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Whole Life Vs Term Life Insurance: Determining Which Is Best

January 24th, 2010 Leave a comment Go to comments

The two main forms of life insurance are whole life and term life. If you are in the market for a life insurance policy, you should make sure you understand the difference between the two before you buy anything, so let’s talk about the difference between whole life vs term life insurance.

The main difference between the two different types of life insurance is that a term life insurance policy is just life insurance. It does not build up a cash value like a whole life policy does. If you die, your beneficiary gets the money; if you don’t, well at least you were covered by the policy in case something had happened to you.

Whole life is a whole different story. When you buy whole life insurance, you are not just buying insurance. You are buying insurance that is bundled with an investment. In other words, a portion of your premium each month is invested and earns you a cash value on your insurance policy. If you have had a whole life policy for many years, you may be able to cash it out for a significant amount of money.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that a whole life policy is better just because it has a cash value. That is not necessarily true. In fact, in most cases you will find that the term life is actually a better value if you stop to do the math. This is because when you buy whole life, you pay for both the insurance and the investment. However, you can only ever get one or the other, not both.

You have to take the difference in price into consideration when deciding which life insurance policy is the better value. You also have to consider whether you are really getting anything extra at all by purchasing whole life.

If you die while you are insured under a whole life policy, your beneficiary will get the life insurance amount, but not the cash value. So you could have gotten the same result by purchasing the cheaper term life policy. The cash value can’t be redeemed if the life insurance is paid out.

Let’s look at another option. You will pay less for a term life policy than for a whole life policy, so consider what would happen if you invest the difference into an investment that is likely to give you a better return on your money, such as a mutual fund. If you do that, you will have both the investment and the insurance for the same cost as the whole life policy, which will only allow you to collect one or the other.

Before you purchase any insurance policy, you should do the math yourself and determine which type of life insurance policy is best. Don’t just take my word for it, or the salesman’s either. If you evaluate both policies carefully, you will probably find that the term life insurance provides the best possible value for the money.

Life insurance can be complicated, especially if you don’t know the difference between insurance types available. The types you’ll see most frequently are term and whole life, let’s compare whole life vs term life insurance, to ensure you get the most competitive term life insurance .

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