<prompt> Human: About 4 years ago my wife took on a whole life insurance policy. Its a Minnesota Indexed Universal Life policy. It has a 183k death benefit and costs us 150mo.It has an accumulation value of about 5400 and a surrender value of about 2100. Its become clear that this was a poor choice on our part. How can we get out of this with a minimum amount of hurt?Can we take cash out? Convert the value of the policy to a really long term policy?Assistant: If you read through the actual policy, you will learn a lot more than by posting this question on Reddit. The policy likely has a surrender charge for a few years still, and also has a guaranteed minimum rate of cash value accumulation excluding costs of insurance charges.IF you stuck it out until the surrender charge is behind you, its likely you would at least break even on your cash value relative to premiums paid. No mathematical loss and youve had insurance the whole time.If you cancel now, you will have succeeded in paying the brokers commission as well as allowing Minnesota Life to recover all their underwriting costs. The only one losing money by cashing out now would be you.Also, this is not an whole life policy and this is a very important distinction. Index Universal Life is a non-registered product, which has investment characteristics. Also, the person who sold it likely has no FINRA investment registration due to the mismanagement of their own personal finances. Read your policy and run a broker check before you buy any investments or insurance from another advisorHuman: If you read through the actual policy, you will learn a lot more than by posting this question on Reddit.There are people here smarter than me, and asking questions is the purpose of this forum.The policy likely has a surrender charge for a few years stillIt has a value of 5400, and the surrender charge brings it down to 2100.IF you stuck it out until the surrender charge is behind you, its likely you would at least break even on your cash value relative to premiums paid. No mathematical loss and youve had insurance the whole time.This is the ideal scenario. Ill look into this.If you cancel now, you will have succeeded in paying the brokers commission as well as allowing Minnesota Life to recover all their underwriting costs. The only one losing money by cashing out now would be you.Yes, thats why Im asking the question how can we get out of this with a minimum amount of hurt? Also, the person who sold it likely has no FINRA investment registration due to the mismanagement of their own personal finances.Im not here to get into ad hominem attacks about the person who sold us the policy.Read your policy and run a broker check before you buy any investments or insurance from another advisorWeve learned a lot in the last few weeks reading here.  <response>: Its still a good idea to run the numbers on paying the policy until you can take the cash value without penalty, but if it doesnt beat 5 return per year Id just eat the surrender charge. Maybe you can take out a loan against it and use that to pay the premiums?If you find yourself in a hole, Step 1 is generally to stop digging. The sunk cost of this policy is irrelevant to your future actions - consider it like you are analyzing a new policy that has a cost of 2,100 up front and 150month premiums. If you can cash that out and profit, then do it. 