Life Insurance Woes

Two years ago I bought a life insurance policy. Whole Life, which means that after a while it will have monetary value and it will pay dividends. Recently, however, I was told that Mass Mutual was not as good as Northwestern Mutual and that I would be throwing money away if I kept that policy. I was shown the numbers and it is true, The Northwestern Policy will have a cash value of 260,000 dollars at age 64 and the Mass Mutual Policy will have a cash value of 148,00 at the age of 64.

So now I am vexed. Do I just cancel my current policy? If so, I lose 3,300 dollars that I have paid into that policy for the last 2 years. If I keep paying on this policy, in 10 years it will be worth a few thousand dollars, but it won’t be worth the money I put into it for like 15+ years. Ugh. Why does this finance stuff have to be so hard?

Also, I don’t recommend getting a life insurance policy unless you really know what is going on. The guy I talked to made me think that my policy was going to be worth the money I put into it, so I thought that after a couple of years that it would be like a savings account with all this money accruing and I could borrow agains it. Wrong. For the first two years you are paying fees and paying for Mass Mutual employees salaries. It’s only after years of throwing your money into one of these investment strategies that you start to see a return. For someone like me, this is not a good thing. I don’t like long-term investments.

So what should I do? Should I just cancel the policy? My friend with Northwestern says Yes. That in the long run I will lose more by staying with them than I would if I just cancelled the policy now and started putting that money someplace else.