<prompt> Human: My mom got a whole life insurance three years back. Her monthly premium is 290. Ive read quite a lot of negative comment on whole life insurance from PF saying how whole life insurance is not a good investment, and term life insurance is almost always better. Considering my mom already has a whole life insurance policy almost in it for four years, would it be a good call to pull out and switch to term life insurance? I checked her life insurance account last night. Out of 290 every month, the insurance provider transamerica takes almost 150 for fees and premiums, and the rest of it is invested in SP500.  <response>: Sounds super likely that she has Universal Life and not Whole Life. Just sayin.The policy value being 10k and the cash now being 6k probably means she is still early in the contract and facing the kinds of steep early withdrawal penalties typical to Universal Life that dont exist in Whole Life.If she stays in for a few more years, those penalties would likely go away.This would be in the contract she signed somewhere.You should also note that if its a UL policy, the death benefit IS all term life.The way UL works, you buy one year renewable term every year for your chosen death benefit and any additional money you put in goes towards an investment account. I described how that investment account works elsewhere in this thread.In general, you shouldnt expect anyone in Reddit PF to know much of anything about permanent life policies and how they work. Very nearly everyone here knows very nearly nothing about permanent life policies. 