What Is Universal Life Insurance? 
Video Transcript : What is universal life ? Universal life insurance was invented in the '80s . It 's a combination of buying term and investing the difference . It has different crediting methods which could be interest rate , could be indexing , or could be separate sub-accounts . Those will give you 3 different ways to accumulate cash . If you 're looking for death benefit and it needs to be permanent , you need to make sure that the universal life contract that you choose has guaranteed death benefit for the period that you need . The cash accumulation ideas , whether it 's interest rate or whether it 's indexing or separate sub-accounts , those will bring some accumulating cash and it could be used for some retirement supplement plan to augment your 401k . 