Cash-Value Life Insurance

A permanent life insurance product that offers a living benefit: coverage & cash value for life.

That’s right, you get coverage and cash value for your entire life, even if you live past 100. Expect jacked-up premiums for this borrowing benefit, but the accumulated cash value over the life of your policy may be surrendered upon your choice to pay for your premiums, buy more coverage, exchange for an annuity, support your prescription drug addiction, or simply take as a lump sum to pay off your payday loan with the insane 56% interest rate...minus any applicable fees, of course, or operating costs, or transfers, or any other ambiguous fees that the insurance company has deemed fit to charge to its clients.

Example.

You buy a permanent life insurance policy (whole, variable, universal, dark chocolate with sprinkles, whatever) for $100,000. Over a period of time, a portion of your premiums are allocated to a cash value account, whilst the other portion is allocated to your death benefit.

Upon your death (sorry...it's gonna happen one day), your beneficiaries will receive $100,000, but the insurance company will pocket the cash value of, say, an accumulated amount of $25,000. And those sneaky SOBs end up truly only being liable for $75,000.

The benefit of all this, of course, is that you were able to pay off that stupid payday loan.

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Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)