Also, you’ve probably run across those creepy rah-rah-rock-em-sock-em sites that read like they’re trying to sell you something. If you’re like me, then that approach doesn’t work quite as well as you’d like, and it comes off as . . . fake, or at least like it’s trying to rush you into a decision. All plusses, no minuses. Or all minuses, no plusses, depending on if you get a site that really has an axe to grind. Either way, those sites aren’t helpful, because they don’t read like they were written by real people. At least they never have to me, and that always ends up creeping me out.

Well, I’m sure I’m not the first real person to comment on Primerica, but you happen to be here and I happen to be real, so you’re at least in better luck than you were before.

My husband and I tried Primerica before my daughter was born. We didn’t hack it and quit. But, Primerica is a big company that has some plusses going for it. It also has some very real minuses, and I think you need to know those before you throw yourself into the culture. It’s been a few years since I was there, so any and all bitterness and unreasonable cheerleading have worn off by now. I figured it was a good time to write this post, since I have my objectivity back. So, without further ado, this is what you need to know.

I’m leading with the negatives, because you haven’t heard them yet.

I guarantee that this is the case. It’s part of Primerica’s selling model, and really, you can’t blame them. It’s ingrained in our culture. You don’t hear the negatives about a company from the company itself. Bed, Bath, and Beyond doesn’t tell you that their stuff is ridiculously overpriced, but they do try to make it seem normal that their stuff costs so much. Primerica is not skeevy for using this business model any more than Tide is skeevy for not telling you that their cheapest product will cause your colors to run. But Primerica is skeevy about doing other things. They won’t tell you those things, and they put a lot of energy into making sure you’ll never know until you’re waist-deep into their business model.

But first, a disclaimer.

Maybe my husband and I just got a bad apple. Maybe my area is a problem area for Primerica and they’re really embarrassed about it. But we had some very decidedly not nice experiences with the branch of Primerica that we worked with. I’m going to just issue a blanket disclaimer here: my experience is not going to be everyone’s experience. You might have come to this site because you love Primerica and want everyone to know just how fabulous an opportunity it is. Great for you! But you’re not going to win any friends by talking about how wrong I am in the comments section. You can win friends by explaining why the particular negatives that I list here were not negatives for you and telling everyone who they can go to in order to have a better experience than I had.

Similarly, if you’re convinced that Primerica is the anti-Christ, it’s probably because you got a swindler for a boss. You will have the most impact by saying in the comments section who/where that particularly bad experience was so that other people can avoid what you had. Rest assured, I’m not trying to say your experience was not terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad. It probably was all of that, and you can have the most impact by helping people avoid the person you had that experience with.

I’m sure you’re ready to hear some negatives now.

I like lists, so here you go. I’m still a little bit unhappy about some of these, so proceed with that in mind:

1. Primerica is a mid-level marketing scheme. They will tell you, “We are NOT! a mid-level marketing scheme.” Don’t listen. They are. Here’s how it works:

It starts with you being recruited. They will start by trying to sell you their stuff first. This is ostensibly because they believe in their product so much that they think everyone should have it, including you. And, true story, it is actually a good product. They sell life insurance, stocks, etc. and they sell it in a different way. I still have life insurance with them. Yes, even though it didn’t work out, I still buy their product. It’s not the product that I have an issue with. More on that later.

Once you’re recruited and have bought some stuff, you are now making the person who recruited you money. This is all laid out in the informational meeting that you go to, but it may not be very clear, so I’m going to lay it out here. The guy who recruits you gets you to buy. He gets money from this transaction. He then turns you loose on your friends and family. You get your friends and family to buy. He gets money. If any of your friends/family join up, they recruit their friends and family, and it all comes back to giving him money. By this point, you get money too.

Sound sustainable? It isn’t. But they do still have room to grow, so the gravy train won’t run out very quickly.

