When it comes to buying life insurance the most important comparison is between term insurance and whole life. Here is an explanation of each.
A term life insurance plan provides life insurance – plain and simple. A whole life insurance plan provides life insurance but also accrues value, which you can cash out or borrow against. It generally takes about three years to see any value and then it’s not a lot of money. Term life insurance, in comparison to whole life, is considerably less costly for this reason. Some will refer to term life insurance as renting insurance rather than buying it. The reason for that attitude is that, much like auto insurance, you pay the premium each month or quarter or year to hedge against the bet that you might have an accident (in the case of term life insurance the accident is death). If you don’t have that accident, in the case of auto insurance, or if you don’t die in the case of life insurance, you don’t get the money.
We all die, of course, so it might seem that term life insurance is a good bet and the best bet in comparison to whole life. You would, you surmise, always get your money back. The...