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I would cancel all future payments on that life insurance and just say you don't want it anymore. Those things are scams. The fees are super high and it pays his buddy, not you. If you want an insurance policy, purchase a term policy. Insurance is not the best way to save and invest for the future, it should be used specifically for the purpose of insurance. if you want a vehicle for investing, there are better ways with much much lower fees.

Now, with that said, your brother is an ungrateful tool. I know you're trying to keep a relationship with him, so maybe you're trying to keep it cool, but I'd just tell him that after researching further, you no longer want or need that product. Just end it and call it a day. You are not an ass for buying low. Screw all that noise.

Thank you for your concern. I didn't buy life insurance though. I bought an annuity.

Please do not let yourself be bothered by your brother not speaking to you. It’s called the silent treatment and is a form of abuse. It’s only effective if it actually bothers you. Clearly it does, from what you’ve written, so it sounds like there may be a pattern here that is worth examining. A pattern where you feel guilty about things you aren’t guilty of. There’s a lot written about codependency and I don’t like the word myself, but it might be worth doing some reading on the subject, especially boundaries and pleasing tendencies. Take some time to reassess your relationship with your brother and look at any patterns you perceive. Your desire to have family, I.e. keeping in touch with him, may be compromising your self care and self respect, if there is a one sided aspect to your relationship with your brother, who sounds very bullying. You need to be fairly unflinching when examining this stuff - your relationship to yourself is much more important than your relationship with him. Please don’t sacrifice your relationship to yourself on the altar of ‘family’ or duty. It might be that loneliness, or fear of it, behoves you to your brother, but there are other ways of dealing with that. This a good opportunity now to teach others, and your brother in particular, how you want to be treated. Do not give in to his silent treatment, you have done nothing wrong. On the contrary. Get busy with friends and other activities and de focus and detach from this abusive behaviour. You are not his puppet. Cut the strings. Big hug, this stuff is hard.

[This message edited by Edie at 5:13 PM, Friday, May 6th]

No, I don't think my brother is romantically interested in him lol. My brother is not gay.

I didn't know the gender of the sales guy. You managed to not use any pronoun for this person in your original post - that's a little unusual, so I thought there might be a reason behind it. I was not assuming anything about your brother's orientation, it's just odd that he's so attached to this person's opinion of him that he'd jeopardize a sibling relationship over it. Something is fishy, just don't know what it is.

You need to work very hard on your boundaries. I wouldn't even be questioning myself if I were in your shoes. 1) I would NOT have had him and his friend over. I would have told my brother no thank you. Period. 2) as soon as he started talking BS over the phone, I would have told him, "I'm sorry you feel that way," and then just hung up. 3) If he'd gotten to the point where he was telling me off (believe me, he wouldn't have, but playing along), I would have literally told him to go Fuck himself and hung up and turned my phone off for a while. I definitely wouldn't be talking to him again unless he first apologized.
My idiot kid brother stole some not too expensive items and then tried to lie to family and bad mouth me. Haven't spoken to him in about 6-7 years. When he apologizes and makes at least some effort to reimburse me, I may consider allowing him guardedly back into the outer circle of my life. He'll NEVER again be in my circle of trust though. Boundaries.

And how much has your brother committed to his friend the financial planner?

Anything ?

That might be an interesting conversation starter.