The problem comes when you run out of recruits and no one has joined up. Now your friends and family are irritated, and you have no leads. They won’t give you any, either. You will resort to cold-calling leads. This was the point that my husband and I quit and apologized to everyone involved. But, some more people did end up with an excellent product, which is good. Too bad I dislike the company selling it.

2. You won’t see money on insurance sales until you are licensed, which takes time and money. They will work with you to get you licensed, but there’s the money for the background check, the money for the courses, the fees for the test itself, the licensing fees, etc. To be clear: none of the fee goes to Primerica; it goes to the police (for the background check), the people running the classes, the licensing board, etc. But they will not pay this. You pay it. And, while you are waiting, they have you sell insurance, with a supervisor who is licensed. The person you work for gets the money until you are licensed, at which point the residuals–a percentage of the cost of the insurance that the client pays each month–will switch over to you. You will not get the commission for the original sale if you were not licensed at that point. You will also not see any previous residuals. If that seems unfair, I thought so too. That’s why I quit.

3. You have to go to meetings that will make you feel like a sales drone. If you’ve ever been to a motivational speaker, you know how embarrassing these can be. It’s like being in an echo chamber. The worst part of the whole experience was sitting back and thinking about how much time I spent shut up in a little room with people who drank the Kool-Aid talk about how great it is to be your own boss and how the common employee gets shafted because they can’t be their own boss and don’t get paid much. I like being a common employee. I like knowing that my time is worth a certain amount and that my next paycheck is definitely doing to pay this much. Maybe I’m just not enough of a risk-taker, or didn’t drink enough kool-aid, or just needed to get out there and work harder (you’ll hear that a lot–about how only the people who don’t Work Hard! are the ones who fail, and that hard workers always succeed). Either way, it didn’t work for me, and I really look back at those meetings now with a massive internal facepalm.

4. They will tell you it will work if you put in the time. But there are a lot of other factors that can go wrong. Don’t know a lot of people to recruit? They’ll tell you it’s because you’re not working hard enough, and if you think a little more you can totally milk that rock for plenty. Not so great at doing the spiel? Practice more, you’ll get the hang of it! Not certain you can hang in there until the money starts rolling in? Just stick with it! It’ll come if you stick with it!

Honestly, if you’re thinking, “I will not have enough recruits” then do not go into Primerica. If you’re great at sales, then go into Primerica. You’ll do great. Some people are just not wired for cold calling, and the sooner they realize that, the sooner they can get out and go to a job where they’ll fit in. Some people do not have the temperament to go through a day of doing The Spiel (the sales spiel that’s the same for every client) without hating themselves at the end of it. If sales make you feel horrible, don’t go into Primerica. Some people don’t have enough of a safety net  to keep going without money. If you don’t have another income source or enough savings (read: a lot) to make it through the initial slow period before residuals start flowing, don’t go into Primerica. You’ll hate it, and you’ll end up poorer than when you started.

5. Primerica tends to recruit the unemployed when they really shouldn’t. That was how we were recruited. We literally put up ads on Craigslist and called every small business in the area looking for jobs. There honestly weren’t any that we could see. Then we get this call from a fellow from a company we’ve never heard of it telling us to come in for an interview. The interview was an informational meeting. He didn’t warn us that 1. the first step of any Primerica sales relationship is to “save the client money on their life insurance”–and that we wouldn’t make money on that particular sale. The second step is to sell the client investments using the money they’ve saved, but most clients don’t make it to that step, and that was the step that he said we would make money on. 2. The residuals you make on these sales are individually tiny, and you won’t have enough money to live on while you’re waiting on that income to build up. But he did tell us that once the income built up, it was practically self-sustainable. 3. If you run out of recruits, they won’t provide you with leads. Why would they? If they have their own leads, they can make more money by cutting out the middleman. 4. Getting licensed takes much longer than it seems like it will take.

Someone who is already employed can handle this time period where nothing is happening. Someone who is unemployed should become employed before going into Primerica. But–at least in the area we were in–Primerica targets the unemployed in order to make a profit. This was the third and most hefty reason why I left Primerica.

