Like whole life plans, most term life plans have a fixed premium and fixed death benefit. However, whole life provides benefits for the rest of the insured person’s life, whereas term life only lasts for a specific period of time. In addition, a whole life policy includes cash value, whereas a term life policy only includes the death benefit. On the other hand, term life has a lower premium per dollar of coverage and significantly larger death benefits are available.

Whole life and universal life are both types of permanent life insurance, so they have many characteristics in common. Both whole life and universal life provide a death benefit for the rest of the insured person’s life. The main difference is that whole life has a fixed premium and a fixed benefit, whereas universal life has more flexibility — but that flexibility comes with more risk, as the premium might increase.

In general, whole life is a highly affordable type of insurance and the premium will never increase. Your premium takes into account your current age at the time of issue, your gender and your death benefit amount.