<prompt> Human: A family friend convinced me that bank on yourself via a whole life insurance plan was the best thing for my retirement. After paying in for 3 years, my wife and I have just over 50k in cash value. The returns have been absolutely abysmal: weve invested a total of nearly 90k.Supposedly at year 7 years of investment we break even. Maybe that will happen, maybe not.If I cut my losses and cash the whole thing out, where should I put that money?Since Im stupid I havent invested much my 401k. Its sitting pretty at 2k. Im thinking the first thing I should do is max that out for the year.Our only debt is a 90k mortgage at 3.8. Should I make a huge payment on the house?Im obviously financially illiterate so any help you all can provide would be massively helpful. I hope this post serves as a guide to others.Also, I dont care about the life insurance aspect.-- EditIm 31 years old.-- EditIve put together a few graphs to help show the financial situation of the accounts.Paid Premiums vs Cash Value - Cash Value Less Paid Premiums - Cash Value as a Percent of Paid Premiums - Percent of Contribution Applied to Cash Value - -- EditThe company Im working with is Northwestern Mutual-- EditThe combined values of the policies is 2.7M-- EditOne redditor suggested calculating continued investment in the life insurance plan vs taking the loss and investing the cash value in an index fund.The assumption of the life insurance fund is that it breaks even at 7 years 4 years from now. At the current investment level, the final value would equal 185K.Surrendering the account today would leave me with 51K. If the cash was used to invest in a 5 index fund while maintaining identical additions, the total equals 162K. At 7 171K. At 10 187K.Assistant: Im confused. Youve paid in 90K in 3 years and it is only worth 50K?Are paying 1Kmo into this policy? Human: More like 2,500  <response>: As a former NWM insurance agent, that dude took home one hell of a commission check for that policy.But like others have said, whole life is an excellent product, I think you just might have purchased it for the wrong reasons 