Update News for July 2024

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

• • I Don’t Believe The Inflation Number

  • Price Increases in September

  • Changes to the Internet Engine

  • Our Current Programming Plans for 2024

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

I Don’t Believe The Inflation NumberI think that the Federal government is keeping the inflation number artificially low to help Joe Biden get re-elected. Further, no matter who wins the 2024 election, the numbers will be quickly corrected after the election because Biden will be a lame duck if elected (the numbers won’t matter to Biden anymore), and they will want to blame Trump for the rapid rise in inflation should he be the President.

The biggest driver of U.S. inflation is government deficit spending, and the accumulated national debt that it has created. It’s NOT a pretty picture. Here’s a graph from Wikipedia:

Price Increases in SeptemberThe reason I am talking about inflation (again) is because we will be increasing our software prices in September, just as we did last September. As I told you last year, I am CERTAIN that inflation is back and here to stay. I lived through the Carter years and remember the inflation of that time period. Now, because of the government debt and deficit, we are stuck with inflation and it is not going to end. I also believe that inflation is going to take off like a rocket and before long will become hyper-inflation. That means, like everyone else who has something to sell, prices will have to go up. That is just so we can keep up with the rising costs that we ourselves face. We plan to increase prices annually moving forward, because we don’t want prices to go up all of a sudden.

I was VERY tempted to put the prices up 5% this year. As I said earlier, I think that number is artificially low, but given that the CPI is 3% we are going to keep the price increases tied to that percentage.

Product	New Price	Old Price
Mobile Quoter	110	104
Website Quoter	215	209
Personal Use PC	215	209
Agency Use PC	380	369
API – 1,200/m	470	454
API – 6,000/m	935	909
API – 30,000/m	1,460	1,419
Internet Engine	1,875	1,819
Batch Analyzer	2,320	2,250
Historical Disk	115	109

NOTE:   There will be NO increase in Term4sale listing prices this year. We raised them in a $3 increment last time, which was higher than a single year inflation rate. That was partly because it had been a VERY long time since we changed that price, but also we like to keep the price easily divisible by 12. The reason for this is there are many times we have to calculate partial year prices, due to mid-year purchases, because additional zip code purchases renew on a calendar year basis. If you but an additional zip code in July, you only pay for 5 months and would only renew for a full year at the end of the calendar year.

Having noted that we are keeping this year’s price increases to 3% for everything else, I fully expect next years inflation numbers to jump quite a bit higher. You should plan and expect that we will adjust prices accordingly.

Given that, I would encourage you to LOCK in the old prices by pre-paying. You can send an email to service@compulife.com and we will be happy to send you an invoice for a one year, two year or three year subscription (in addition to your current subscription) all at the old price. If you go two or three years, you can take a further 10% or 20% off the total cost respectively. And no, we do NOT accept renewals longer than 3 years; I’m not kidding about inflation.

NOTE:   The 10 and 20 percent multi-year discounts can be applied to “local” zip codes that are tied to your subscription. However, the discounts are NOT available to additional zip codes which renew at the end of the calendar year. As additional zip codes can be bumped, and you could lose one of more additional zip codes, we keep all renewals limited to the current year.

When thinking about multi-year discounts, we want to point out that as Compulife comes up to our 42nd year in business we think you can trust us to be still around 3 years from now. And if prices do go up next year, (as they are doing in September), then prepaying for up to 3 years gives you a great discount by locking down the old price in additional to taking multi-year discounts.

In fact just this week we renewed one of our IP servers for 3 years when they offered us a significant discount. We do NOT believe things are going to get cheaper, and discounts that are better than the current interest rates make a lot of sense to take advantage of.

Changes to the Internet EngineLast month we told you that the latest delay in our development of the new software was related to a linux compiler problem. We use the linux compiler to produce the linux internet engine version of our software. The problem we were stuck on has now been resolved, and there are other issues that have turned up through testing. Once the new linux engine is working properly, we will first introduce it to our webquote services.

The next service which will get our newest internet engine will be the Compulife Mobile version, which is the same engine with further capabilities enabled. The Compulife Mobile version is available for YOUR use on the web, it is NOT for you to be able to put on your website. The Mobile edition will only be updated once we have had a 2 week period of problem free function with the webquote option.

Following a successful 2 week period with the Compulife Mobile edition, we will then replace the engine that powers our API software. It’s the same engine as the webquote engine, but given the high volume use of our API customers, including our term4sale.com website which runs on the API, we want to make sure that we have tested it thoroughly before updating it for high volume customers.

Following that the engine will be used for new customer purchases, and available to existing customers for upgrade. And following that we will update the Windows server engine, for those customers who use that engine. We do NOT use Windows servers ourselves, and so we will need a single customer willing to test that engine on our behalf.

NOTE: Upgrade will NOT be required, unless you need the correction for the John Hancock modal premiums which provoked the need to update the engine.

To review, most product additions and changes in our system do NOT require our programmer’s involvement or change/updates to our computer program. The software tools that we have built over the decades allow us to set the many variables that impact the way a life insurance product functions and quotes, and so it is fairly rare we encounter something that requires a “special routine” to make the product work properly.

John Hancock has a peculiar/unique rounding calculation in the steps for quoting their modal premiums, and we had to create a special routine to handle it. That routine is linked to products codes. The problem was there was a change in codes and that required production of a new engine. Normally that is not a big deal, but it had been a long time since we had to compile a new engine. Because of ALL the changes we have made to our software, in preparation for the new CQS.EXE, the new linux compiler combined with all those changes created a number of bugs that had to be sorted out. The biggest one is now gone and we are stepping through those that remain and show up in our testing.

To summarize, if you are an engine customer and you do NOT quote John Hancock, there is NO need for an update at this time. And assuming we do NOT run into the need for more or changes to special routines, you should be set for a year or more, until we are able to move to the new data file structure.

Our Current Programming Plans for 2024The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing in 2024:

• • Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE

• • Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files

• Introduction of Compulife Mobile* Plus (with Pick 12)

Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:

Please don’t email me essay questions, just call. If I’m not in, email me your phone number, I’ll call you.

These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during the balance of this year and throughout 2024. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE, and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning it’s full attention to our web based, Compulife Mobile software. The long term goal is to have a web based product that does everything our PC based software does.