Term or whole life insurance: which should you buy?

Term life is pure insurance: pick a period, 20 or 30 years, and a payout, and if you die during the term your family gets the money. It is cheap because most people outlive it, which is the goal. Whole life bolts a savings account onto the policy, lasts forever, and costs roughly ten times more for the same death benefit, with early premiums heavily consumed by fees and agent commissions and cash value that grows slowly and gets forfeited or borrowed against on unfriendly terms. Industry data has long shown a large share of whole life policies lapse before ever paying out, which is where much of the profit lives.

The standard advice from fee-only planners is blunt: buy term sized to your obligations, commonly 10 to 12 times income while kids and mortgage exist, and invest the premium difference in retirement accounts. Whole life has real but narrow uses, estate planning at high net worth, special-needs dependents. If a commissioned salesperson is pitching it as your retirement plan, that is the tell.