Not bad companies. Some try to only sell whole life, which is not a good option for some people.

Talk to an independent financial advisor before buying life insurance. But here is a note. When I first bought life insurance it was when my first child was born. I needed to protect my family from income loss in case something happened to me. Income replacement being the primary goal, I chose a term policy. I was young. It was cheap, so I could still contribute a high percentage to my 401k, etc. In other words paying my term policy premium didn't change my savings and investment at all. Later I will likely either convert that policy with the same company or change to another insurance company and get a different type of policy. The reason for that will be estate planning. I do like "whole life" in general, but only "within reason". An independent financial advisor can help you figure out what that means. My personal perspective is if your life insurance is keeping you from saving for retirement, you have to strike the right balance. You really do need the death benefit b/c there isn't really much else besides life insurance that bypasses probate when you die so treating it like a bank seems like a bad idea. My dad bought me a whole life policy when I was a kid. It has been a "decent" investment. Nowhere near like the stock market but a lot better than a savings account. That said, I haven't bought one for my children. But one of the other nifty things about it is that once your children are insured it can never be taken away, so imagine a world in which one of your children gets a disability or disease and it gets harder to buy a new policy. Their old one will always be there / cannot be revoked.

Where is MetLIfe?

They got out of the personal life insurance game. You can't buy individual life insurance policies from them anymore but people still have existing policies.

Thank you, I didn't know about this. Do they work with companies only?

This is why I go to my local guy and just get what he recommends. I can't tell which end is up, but thank you Nerd Wallet for trying to help. To many people on here trying to pick up business and squabbling. No wonder it's hard to trust insurance people.

I am an independent insurance agent and I can say as with anything, every insurance product has a goal and is not a one size fits all. Whole Life Insurance can be defined in short as a high yielding savings account of 4% or higher with a death benefit. If you have a significant amount of money in a savings account with no need to access the money immediately. Whole Life insurance can make sense instead of a bank account, If you do not plan on accessing the cash value for at least 5 years. The death benefit is always there. The death benefit can grow over time. You can surrender the policy and take out the cash. You can also stop paying into the policy and take a "reduced paid up" paid in full policy with a reduced death benefit if you no longer want to keep contributing to the policy.

Term Life is the purest and cheapest form of insurance and is for a set period. Most average income earners will opt for a term policy to protect their mortgage and their families.

I generally recommend policies with level fixed premiums that do not change over time. The type of Life Insurance you get should be based on your needs and your goals.

This is bs paid advertising

Hi Looney Libs!, thanks for reaching out with your feedback. Our editorial team uses comprehensive scoring formulas that assess each financial product’s key features, weighting them according to their importance to consumers. Editorial team members are solely responsible for creating all product reviews and ratings, and these assessments reflect their opinions alone. Only products that meet the editorial team’s standards appear in our "best" lists, meaning no company can “buy” an award. You can read more about our methodology at the bottom of the article.

If there are other companies you think we missed you're welcome to reach out to feedback@nerdwallet.com--we're always listening!

Hello fnj944, have you had the opportunity to sit with a Financial professional to properly educate you on life insurance in it's totality and how is works? If not I would be more than happy to assist you.

Hello, I’m looking for a whole life policy to cover myself and my two children ages 15 & 4 in NYC. Any suggestions for reputable whole life insurance companies that offers whole life for us all.

Hello Nik L... is there any particular reason that you are looking for just whole life policies or are you looking for permanent coverage that comes with benefits? I would love to have a conversation with you to help you with exactly what you are looking for.

I just joined FEG (Freedom Equity Group) last year and bought a life insurance policy from them. I pay $137/month with a $250,000 policy and another $100/month for $200,000 policy for my daughter.

Anybody with experience with them?

Yes, They are a marketing company offering life insurance policies through a variety of insurance companies. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

What's best, Term life insurance, Universal Life Insurance or Whole? I am 50 super healthy female, single and one daughter in college. Any advice will be helpful. Thank you!

What's your goal? If you have a plan and be out of debt by 70 and taking income out of your 401k and Social Security then a Term Policy is great.

