Two comments:
1. My husband and I just went through a financial review with a "financial advisor" who turned out to be an insurance salesman. He was pressing us full force to buy a whole life policy on my husband. In order to afford this very expensive whole life policy, he suggested that we refinance our mortgage from 3 years left on it back to a 30 year mortgage AND stop contributing to our 401k. We could tap into the "cash value" of the whole life anytime but the time it took for the actual cash value to equal the amount we paid in took 10 YEARS! The term policies we currently have cost at least twenty times LESS than the whole life policy he wanted us to buy. Interestingly, after we declined to purchase this policy, this advisor "broke-up" with us via email saying that he just couldn't keep us on as clients because we were endangering our future by not refinancing our mortgage, and diverting our 401k savings to a whole life policy. He tried to convince us that the overwhelming majority of financially savvy folks who would never invest in whole life insurance were all wrong and he was right.
2. My husband was diagnosed with cancer at a young age. Thank God we had plenty of term life insurance not only because of the seriousness of the disease but, he will be unable to even get more life insurance until he has been cancer-free for 5 years. As many PP have already pointed out, if you have others depending on your income, get a good guaranteed-term policy.
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