Do you have some acquired distastes? This might be a good time to talk about them.
Yes, an acquired distaste is the opposite of something we’re more familiar with — an acquired taste. Most of us can name something we thought we’d hate, but grew to like.
I felt that way about oysters, but grew to like them. Ditto mussels, clams of all sizes, snails, periwinkles and anchovies. One commonly cited acquired taste is Guiness Stout. It’s not for me.
Whatever it is, you try it, but you just can’t get there with liking it. Other things start favored to neutral, then you really don’t like it. That’s an acquired distaste.
Here’s where I confess. I have an acquired distaste for the banking and insurance industries. I liked them back in the brief time I was a normal person, a consumer. I really liked credit cards as a young man, and banks were happy to provide them. I also liked insurance. For one thing, it allowed me to drive and have accidents. Men under age 25 are prone to accidents. I was no exception.
But once I started writing about money and investing – personal finance – my feelings changed. The more I learned, the more I disliked banking and insurance. It’s difficult to say, for instance, whether banking or insurance makes greater use of weasel wording. It’s also annoying that executives in both industries can make enormous mistakes that cost consumers billions but are never held accountable beyond, say, loss of some stock options. Many are paid handsomely to retire or just “go away,” like the embarrassing family relative who receives a monthly allowance if he never leaves Morocco.
Intellectually, I love both industries. Without banking we’d still be bartering chickens for rope or corn for cloth. Banking enlarged the possibilities of trade. It’s difficult to measure how much this has increased our standard of living over many centuries.
It’s the same with insurance. Creating companies to share risk was a magnificent invention – one of the great achievements of Western civilization. Measuring life and death led to the creation of life annuities, retirement funds and other tools to provide guaranteed income until death.
Most of the time I feel bad for insurance companies because so many people think the insurance companies have all the money. They want it back, and then some, every year. Result? Insurance companies are constantly defending themselves against armies of minor league fraudsters.
But that was then. In nearly six decades of learning and reporting, generations of the managers that run these industries have gotten rich, while they have lost fortunes for people who do something truly useful for a living. The biggest banks are “too big to fail,” so they’ve survived multiple debacles in the last half century. Similarly, while calling a major product “health insurance,” the insurance industry manages to cause 500,000 people a year to declare personal bankruptcy while denying needed treatments to thousands more. Should I mention the decades of class-action lawsuits against companies offering long-term care insurance?
Can something be done politically? Doubtful. Six decades of watching Congress provides no basis for cheer.
The best course of action is to avoid, as much as possible, being harmed. That means:
- Limit the use of credit, particularly credit card debt, as much as possible.
- Reduce, as much as possible, the amount of consumer durables you are forced to finance and insure.
- Actively use a cash reserve to pay for repairs and reduce insurance premiums for homes, cars and other consumer goods.
- Use carefully selected term life insurance when you are young and recognize that most people are over insured by their 50s.
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “The Nitwit Sector,” 8/12/2007: https://scottburns.com/the-nitwit-sector/
Scott Burns, “The Great American Bank Robbery,” 3/21/22010: https://scottburns.com/the-great-american-bank-robbery/
Scott Burns, “The Only Tax Reform Worth Talking About,” 2/1/2005: https://scottburns.com/the-only-tax-reform-worth-talking-about/
Scott Burns, “The Dirty, Soiled, Lousy, Filthy and Smutty Rich,” 5/30/2010: https://scottburns.com/the-dirty-soiled-lousy-filthy-and-smutty-rich/
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: Scott Burns, 6/18/2024 Walking the Camino de Santiago, Francais path. Some days are longer than others.
(c) Scott Burns, 2026