But there was something else my local people did that made me uncomfortable:

6. Primerica will not tell you that it is Primerica until you are hooked. That was the idea, at least. We were instructed, when we would cold call, that we should never, under any circumstances, mention that it was Primerica calling. The individual offices were registered under a different business name because they were technically an independent insurance salesperson hanging out his shingle. We were to mention this business. Even if we were asked point-blank, we were told that we should not tell. This was the final reason that I quit, and it propelled me the remaining 20% of the way that I needed to go. This is absolutely a terrible move to contemplate, and if the branch that has recruited you wants you to use it, it’s a sign that they’re trying to trick people and you should go. Now. Immediately.

In summary of the negatives:

Primerica does not work if you are unemployed, bad or uninterested at sales, have no people to recruit, need income quickly, or can’t pay the fees to get licensed. If any of these apply to you, then it will resemble a scam to you, because Primerica has you sell to yourself and people that you know–a conflict of interest if I ever saw one, but not one that is illegal, unfortunately. Also, it at least partially ran (in my area) as a scheme that did not inform people of the true nature of the business, which is a definite red flag. If you should observe that happening, run far and fast.

But there ARE some people that can make Primerica work.

At its best, Primerica resembles building a website that brings in good residual income. You spend time to make tiny amounts of almost-effortless income. In the case of a website, you make the articles, which begin to bring in visitors who will click on ads. In Primerica, you sell them a product that brings in small amounts of residuals which continue to come in at an near set-it-and-forget-it pace. So you make more sales, get more residuals, and most importantly–get more recruits. Those recruits get you residuals and more recruits, who eventually bring in their own recruits, which eventually actually makes you effortless money. Theoretically. I never got that far, obviously.

Positives Primerica has going for it:

1. They actually do have a really good product, if you can stomach how it’s sold. Most people buy insurance that has a really crappy savings account attached. Because it has that savings account, that life insurance costs way more than Primerica’s life insurance. So Primerica gets you to switch to a cheaper life insurance without the savings account, then turns around and invests the money you’ve been paying on that expensive life insurance in a way that has a much bigger return. You get more money for less. They also try to save you money on your car insurance so you can then invest the savings. Really, that’s a business model I can get behind–if only the sales side wasn’t so terrible!

2. For people who are used to sales, it’s an easier sales job. They have a spiel worked out that is really effective. You usually don’t have to cold call. It’s all legal, and most of it is explained up front. They have pretty graphs that make the customer happy. They provide you will all the stuff you need at ridiculously little charge when compared to how much individual insurance salespeople have to pay for it. They pass these savings on to the consumer. They also have all of those little motivational meetings that can help you get through a slump, free of charge. It’s basically a much easier sales job with a much better support component than most other sales jobs I’ve encountered. It is still a sales job, so if you hate sales, Don’t Do It! It’s not magically not a sales job, no matter how much they tell you it is magically not a sales job.

3. If you’ve got a source of income, it’s an excellent way to make a little money on the side. It can help you pay the bills if you stick with it. It probably won’t be your only source of income–at least not for a long time–and it does take a bit of work. But it does provide you with an easily-maintained source of extra income. Just be aware that you do have to pay income tax on it.

4. Primerica’s education transfers. So, if you hate the way Primerica works, you can take your license to a different company. They won’t like it, but there’s nothing they can do about it. You could even hang your own shingle out–provided that you come up with a different sales method and know what you’re doing so you don’t get sued for duplicating their company. And you’ll still get residuals on the stuff you sold.

5. You can go to the informational meetings and listen, try it out as far as you’re comfortable, and then bail when you’re not comfortable anymore. For some, that point will come pretty quickly. For others, it won’t come at all. As long as you don’t give them credit card information or a money order/check, they can’t get any money from you. So it doesn’t hurt to check it out if you’re curious.

Some guidelines for how to be successful at Primerica

(Bearing in mind that I didn’t make it very far. I suppose you can call this a guide for how to avoid being burned as badly as me, then.)

