The Radical Guide to Life Insurance: Why term life is a bad deal

Increased premiums as you age. As you get older your chances of death increase and so do your term life policy premiums. On the other hand, the premium payments you make for permanent life insurance policies do not increase as you age and ideally are financed by the growth of the cash value portion of your policy as you get older.

Only a death benefit. While your term life policy provides a death benefit, there is no cash value component to your policy. Cash value is a feature of permanent life insurance and can be quite substantial if invested wisely.

If the policy expires prior to your death. If the term policy happens to expire prior to your death, your beneficiaries won't receive anything at all! Do you really want to pour all that hard-earned money into a policy that leaves you with nothing? (Hint: if you stick with term life don't let your policy lapse.)

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