These days, life insurance agents can seem more like car salesmen. They both sell expensive "extras" that aren't necessarily good for you, but are great for their bottom line. And both are trained to win sales through a strange combination of hypnotically friendly persuasion and a series of well-rehearsed pitches.

Life insurance sales pitches have been finely tuned to sound as if they make a lot of sense while they prey on your guilt.

We're going to expose many of these commonly used life insurance sales pitches and the reality behind them - so you can just say "No!"

Forewarned is forearmed. If you are ever confronted by an insurance agent trying to sell you more than you need, remember that plain vanilla term insurance is not the best deal for the insurance agent, but it is for you in many cases. (See Straight Talk on Life Insurance.)

Here are common sales techniques you'll hear to try to get you to buy more expensive cash-value policies. But you'll know better!

The Life Insurance Pitch: "Term insurance is only a temporary solution to your life insurance needs."

The Reality: Life insurance should be a temporary solution because you don't need it at every stage of your life. The time you're most likely to need it is precisely when it costs the least - when you are young. How's that for some good news?

If you have no dependents, you may not need it at all. If your employer offers it as a paid benefit, it's usually a small payout perhaps equal to one year's salary. Accept it graciously; if you're single, make your parents or a sibling the beneficiary and hope they never get the payout!

If your children are grown and self-supporting, and if your spouse has retirement funds or investments to live on, the money the agent is asking you to fork over for life insurance would be better spent going into investments that don't carry such heavy charges.

The Life Insurance Pitch: "Cash-value policies pay dividends and provide you with a savings fund."

The Reality: Cash-value polices don't function the way investment or savings accounts do because they are illiquid. When you surrender a cash-value policy in the first 10 years, you lose most of the value. In many cases, you'll get much more bang for your buck from a dividend-paying stock, and more safety and liquidity from a money market fund or a CD.

The Life Insurance Pitch: "Buy this policy to protect your loved ones."

The Reality: This one really gets us because insurance is often sold by guilt association. "Don't you really love your loved ones?" the agent asks you, just as he learned in the training program. We've even heard of agents using a nasty fear ploy: "Make sure your children don't sue you for not looking out for their inheritance"!

Please.

To provide for your loved ones, consider buying a simple term life policy. Insurance should not be used to build an estate for your heirs that you couldn't build up through your working years. It doesn't work, no matter what the salesperson tells you. The investment dollars in a cash value policy will generally not build up enough to make much of a dent in the money you'll need for a golden retirement.

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