A tontine is a kind of primitive insurance fund, combined with a sort of lottery. And while it has many flaws as a financial scheme, as a literary device_

I didn't have enough other people in my life to cover the loss of this many people at once. I didn't have spare aunties or cousins or grandparents. I didn't have backup. I didn't have insurance to cover a loss like this.

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.

The Israelites in the desert found that hoarded manna rotted. They were permitted no bank accounts and no insurance policies. God is enough. He will be tomorrow who he was today. Later, through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 2:13) God chastises Israel for digging cisterns next to streams of living water, hedging their bets just in case God forgets to be God...or neglects to be good. God is enough. Will he not be tomorrow who he has been today?

Insurance business is about promises and trust. It is about delivering to the customer in times of need and if this cannot be imbibed in a professional neither him nor the industry will succeed.

We were poor back then. Not living in a cardboard carton poor, not __e might have to eat the dog_ poor, but still poor. Poor like, no insurance poor, and going to McDonald's was a really big excitement poor, wearing socks for gloves in the winter poor, and collecting nickels and dimes from the washing machine because she never got allowance, that kind of poor_ poor enough to be nostalgic about poverty. So, when my mom and dad took me here for my tenth birthday, it was a really big deal. They__ saved up for two months to take me to the photography store and they bought me a Kodak Instamatic film camera_ I really miss those days, because we were still a real family back then_ this mall doesn__ even have a film photography store anymore, just a cell phone and digital camera store, it__ depressing_