I am a MassMutual Advisor that just stumbled upon this page. Figured I would give my thoughts on this. I speak to people all the time who have old Universal life policies that are imploding due to the cost of insurance increasing. For permanent policies, Whole life is the way to go, especially starting ones for your kids. Also great alternative for those who cannot fund roths anymore due to amount of income. Whole life grows tax free, is not affected by market downturns, and comes out tax free if structured properly. I recommend starting before age 40 if you really want to take advantage of compound interest via cash growth, earlier the better. For example, If you do $100 a month for a 2 year old, into a just a 20 year pay policy, you would put in 24,000 total at year 20. Your done paying. Cash value when the that kid grows up and hits age 30 is over 45,000. Age 65, cash is over 250k, age 80, over 512k. Death benefit at age 85 is over 800k. This is just a 20 pay plan. He or she can be their own banker with this plan throughout life. If you instead did a Whole life paid up at 65, the kid could take over payments when he starts making income, he or she can increase the policy as the budget allows, and that plan will create a very large bucket of tax free money for retirement. Since the death benefit is very high, we can illustrate for you what is looks like if you systematically pull out tax free money each year in retirement, or sooner. If you do not need the full amount in death benefit, draw against it. Also a great alternative to pull money from in market down years. Pulling money out of retirement accounts that are taxed at ordinary income, such as 401k, during market downturns, can seriously damage your portfolio, and never bounce back. Most importantly, when choosing a company for Whole life, you must go with a mutual company that pays the most competitive dividend, and that does NOT HAVE DIRECT RECOGNITION when you "take loans" from the plan, or pull it out in retirement. Many companies on this list above, including the top ranked, only have direct recognition. Direct Rec means the policy recognizes a loan when taken out, and the dividend pays on only the remaining money, which will affect growth. A Non-Direct Recognition plan, does not recognize a loan, and will grow as normal. MassMutual is Non-direct recognition. Huge Difference maker. Also if you look at the top dividend performers over the past 20 years, MassMutual is the top on that list. Others are close, but no cigar. They are a very interesting company to work for, that can seriously help many individuals, families and businesses around the U.S. The company has invested heavily into technology/platforms and has really turned into a comprehensive financial planning firm/ top broker dealer. It is coming out with a groundbreaking platform end of 2020 which uses interactive technology that clients will absolutely enjoy using for financial planning with an Advisor. Long story short, don't buy Whole life policies from places where you get your auto/home insurance, just because they say they can offer it to you in a" bundle".

Hi,
I've been doing a lot of reading on whole life insurance and how it pertains to self banking. I am very interested in this concept as we have gone through more financial rollercoasters than I care to remember. I also intend to set my sons off on the right track by having them establish their own policies as well. I wonder if the fact that my 20 year old is on tour in the military. Would this make a difference in his insurability? It would be a great time for him to get started and build up cash value very quickly before he has to make any significant purchases in a few years. Your input is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Term and investing the difference in Index funds....

Whole life is crap. If you invest $100 / mo you'd have over $45,000 at age 20 and over $600,000 at age 65 (if you you stop putting money in at year 20, @modest 6% interest). Buy term and invest the difference that you would have paid for WL.

Clients of mine who originally thought the same now think differently since we had the crash. While others lost 30, 40, or 50% of their retirement savings, clients of mine who saved 5-10% of their savings into a tax mitigated and tax efficient whole life insurance plan lost much much less. In fact while everyone else was losing money, those diversified whole life plans through Northwestern Mutual were making money.

Could you update us on their thinking in another 12 months?

Seems kind of interesting that you didn't even factor in Unum or Colonial Life into this.

You know... the company that started payroll deduction....

It's very hard to print this page and see everything I see when the info is on my computer screen. Maybe you guys should reformat your page to make it more printer friendly, or add a "print this page" button that allows us to print this page properly.

Check out Mercury Reader extension for Chrome

Thank you.

Hi Game Over, Thanks so much for reaching out with your suggestion! I'm sorry you're having trouble with that. I recommend sending that idea and any other suggestions you have to feedback@nerdwallet.com, they should be able to better address formatting/design issues. Thanks again for reading and commenting!

Your already at nerdwallet, just passed it over and be done with it.

why didn't USAA make the list if they're rated A++?

Hi David Zepeda, thanks for reading and commenting! The methodology for how the list was created can be found at the bottom of this article. Here's a quick jump link to that section:

https://www.nerdwallet.com/...

Hope that helps!

Ah, well, from that response, and your "largest insurance companies" unqualified in your methodology, you either chose the largest companies known to your second cousin on your m... never mind, or just used a list handed to you. Certainly any google search will yield a variety of sources with names far "larger" by A) assets, B) accounts, C) financial reliability risk rating, etc. I pondered if JD Power had just handed you a list or if you mistook one of the many different Fortune Top 50 lists for size, as they often publish various catchy or clever top 50 lists in order to sell more rags. Had you given some actual reason to David rather than making me read your methodology, I might not have searched. Thank you for that.

