In order to assess whether this is a good policy for you, you need to look at the policy’s inforce illustration. Nobody can tell you if it is a worthwhile policy without digging into the details. You may need to call the company to get an updated version of it.
The inforce should show you how the policy grows through age 100 or so. Some whole life policies have awful fees and have a strong likelihood of “eating” themselves.
Others just don’t grow at any meaningful rate. We were gifted a unicorn that doesn’t have a lot of coverage, but is still a worthwhile part of our portfolio.
One policy that was gifted cost ~$200/yr, with a max death benefit of ~$11,000.
It made sense to switch that monthly contribution toward a term life policy.
When looking at the inforce, it would have been ideal to cash it in around year twenty because the cost per year skyrocketed after that.
We didn’t make any changes to the policy for almost a decade after marriage when we realized the benefit of rolling that money into our term life allocation.
If it’s a really old policy, you may have a unicorn where there may be a guaranteed rate of return that promises bond-like growth with a decent death benefit.
The death benefit may not be as good as a term life, but then you have the cash value growing like a bond allocation and it doesn’t expire like term.
Many would say to just self-fund after a certain age.
We have just decided to calculate the cash value as part of our bond allocation.
Another thing to consider is whether the company is likely to stay solvent for your entire life.
Do a little bit of research on their ratings/reviews/claim habits.
