Term Life Insurance

Term life insurance pays a Death Benefit if you die within the chosen term — 10, 20, or 30 years. That's the whole product: no Cash Value, no equity, nothing back if you outlive it. That simplicity is exactly why it's inexpensive: a healthy 35-year-old can often buy $1 million of 20-year term for the price of a streaming bundle.

Term has a real and legitimate job: covering large, temporary obligations at the lowest possible cost. Young children, a mortgage, business debt, income replacement during your working years — when the need is big and the budget is real, term is the right tool, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

The fine print that matters is the conversion option. Most quality term policies let you convert to permanent coverage — Whole Life Insurance or Universal Life Insurance — without new Underwriting, usually within a window (the first 10 years, or before age 65-70). That option means today's health exam locks in your insurability for decades. People diagnosed with serious illness during the term have converted and secured lifetime coverage no insurer would otherwise write. See Convertible Term for how to protect that option.

Know the statistic before you build a plan on term alone: industry studies put the share of term policies that actually pay a claim at roughly 1–2%. The other 98% lapse or expire — which is precisely why it's cheap, and why the Buy Term and Invest the Difference (BTID) pitch deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets.

Inside an I&E-style plan, term often works alongside whole life: a convertible term policy covers the full protection need today, while the whole life policy — sized to what you can fund properly — builds the banking system. Convert term into more whole life as income grows.