These notes are concerned with the related subjects of expenses and their control, and forward planning in a life office. Little attention has been paid to the subject of expenses in the proceedings of either the Institute or the Students' Society in recent years, with the notable exception of the paper by Dyson and Elphinstone (1959), although expenses formed Subject 1 of the 17th International Congress. Forward planning of a life assurance company as a whole has received even less attention in our proceedings. This is in some ways not surprising since the problems are in the main managerial rather than strictly actuarial, but even if this is accepted they are nevertheless problems with which many actuaries have to deal, and this neglect is regrettable.