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Originally Posted by Amnorix
Looks like its based on whole life insurance. Uhh, no thanks. Whole (or permanent) life insurance is pretty expensive as an investment vehicle, with a comparatively lousy rate of return. If you're a higher income earner and have maxed out your 401(k), IRAs, etc., and/or have some unique reason to have whole life, then sure, whatever, but for the vast majority of people, I wouldn't bother with it. Term insurance is substantially cheaper.
All that said, I do have a modest amount of whole life, which I got back in like 2000. Now, about 18 years later, the cash value of the policy equals the amount I have paid in premiums. Now, there was the peace of mind of having life insurance in case something happened to me years ago as well, of course, but still, that's a lousy return where the stock market since 2000 is up about a bazillion percent.
I would have been MUCH better if I took like X% of that whole life premium and put it into term insurance, fixed for 20 years, so I would have the same death benefit as with the whole life, and put the rest of it into index mutual funds or something.
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The type of plan you got (and most people know of with whole life) is unfortunately not very efficient. The type of policy used with this system is one designed to maximize cash value. For example, My policy had cash value equal to what I paid in premiums in year 4. Every bit of what I put in each year now goes 100% into cash, which earns 5% (contractually guaranteed) uninterrupted compound interest + a dividend that has been paid for over 100 years.
It grows tax free, it comes out tax free any time I want throughout my life, and I can use it on anything I want with no limitations, and it passes on to beneficiaries tax free.
I can be pulled out and used for investments that will earn greater returns while at the same time continuing to earn that 5% + dividend inside the policy. The dollars are working for me in two places at the same time. The policy return is just a nice little tail wind behind any other investment I make with it.
Again, what you said about whole life is the common misunderstanding about it. That design of policy is indeed not good. Properly designed, it's an extremely valuable tool.
No, I'm not an insurance salesman. I'm just somebody who had lots of questions about why Dave Ramsey and others say whole life is so horrible, and others say a "properly designed" policy is so valuable. I studied it a long time, I figured it all out, and it's true. These things rock. I now have 2 policies on myself and one on my wife. I'm able to use the cash I put into them just days after opening them, and use the money while earning interest on it in savings at the same time.
State Farm, All State, American Family, etc. can't do policies like this. It's only available from mutual companies like MassMutual, Penn Mutual, Northwestern Mutual, etc. Many of their reps don't know about it either, or don't like to offer it because the high cash value design eliminates 90% of their commission (which is another area whole life gets a bad rep and this type of policy avoids).
It really is worth a further look. Don't take it from me, but don't let "whole life" scare you away. Study the concept, study the math, and study how it will guarantee you to reach the huge compounded gains you see on compound interest charts since you never have to use your actual money to buy stuff. Your money sits there untouched, earning interest the whole time, and turns into tax free income whenever you want to start using it that way.
Until then, you can use it for cars, taxes, vacations, holidays, weddings, college, etc. And of course, cash flowing investments that are super-charged by the extra return you get from the policy. You'll never have limitations on how much you can put in, and you'll never have limitations on how much you can take out, when you can take it out, or what you can use it for. It grows tax free and comes out tax free. There's really nothing else like it, but people get scared away as soon as they see "whole life". It's a shame.
The death benefit is secondary to a design like this, but with the maximized cash value buying up paid up additions every year you end up with a massive death benefit, which again gets paid down to your family tax free. This could go into a trust that could pay premiums on similar policies for everybody else in the family, and now you are the Rothschilds. It can go on forever, and the "family bank" can spit out cash like crazy year in and year out forever.