from Nassau County, Long Island who to get me to sell life insurance to people on a commission-only basis.
Because I have palatable Scorpio energy, I was able to get Andrew to reveal a lot about himself in a short amount of time. It changed course from a job interview to a heart-to-heart pretty fast. He told me he had struggled with addiction and ended up selling life insurance after years of trying to find himself before doing this kind of work. He assured me this was just a stepping stone in my path to becoming an artist and that this was something people really needed. We discussed so many things--life, death, the state of the world—that I left really mind fucked, to be totally honest. I felt like I had really learned something about this person and that he really wanted to help me. I was young, out of a job, it offered a flexible schedule, and I wanted to believe that this was something I could make a living at—at least until I could find something better. He told me if I made enough sales, I could make thousands in commissions. It seemed enchanting, and it made sense. I mean all people need life insurance, right? While the whole time it felt dubious, I figured maybe at the very least it would be something I could write about. I was on the verge of accepting the job "offer" until my father and my then ex-boyfriend talked me out of it, assuring me I’d be miserable.
Sometimes, when my parents have difficulty expressing something to me, they will send me an email about it. My dad sent me an email with the subject "your destiny". In the email, dated 4/8/2016 he wrote, "You have so much talent and great stories to tell. You were given these talents, schooling, and years of experience that this needs to be the focus of your life. I know you are struggling to find work in your field but don't give up. Selling life insurance will require a commitment to learning the insurance industry, competitors, financial terminology, etc."
After that, I decided he was right. I told Andrew no. I could tell he felt hurt. We established a connection in some way. A few months later, I got my first phonebanking job, and the life insurance proposal became a distant memory.
Anyway here we are—years later and I would like to think, far wiser (although I guess not as much). I saw a posting on Queer Exchange by a guy named LJ who was offering free "financial consulting sessions". I am not doing too hot financially right now, and I thought this would be some sound advice. I should’ve known something was up when he asked me before our appointment if I could refer three people. In hindsight, Andrew told me with any clients that I would’ve had to do the same thing. But I figured, if he does consulting, that the first session is on the house and he’d want to have some more clients in mind if things worked out or not.
The second I accepted LJ's zoom invite Monday afternoon and saw him in a button down and tie, I felt the vibe was off. He asked me about what my budget was. After I gave him too much information about my finances, hoping he could give me tips on how to make my budget smaller, or how to invest, he revealed to me what his true purpose was: to buy life insurance. He explained to me that the benefits of life insurance were that you can put some aside in an account that is protected from being taxed, and that it was common for people to take out some money from their policies in hard times, or especially if their worth increased as they got older. Then, he told me that I should get life insurance now because many companies were going to consider people who got COVID-19 to be uninsurable because no one knows the long term affects. He told me that if I setup an insurance policy while I was young that I could pay a very low premium. He told me that most young people without partners or children put their money aside to be collected by a charitable organization, something I rather liked the idea of.
We ended up having a really great conversation. He told me that he had just graduated school with a Philosophy and Sociology degree and that he identified “farther left than socialism, somewhere between a communist and an anarchist.” He told me that most people wouldn’t talk to him about this stuff, because people didn’t want to talk about death. He convinced me I could start on a really low plan and work towards a certain number, and that if my income changed and I wanted to invest more, I could. After all, he explained to me I could take money out of my account and it wouldn’t be taxed at any time. He quoted me at twelve dollars a month for a policy, which seemed very reasonable. I mean, how much commission was he going to get off twelve dollars a month? Maybe this wasn’t a scam after all. Anyway, I was somehow convinced in the moment that life insurance was something I needed. I mean, I am older now than I was in 2016. What if I died of COVID tomorrow? What would I be worth?
