Permanent Life Insurance

It depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you are simply looking to cover debt and provide for children until they become adults, term is what you are looking for. If you are looking to do those things and legacy planning, whole life is what you are looking for. Both term and whole have pluses and minuses. Whole does have some advantages pertaining to having can value down the road.

It can be a sucker's investment. It can also be a very good, safe investment. It all just depends on how much money you are looking to sock away each month into the "investment". If you have a very large estate, you can have tons of permanent, expensive life insurance. This way, you protect your estate and you make a ton of money off of the policy after a few years. It's tax-free, the government can't get their hands on it, and you create your own personal bank.
You can cash it in later down the road, you can choose to have dividends transferred to yourself each month while keeping the policy in force, or you can choose to have the dividends pay the policy each year for you, keeping the policy in force and not having to pay a dime for it all while growing it. To be fair, it does take a long time to get to the point of being able to do the last thing I mentioned.
If you are like 90% of Americans, permanent life insurance probably won't make sense for you. But if you have, I'd say, more than $5, 6, or 7 million, you need to have it.

I approve

Is someone recommending a policy for you? What kind? What company? Give us more details about your situation. There's no one size fits all answer.

It can be a very useful product for some situations.

NML WL policies have been the best performing over the long term. I'm sure your agent has shown you all the numbers and what not with their rah rah. When looking at WL policies, I honestly would only look at them, Mass, and NYL. Mass and NYL are pretty close when returns are considered (past 30 years or so). Most other policies aren't worth much honestly.

As was said earlier, most policies will have the ability to pay for themselves in about 15-20 years, so you get "free" insurance for the rest of your life.

Drawback, they definitely suck as far as cash growth is concerned, in the short term, as they are a long term product. The later years are pretty damn sweet when you are going a little more conservative with the rest of your investments.

I am not an insurance agent so an independent opinion. My wife and I currently max out our retirement funds, have an emergency savings and then had money sitting in the bank earning .5%. We wanted to try and find an option that would be safe that would yield some money but give tax protection. We felt like Whole life was the solution. We have been very happy with it.

IMO for whole life to work you really need to pay more than what your scheduled monthly payment is to see the money accumulate. Hope that made sense as I think it's a decent investment option but not ideal for everyone.

That article doesn't take into account death benefit appreciation, so they actually do sort of get both. You can take the cash out and then still have the face death benefit, or leave it in, and face amount increases.

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Permanent Insurance

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Is a ripoff

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FWIW my cash value is worth well above the face value of my policy. So if I did die my family would get the CV.


I guess I have the somewhat odd belief that if I put money into an investment and life insurance, that when I die my family should get the value of the investment and the death benefit of the insurance, not one or the other.

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This is the worst argument I've seen against whole life. The logic is completely flawed and its essentially the entire selling pitch made by Primerica and companies like it.

As whole life premium are paid, the cash value and death benefit grow. This action is compounded by over funding. The death benefit will far exceed the cash value or invested dollars because the funds are being leveraged. Upon death, the death benefit is paid tax free.

You can't say your only going to keep a temporary policy in place then proclaim when you die they get both accounts. Unless you know when you're going to die.

Is whole life the answer to every need? No, far from it. But if you're going to argue against it about how the policy works then at least try to understand how the policy works.

Tiger, you put in around 7000 and its worth 17000 and protected your family all these years and you wonder if you did well?