Is Whole Life Insurance The Same As Permanent Life Insurance? 
Yes . Whole life is a permanent life insurance . The premium and the death benefit can be guaranteed for your entire lifetime . So can the cash value . This makes the product an extremely competitive cash accumulation vehicle for the conservative part of your portfolio . And why would you want the premium and the death benefit to be permanently guaranteed ? Well , imagine yourself buying term insurance and then outliving the policy . Now you need to buy another one . And youre older , so the price is automatically higher . And what if you unfortunately have a serious medical condition ? The price could be even higher . Worse , you may not qualify for coverage at all ! Permanent insurance means you permanently dont have to worry about qualifying for coverage . Whole life does that very well . But remember this : these guarantees come at a big cost . Especially the guaranteed cash value . What if you like the idea of permanent guarantees , but want to spend less on the coverage ? You do have an option : guaranteed universal life insurance . You can get the premium and the death benefit guaranteed for your lifetime at least until age 121 :-RRB- . You just wont have any cash guaranteed to grow inside the policy . Guaranteed universal life is also permanent insurance . Its a cheaper version of whole life , without the cash . Kind of like permanent term insurance . 