As the name suggests, the benefits of the permanent life insurance are for the whole life or for as long as you keep paying the premiums. Some permanent life insurance policies are designed to start paying off from the accrued cash value. Therefore, when you retire, the premiums stop for these policies but the benefits do not.

Permanent life insurance is useful when you have a long term plan in mind. Permanent life insurance plans not only have the death benefit, but can also have additional cash value that can be passed over to your survivors. The cash value can be used by you also as you can borrow from it in the form of loans. If you plan not to pay the loan back, your death benefits and the accrued cash value would get decreased accordingly along with some possible penalties.

Permanent life insurance policies can generate a monthly income during your retirement. The sooner in life you start your permanent life insurance policies, the lower would be the monthly premium and higher would be the returns that you can use for yourself later in life or just pass it on to your survivors.

As with all kinds of insurance, you would first need to decide what your financial goals are when you buy the permanent life insurance for yourself. Do you need to use it as a possible income source during the retirement, would you like the premiums to get paid on their own from the accrued cash value so that you do not make any premium payments after the retirement but still have the death benefits? Since permanent life insurance can be used as an investment, you can also design the policy such that you get some tax advantages. Therefore, if you have a lot of extra income and you have maxed out your 401k and IRA contributions, you can dump a lot of extra income in the insurance policy and save on taxes. The additional money would add to build your nest egg even bigger.

When you decide on permanent life insurance policy, you should analyze your family history and make an intelligent guess about your own longevity. If members in your family have lived more than 90 years or so, you should plan to have regular income for more than like 30 years after you retire. You can have a sustained income for long only if you have made enough contribution which can happen if you start a permanent life insurance policy early in your age. If you are close to retirement already, you would need to have higher premiums so that you can contribute more to your nest egg.

Getting a permanent life insurance policy when you are young have many advantages. Some of them are:

• Your premiums do not go up

• You can build a larger cash value

• The larger cash accrual can allow you to borrow money from it or just have substantial regular monthly income. A large enough cash value can provide income to you for your whole life and even leave savings for your survivors.