Most of us are familiar with term life insurance, as it tends to be the more popularly chosen of the two. It is less expensive, and it only lasts for as long as you need it to. However, not many of us are familiar with whole life insurance. We need a whole life insurance explanation. What exactly is a whole life insurance policy?

Whole life insurance is life insurance that covers you for the entirety of your life, as opposed to term life insurance which only covers you for a certain number of years. With a whole life insurance policy, your beneficiary will receive a death benefit. Sounds pretty standard, right? Well, whole life insurance policies also offer you the option of fixed premiums, which means you will pay the same amount for you whole life insurance policy for the entire time you have it, as long as you faithfully keep up with payments. Your premiums will not increase! You can withdraw money from your policy at anytime without paying it back, and you can even choose to receive dividends that can be paid toward reducing your payments.

Yet, even with all of those great benefits, there are some drawbacks to having a whole life insurance policy. For example, the “investment component” that comes along with a whole life insurance policy is not always what it is cracked up to be. Whole life insurance policies are no account flexibility. This means you can not spread your money among different accounts, nor can you move your money from one account to another. Whole life insurance policies also will not allow you to invest your money into different accounts.