After the call was over, I remembered that this was something I had pondered all those years ago with Andrew. I texted my friends, and I was like, “was I just hoodwinked?” and they all reassured me I was, and one of my friends asked, “don’t your parents have a life insurance policy on you anyway?” and that’s when I realized, they definitely did. Another friend told me that life insurance wouldn’t make sense for me to purchase since it really was only meant for people who had sizeable amounts of assets—people who had property, partners, and children. I couldn’t believe that I could’ve been almost hoodwinked by the same scam almost twice. Was I a fucking idiot or what? I kindly sent a message to LJ telling him that I was going to forgo our follow up plans to get life insurance, and not to share any of my financial information with anyone. He simply replied, “Ok, no problem!” however, I felt bad for wasting roughly an hour of his time.
As Brian Jordan Alverez's life coach-inspired character Marnie would say, the price of a human soul is $130,000. The brush with LJ made me think how bizarre the concept of life insurance is. How much are any of us really “worth”? During this time, a lot of us are grappling with the idea of how much time we actually have left when people are dying left and right. At least for myself, I’ve thought of my mortality in a completely new way—almost in obsessive and unnatural way for someone who isn’t in their thirties yet, I would think. It’s a strange thing to think about, in a world where millions have died of COVID, and thousands more are dying every single day of this terrible disease, how is our worth determined? It turns out, maybe you can put a number on it. But when you quantify it in terms of life insurance, it seems really bleak. LJ told me that I could set a low rate at $25,000 or less for my premium. It made me think, am I worth $25,000? Am I worth more? Am I worth less? I like to think that I’m priceless, but I’m not. I don’t think any of us are in a capitalist society. If we weren’t worth anything, then student loan companies wouldn’t hound family members of dead families (which unfortunately happens way more often than it should). There wouldn’t be funeral industries, or auctions, or estate sales, or notaries. From the time we’re born, society “invests” in us. It is only when we leave earth that the living can investigate how much we’re worth paying for now that we’re not around.
Both of these life insurance scams made me examine my relationship to the death as well as pretty much everyone I knew. I realized the more money you make, the chances are greater that you can work remotely and stay away from an extremely deadly virus. But then there are the “essential workers”, a completely paradoxical phrase. What is it like to know that you are, in the eyes of the workforce, someone who is deemed a valuable worker, but at the same time, not valuable enough to be away from the virus? Essential workers feels an awful lot like class genocide—in fact, who COVID affects in terms of high death rates (disproportionately low income Black and Brown populations) would similarly suggest this as well. In fact, the whole economic relief package that congress can’t seem to agree on seems to suggest this very thing: even the major branches of our government can’t quite decide how much any of us are worth individually. Although, we did establish in round one of the stimulus checks, that we are worth at least $1200, but if you’re a major corporation, you’re worth thousands of more, actually.
I am coming to a point where I’ve accepted there is a high possibility that I may need to take an in-person gig soon and expose myself to the virus, something I am at a high risk for. I am scared. But what are we supposed to do? My UI benefits haven’t kicked in after more than a month of waiting. I worked at least 30 hours a week since April, with only one period of being furloughed for a handful of weeks in October. And yet, I am stuck in a Sartre-esque hell where I am waiting to get my benefits calculated almost a month out. I am getting stressed out. My bank account is dwindling. If I were to get the virus and die tomorrow, how much would I be worth? Not much.
But then again, is money all that determines a persons worth after they die? What are we worth if not only the amount in our life insurances plans? If not, what defines someone’s worth? How many people come to their funeral? How many people will still remember and talk about them ten years after they die? Twenty years? Fifty? A century? How many lovers they’ve had? How many people they’ve touched? In art projects? In journal entries? In facts they knew, or in lyrics they memorized? How do we know how much we’re really worth while we’re still alive? And if we were to discover how much we were really worth before we died, would we change our lives to be more “worthy” of living? How can we know what roads we take in life were worth taking until we’ve taken them?
Maybe we just aren’t ever meant to know how much any of us are worth while we’re still alive, because it is ultimately up to us to decide what makes us worthy or not, and we simply can’t objectively assess it while we’re still here. Perhaps when we get to the other side, if we’re still conscious on the other side, we’ll be able to see things from above. As Roger O’Hirson once wrote in one of my favorite musicals, Pippin, “from the heights, all things are very clear.”
