I’m Ryan Hearn. I read the things most people skim.
I’ve been a licensed California insurance producer since 2016 — CA License #0L14758, covering life, accident and health, property, and casualty. Before that it was law school. The habit is the same either way: I want to know what the document actually says, not what the summary claims it says.
A few years ago I lost most of my vision. I now read every policy, every contract and every word on this site through a screen reader, which turns out to be its own education in how badly most documents are put together.
This site is not an agency and not a carrier. It is where I write, and where the things I’ve built are listed.
What I write about
Fine print, mostly, and what it costs people when nobody reads it.
That covers insurance: what a policy actually says, how the products really differ, and which parts of the industry are confusing by accident and which are confusing on purpose. It covers the law I studied and never stopped following. And it covers documents that are unreadable by design or by neglect, which is a subject I now have an unusually direct stake in.
The second thread is what skilled professional work looks like when you cannot see it — the assistive tech that earns its place, the workarounds nobody writes down, and the ordinary obstacles that turn out to be the expensive ones. If you read one thing here, make it Progress, Not Perfection, a long and practical guide to adjusting to blindness, written for people in the middle of it.
What I’ve built
Insightful Coverage (opens in a new tab) — independent rankings and plain-language guides across every major line of insurance. No affiliate links, no commission, nothing sponsored. It is a publication, not an agency.
Life Coverage Calculator (opens in a new tab) — a free estimate of how much life insurance you actually need. No signup, no email, no phone call afterwards.
Neither one earns me anything. There are no affiliate links on this site and nothing here is sponsored.
Latest writing
- Progress, Not Perfection: A Practical Guide to Adjusting to Blindness
- What Is DEI? A Personal and Unfinished Journey Toward Belonging
- Life Coverage Calculator: I Got Tired of Guessing, So I Built a Tool
Get in touch
A question about a policy, a project, or something I’ve written — I read everything that comes in, and I answer most of it.