Buying whole life insurance now is a very generous and thoughtful thing for you to do for your loved ones in the future. A whole life insurance policy can give you and your loved ones the peace of mind of knowing that they will have enough money to pay for your funeral costs or your outstanding debts when you pass away.

A whole life insurance policy gives you the option to leave a legacy to your parents, children and grandchildren and/or to leave all or a portion of the death benefit of your whole life insurance policy to one or more of your favourite charities.

Whole life insurance is permanent insurance that builds guaranteed cash value and has a level premium for life. You may have the option to fully pay for the insurance in a set period of years.

There are two basic types of whole life insurance: participating and non-participating.

Participating whole life insurance is ideal for parents who want to buy their children a whole life insurance policy that will grow as they do. Grandparents can also buy their grandchildren the gift of participating life insurance. Participating whole life insurance may be the perfect option for you if you are just starting out after graduating from school and landing your first job or you own a business and want to have some money in a life insurance policy for tax advantage growth.

Participating whole life insurance gives you a stable premium as well as guaranteed cash value and death benefit growth for the life of the policy. The growth of the death benefit comes from dividends that can grow the value of the policy over time. These dividends can be used in a number of different ways. There are two popular ways of using dividends. First, when the dividends are large enough, you can choose to have them pay for the premiums so in essence the policy pays for itself. Second, you can use dividends to purchase paid-up additions to grow the value of your policy. Paid-up additions are essentially participating whole life policies that earn dividends which are added to your existing policy and continue to compound over time. The use of paid-up additions allows the dividends to contribute to the growth of the cash value which you might use to enhance your income once you retire.

You also have the option of surrendering paid-up additions for their cash value. It is important to remember that when you surrender these paid-up additions they are deemed as income so are taxable.

Non-participating whole life insurance also provides a stable premium as well as guaranteed cash value growth for the life of the policy. These policies do not have dividends so the death benefit stays the same for the life of the policy.

If you are older and have never owned a life insurance policy before, you might want to consider a non-participating whole life insurance policy to pay for your final expenses and any outstanding debts that you might have when you pass away.

Many non-participating whole life insurance policies are no-medical policies.

You should review your whole life insurance policy if your circumstances change for the better or for the worse.

I would be happy to review your whole life insurance policy with you at no obligation.