How Europeans Can Sign Up for Cryonics

The purpose of this article is to show you how to maximise the use of your money used for suspension.

Many cryonics organisations are unaware of financial efficiency and will tell you to do something that gets the money to them fast but has the money working for financial and legal professionals rather than for you personally. No one can be experts at everything, and the cryonicists are improving their financial expertise , but they have rather more to think about than maximising their member's investment performance. Although $28k seems a lot, I plan to show in this message that it is attainable by virtually anyone with a job, and indeed there is a case of someone trying who is on the DHS. I also plan to show how the very currents in human history that will make cryonics reanimations possible can also be used to generate the funds with which to pay for them.

If you are interested in signing up yourself, you may be interested to know that the Cryonics Institute offers a service in the UK and Europe through London funeral directors Barry Albin & Co, who have been trained in CI methods. You can contact Albin's at Arthur Stanley House, Culling Road, London SE16 2TN tel 0171-237-3637. They will fly personnel to the site of a deanimation anywhere in Europe by light aircraft and make all the necessary arrangements. They can be paid by the CI if you allow the CI the necessary funds in your trust (see below) This arrangement may avoid VAT as the service is being ordered from outside the UK. There is also an active support group for UK people signing up for cryopreservation.

CI charges $28k plus about $6k for transport (both payable on death) and a joining fee of $1,250, for a whole body cryopreservation. These prices have never been increased, and are very much lower than other organisations. Despite this, research by a leading Russian cryobiologist emoployed by the CI shows their protocol to be as effective as we know how.

The cheapest way to sign up is to have a portfolio of equity investments in a revocable trust. These will grow and work for you as well as supply your suspension funding. Life insurance has to be paid for and it means your investments are much less efficient. You money is used to pay the high fees of financial professionals instead of working for you.

If people are to be revived from cryopreservation, then there will have to be advances in technology that are not currently allowed for by stock market quotations. Therefore funds invested in technology will grow well beyond the expectations of professional financial advisors. If people are not revived for reasons of lack of technology, then they will not be there to observe this, ie it will not happen as far as they are concerned.

Therefore your portfolio of investments should be in good quality companies in a cryonics trust. The Cryonics Institute already have a trust form that you can use.

If you have little money at present, the cryonics organisations will probably try and persuade you to take out whole life insurance. I consider this will not give you the best possible financial performance. Instead I would recommend, in order of financial efficiency:

1. If you wish to take the risk of dying young in an accident yourself, save money vigorously by investing in a technology unit trust until you have amassed enough to join the Cryonics Institute with a trust ready.

2. Take out term life insurance for say ten years (very cheap if you are young), join the Cryonics Institute, and also save vigorously until you have enough for a trust. I believe that the Cryonics Institute will accept monthly payments until you have amassed the $1,250 joing fee.

Investing in technology stocks should give, over a long term period, of the order of 25%-30% annual growth. Therefore the more you can invest early, the less you need to invest later. If you have very little now, ask a financial advisor for a technology based unit trust (such as Aberdeen Technology) or investment trust company into which you can make monthly payments. Do not be persuaded to buy insurance bonds to save tax - if you have little money you pay no capital gains tax anyway. It is capital gains that will drive a technology fund up - the income is trivial or non-existent. An ISA may be advantageous only if it is a "no charges" ISA - some unit trusts run these to encourage people to invest into their units. In addition, in the early 21st century there is a slump in technology shares - therefore they can be bought extremely cheaply. If this slump goes on for ever, it will most likely be because the promise of technology advance does not occur, therefore cryonics will not work anyway. More likely the markets will recover, and as markets always overdo both peaks and troughs. Buying in a trough gives you additional gains in the long run. The writer has been a long term investor in technology, over several boom/slump cycles, and is still showing a very substantial gain over spending a similar amount buying life insurance.

Do not worry about stock market "shakeouts" and "slumps" - they happen from time to time, but over a decade or so you will find that your fund will grow dramatically. Making monthly payments means that you get more units when the market is down. Our civilisation is totally dependent on technology, and technologcial growth at that. If our civilisation survives, your funds will grow. If it does not, money will have no meaning anyway.

This little BASIC program illustrates the point by investing UKP37 a month for ten years into a technology fund paying 28% per year compound. Of course this is simplistic, in some years it will pay more, in others it may even make a loss.:

screen 12 

payment=37 

Print "Year","Capital ","Capital $" 

for year=1997 to 2007 

for month=1 to 12 

capital=capital*1.0207847 

capital=capital+payment 

next month 

print year, 

print using "######.##"; capital, 

print, 

print using "######.##"; capital*1.5 

next year 

Year Capital Capital $ 

1997 498.44 747.66 

1998 1136.45 1704.67 

1999 1953.10 2929.65 

2000 2998.41 4497.61 

2001 4336.40 6504.60 

2002 6049.04 9073.55 

2003 8241.21 12361.81 

2004 11047.18 16570.78 

2005 14638.83 21958.25 

2006 19236.15 28854.22 

2007 25120.70 37681.05