1. Don’t drink the kool-aid. No matter how cool it sounds, don’t buy into the hype. Keep a level head. Investigate your bad feelings. Act on them. Don’t turn your brain off.

2. Ask tough questions. You might be the party pooper, but it’s better to be that then out a ton of money. Ask them, “If we run through our family and friends, are further leads guaranteed?” If they answer that you won’t need further leads or anything other than yes or no, you’ll know they’re trying to misdirect you. Think about what that misdirection means. Decide whether you can live with it. Some people are honestly better than others at sales to people they don’t know. If you are one of those people, you might be able to live with the lack of leads.

Some other good questions to ask the recruiter: “How much are the residuals on a typical sale? How often to do the residuals come in? How long does it usually take people in this area to become licensed? How much are the total costs to become licensed? If I have a dispute with the company, how is it resolved? If I decide to leave Primerica and go to a different company, how are my residuals handled?” If they act all huffy and offended that you might take your residuals elsewhere, that’s a bad sign. It means that the person who is recruiting you will want to keep them by pressuring you to stay and can be a sign of trouble on the horizon if you decide to stay past the time it takes to get licensed. Ditto for this: “If I want to wait until I am licensed to begin sales, how is that handled?” If the recruiter pressures you into starting immediately, don’t be cowed. Remember that they get the commission and the residuals until you are licensed.

“Are we provided with an education for how to pick and sell stocks? What is the support system in place for this process? How much upkeep do stock sales take per client, on average? How much time do you take with each client per month?”

You get the idea. Make them sweat. I guarantee you that they’re hoping no one will ask those questions, because they’re hard to answer and might discourage you if you don’t like the answers. They would much rather you jumped in without thinking, because that makes it more likely that they’ll be able to squeeze sales out of you before you leave. Most recruits at Primerica don’t stay for very long, but the business model takes that into account and makes it work to the company’s advantage.

3. Know when to bail out. Again, they’re going to tell you that Primerica could work for everyone if everyone would only put in the time and effort necessary. That is complete rubbish. Like any other job, Primerica works better for some than for others. Is it easier than some other systems? Yes. It is. But it is not a great equalizer. If it looks like Primerica isn’t for you, bail out. You’re not a failure for bailing out, no matter how hard they try to persuade you that you’re just not doing enough.

 But is Primerica a scam?

Honestly, there are very few real scams out there, and they’re usually busted pretty quickly. I don’t think Primerica is a scam, but I don’t think it’s the “fantastic opportunity!” that they make it out to be. It works better for some people than others, won’t support someone by itself very quickly at all, requires you to sell to your friends and family, requires money to get started, and takes a lot more work than they make it sound like. One of the negatives of the company is that they really try to sell you on it being easy. Make no mistake: it’s not easy. It takes work, time, energy, and money. They sell it as “get rich quick and easy!” It’s not. Don’t be fooled. Even if you aren’t expecting it to get you rich, it still won’t compare to traditional income for quite a long time. Don’t let that surprise you.

But, Primerica does have a good product (as evidenced by the fact that we kept our ultra-cheap life insurance even after we left the company). For people who are good at sales, it can be a good job. If your family and friends will buy anything as long as it’s better than the competition, it could work for you. If they’re looking to get into another source of side income and might like Primerica, even better. If you’ve got time and ambition in addition to this, it’ll probably be perfect for you. If you can go into it with these expectations, ask tough questions, keep a cool head, be good at coming up with sources of recruits, and work hard, you’ll probably do great. Just be prepared going into it.

So I thought “Self, people love to hear rants. Perhaps I should vent in my blog to help fight the urge to smack people upside the head?” I try to avoid head smacking wherever possible, so here’s a list of pregnancy-related questions that I never want to see ever again.

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1. Am I pregnant?

I am so sick of this question. Okay, I get that there are a lot of frightened women that ask this for peace of mind and the like. But this question gets asked at least once every five minutes (no exaggeration), and the answer is always the same: pee on the freakin’ stick!