Perception, Thanks for your comment. To clarify, our editorial team used the largest companies by life insurance market share according to the National Association for Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), which is the foremost authority on the insurance industry, including size, and whose data is publicly available. Also of note, USAA has many assets and income mostly because of other products they sell, not necessarily life insurance sales. As much as we would love to include more companies, we have to cut the list off at some point — 20 was the cutoff chosen here at the time of publication.

I am familiar with NAIC. I remain skeptical how you made your review list however.
due to the following available information which we can all get from the association:
Rank Group/companyMarket share
1 MetLife Inc. 14.1%
2 Prudential Financial Inc. 7.8%
3 New York Life Insurance Group 5.2%
4 Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. 4.0%
5 American International Group (AIG) 3.9%
6 Lincoln National Corp. 3.8%
7 Principal Financial Group Inc. 3.7%
8 AXA 3.3%
9 Transamerica 3.3%
10 Jackson National Life Group 3.2%
Again, thank you, When I see badly reported information, it encourages a "do your own research" mindfulness. I am not complaining about the conclusions you drew for the selections you limited yourself to, just your choice of selections.

That % you quote you gave with Met Life ( now Brighthouse) being the leader must be from the 70's or the 80's.

What do you guys think about American Income Life?

Bob look at their financial strength they also were bailed out 2x in the crash of 2008

State Farm is the strongest financially out of all of these companies look inside Forbes Fortune Top 50....no other insurance agency there....they have been in business for 96years and been rated #1 by JD for 5years in a row as of 2019 for Life Insurance... That being said the premiums are higher and are less likely to get preferred rates unless you really are very healthy including BMI but you pay for quality in everything else in your life too, do you buy single ply toilet paper or Charmin?.... And trust me DO NOT get a Universal Life, it is not Whole Life... I had one of each thankfully back in my 30's the UL I had to lose because the premiums were going to be too much to stay in force and the cash never grew(interest rates dropped and I never paid any additional) ... My whole life on the other hand has never changed price since the day I locked it. I had guaranteed values which were outperformed, and I am now sitting on a very very nice Cash Value now in my 70's and can't believe I was smart enough to buy it when I was that young reckless kid haha!.... I've had a great agent and been a loyal customer to State Farm for almost 40years with a great agent maybe I'm just an outlier.... Hope this helps someone.

Sadly, you are misinformed and I'm sorry to see that you went all that time in a whole life policy. You'd have saved much more than what's in your cash value now if you were properly informed in the beginning to invest the money elsewhere. But it's too late for that now it seems... I hope they give you no problems pulling the cash value out because when you pass, your beneficiary is only going to get the one or the other, not both

Sadly you are misinformed Joey. Comparing whole life to the stock market is apples to oranges. You have no idea what you are talking about.

I have been paying life insurance premiums for 20 years (I am now 78) and just received a letter from my company (mutual of omaha) that I owe them $844 and if I don't pay it within the next few weeks, my policy will be terminated. I spoke to an agent who said the cost of insurance 'for someone my age' had gone up, so the premium would cost more. I am shocked. I was told my payment would always be the same - also - this is the first notice I received. They didn't even enclose a return envelope for the payment! Is this legal? I am really upset.

Sounds like a Permanent Policy but doesn't sound like a Whole Life policy.

It's because it wasn't a TRUE whole life policy.

Yes!

@Nancy Why not cash out your whole life policy or take a loan from yourself to pay the $844?

I would if there was any value left in the policy. The 'extra costs' that the insurance company has incurred has consumed the policy's value.

Do you have any advice before I buy whole life insurance?

DON'T do it! get informed

Hi,

I would look at something without variable rates. I personally don’t like to have my life insurance in the market.

I am a Michigan agent. Just wanted to disclose that. Hope this helps. Amanda

I'm no insurance expert, but what I found out after my recent catastrophe is that what I bought in 2000 - a Universal Life policy is NOT what to buy. The value of the policy is dependent on investments the Insurance company makes. When I bought the policy, the company based the future value of my policy on what those investments would earn. However, the interest rates dropped and the insurance company is not going to take the loss. I am.

Whole Life policies are more sound, but just be sure that you are guaranteed that the policy will pay the full amount to your beneficiary, and that your payments will remain the same throughout the life of the policy (and you).