Since symptoms are never conclusive (you can have every symptom in the book and still not be pregnant, or you could have no symptoms and be carrying twins), I’ll let you gals in on a little secret.

If sperm came anywhere near your vagina for any reason, there’s a chance (however slim) that you could be pregnant. No birth control method is 100% reliable, except for abstinence. Sperm does not die instantly outside of the vagina. I don’t care what your special circumstance is. It doesn’t matter what the chances are. You either are or you aren’t pregnant, so take a test and stop wasting everybody’s time.

2. Should I get an abortion?

Oh, internet.

In my personal politics I’m pro-life, but I vote pro-choice. A question like this makes me wonder why I bother. Half of the answers (and there will be a lot of them) will say “no” and talk about adoption, a quarter will call the questioner a murderer, and the last quarter will uncomfortably shuffle their feet and say “You know, that’s actually your decision, not ours.”

Decisions involving babies are huge no matter what the circumstances. You can keep the baby, in which case HELLO PREGNANCY and taking care of a tiny person who depends on you utterly and completely; you can give the baby up for adoption, in which case you skip that last part but get to deal with lifelong guilt, unhappiness, and ‘what ifs’; or you can abort, leaving you with guilt and a lot of angry people telling you how awful you are, not to mention the possibility that you could never have a chance at children again.

Why people try to put this extremely delicate question to the internet, I’ll never understand. I can’t believe such people are actually serious. So, instead of contemplating the possibility of someone  reproducing who thinks the internet can answer whether they should kill a baby or not, I’ll just chalk it up to trolls and shake my fist.

3. I’m bleeding out the eyes/peeing green funk/running a fever of 105 fahrenheit. Is this normal?

No. Now go to the doctor.

In all seriousness, sometimes pregnancy does cause some pretty weird symptoms. Like, the whole thing with having nightmares every single night? I would have chalked it up to mental instability, but nope, it’s common in pregnancy. But, none of us at Y!A are doctors, so why are you asking us? Don’t you have a doctor of your own?

4. I’m pregnant and I don’t want to quit X bad habit. Must I?

What you want is for someone to tell you that X bad habit (smoking, drinking, unprotected sex with a HIV-positive person, whatever) is okay and that you don’t have to quit, even though you know you should. Here’s a little hint. If you think you should quit doing something, then you should quit doing it.

5. I’m 12/13/14/15/16/17 and I want a baby. I know I’m prepared. What do you think?

Inevitably, the contents of this question end up being a teenager talking about how she knows ALL about babies (because she baby-sits her friend’s/sister’s/aunt’s baby) and that she is totally mature enough to have a baby. It’ll be great to have a baby, because she loves them and hers will love her back unconditionally.

The only problem is that everybody in the entire freaking world thinks this is a bad idea. She can’t understand why. She lists all the reasons why she’s fit to be a mother. She talks about how she and her boyfriend are truly in love and how they’ve both picked out baby names.

Then, inevitably, when the commenters don’t agree she whines and cries about how they don’t understand how terrible things are for her and how she’ll have her baby and that’ll show them.

If you’re a teen and you want to be a mother, then you had better be more prepared than any adult you have ever met. You’d better have a car, job, house, insurance, stable marriage, happy life, savings, and baby supplies. Yes, adults regularly get by with less. But guess what: you aren’t an adult. You’re still growing up and learning how the world works.

Since I know you don’t have any of these things, I advise you get a puppy, or an indoor plant.

6. How is babby formed?

Okay guys, it was funny the first time. Maybe it was even funny the second time. But you’re not edgy, hip, cool, or funny if you go into the pregnancy section of Yahoo! Answers and post this question; you’re a moron who can’t come up with his own funnies.

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Ask one of these questions, and you’ll likely find yourself on the wrong end of a large number of moody, uncomfortable, sleep-deprived women; and believe me, not many of us have many qualms with tearing you a new one. Feel free to post if you really can’t help yourself . . . but don’t say I didn’t warn you.