Life insurance policy
"From the details you have given it looks like you have ""Unit Linked"" insurance policy. In such policies a part of the premium goes towards the ""Insurance"", the balance is invested into ""Mutual Funds / stock Market"". It is generally not advisable to have ""Unit Linked"" policy compared to pure ""Term"" policy. Generally the amount of fees charged for ""Unit Linked"" policy is high and hence the returns to the end user are low. i.e. if you buy a ""Term"" insurance for the same sum insured and invest on your own the balance in any ""Mutual Fund"" you will end up making more that what you are getting now. Typically these policies have 3 years lock-in period. As you have purchased this in 2008, you can cancel the policy without any penalties. This will save you future premium and you can buy a term insurance and invest the difference yourself. Note the unit linked policy is useful for people who do not invest on their own and this is a good way to be forced into saving than nothing else." First off, I would question why do you need a LI policy?  While you may be single are you supporting anyone?  If not, and you have some money saved to cover a funeral; or, your next of kin would be able to pay for final expenses then you probably don't have a need.   In, general, LI is a bad investment vehicle.  I do not know hardly anything about the Indian personal finance picture, but here in the US, agents tout LI as a wonderful investment.  This can be translated as they make large commissions on such products. Here in the US one is far better off buying a term product, and investing money elsewhere.  I image it is similar in India. Next time if you want to help a friend, listen to his sales presentation, give some feedback, and hand him some cash.  It is a lot cheaper in the long run. I would like to add to the answer provided by Dheer. I think under some ULIPs you need not pay premium after 3 years and you can take the money back after 5 years (something like that, read your policy statement of course). Since the money is invested in Stock markets and since generally people say the longer money stays in stocks, the better; you can keep the money with them without taking it back and without paying any further premium. That way, whatever you paid will be invested and you can get it back later when you feel you will make a profit.
Some countries don't have robust life insurance markets.  Some countries have horrible travel fatality statistics.  Some countries don't have very good liability law enforcement.   Is $2 on top of a train ticket in the US to send your family a $20,000 payment if you die on the train worth it, probably not.  The fatality rate is pretty low here, lots of people have their own life insurance, and the US justice system carries a big liability stick. If you're moving around on trains a lot in other countries where the fatality rate is much higher, you can't buy life insurance on your own, and the legal system doesn't punish negligent operators it might be meaningful, especially for frequent travelers who have dependents. Is buying this coverage a reasonable and cost effective way to insure a person's life, no, clearly not.  You're buying a policy to insure your life against being mauled by tiger in New York on a Tuesday, when you've never seen a tiger and don't live in New York.  Obviously, if you want life insurance you would not buy coverage this narrow. Personally, I think this is really akin to an impulse buy candy bar at a checkout line of a market.  They're dangling this in front of you for an amount of money that's insignificant because some people will pick it up without thinking about it.  They're tickling your fear of death just enough to get a dollar from you, but not enough to keep you off the train.  And obviously the math works out for the insurer or it would not be offered. Separately, regarding probability, it's not about an incident occurring in a train, it's an incident occurring in this particular train on this particular day/time.  If there's a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying on a train in a year the chance of dying on a particular train on a particular day is likely to be one in billions or more.  This really isn't about whether or not this coverage is valuable given the risk, it's about whether or not they can get you to impulsively spend a dollar. If there are no dependents, there is no need for life insurance.  You mention getting insurance when it is not needed, to protect you against some future risk. If you have a policy and a disease crops up that would normally make you un-insurable, you can keep your insurance for the rest of the term. The cost for this would be very high. You would have to have a term that would last decades to cover you until some future child is out of college. If you never have somebody that depends on you for income, there never is a need for life insurance. "PMI IS Mortgage insurance. It stands for ""Private Mortgage Insurance"". This guy is just trying to get you to buy it from him instead of whoever you have it with now.  Your lender would always be on the policy since it is an insurance policy they hold (and you pay for) that protects them from you defaulting on the loan. Don't think of it as insurance for you in case you can't pay. If that should happen, your credit would still be trashed, the bank just wouldn't be out the money. You don't really get any benefit at all from it. It is just the way a bank can mitigate the risk of giving out large loans. This is why people are keen to drop it as soon as possible.  The whole thing about keeping the house in your estate after you die makes me think he is trying to sell you a different type of insurance called Mortgage Life Insurance. PMI isn't typically about that type of situation. Your estate will go into probate to work out your debts if you die and my understanding is that PMI doesn't usually pay out in that situation.  If this is what he is selling, buying such a policy would be on top of your PMI insurance payment, not instead of it. Be forewarned, personal finance experts usually consider mortgage life insurance to be a ripoff. If you want to protect against the risk of your heirs losing the house because they can't make the payments, you are better off with Term Life Insurance.  However, don't worry that they will inherit your debt on the house unless they are on the loan. If they don't want the house, they won't be obliged to make payments on it (unless they want to keep it). It won't affect their credit if they just walk away and let the bank have the house after you die unless they are on the note. Here is an article (in two parts) with a pretty good treatment of the issue of choosing your own PMI policy: ""Give Buyers Freedom to Choose Mortgage Insurance"" Part 1 Part 2" "Cash/CD's for a house downpayment = Good. Resist the urge to invest this money unless you're not planning on the house for at least 5 years. Roth IRA - Good. Amounts contributed are able to be withdrawn without tax penalties, though you would really need to be in a crisis for this to be a good idea. It's your long-term, retirement money. The earlier you start, the better. Use your 401K at work, if it's offered. Contribute to the Roth as much as you can, as well. Whole life (""Cash value"") life insurance: Be careful... Cash-value life insurance (Whole, Universal, Variable Universal) must be watched more closely as you age. Once they reach that ""magical"" point of being self-sustaining, you cannot relax. The annual cost of insurance is taken from the cash value, which your premium payments replenish. If you stop making premium payments, eventually the cost of insurance (which goes up every year) will erode your cash value down to nothing, at which point more premium must be paid to keep the policy in force. This often happens in your old age, when you can least afford the surprise, and costs are highest. Some advisors get messed up in their priorities when they start depending on the 8-10% commissions they are paid on insurance policies. Since premiums for cash-value policies are far higher than for term policies, you might get some insight into your advisor if they ignore your attempts to consider a term policy. Because of the insurance costs' effects on your cash value, these types of policies are some of the most inefficient and expensive ways to invest. You are better off not investing via a life insurance policy. You don't need life insurance unless someone depends on your financial contribution to their life (spouse and children, for example). Some people just like the peace of mind it brings, and some people want a lump sum to leave as a gift to their loved ones (which is an expensive way to leave a gift).  You can have these ""feel-good"" benefits with a term policy for much less money, if you must have them. Unless you expect to become uninsurable at some point in the future, you should consider using term insurance to meet your life insurance needs until it is no longer needed." Whole life in most instances is a very bad plan. It's marketed as a life insurance policy wrapped in an investment but it does neither very well. The hidden caveat of whole life is that the investment goes away if you die.  Say for example I have a $100,000 whole life insurance policy and over the years I have paid in enough to have a $15,000 cash value on the policy. If I die, my family gets $100,000 and the cash value is lost. With term life you can get a substantially higher amount of coverage for a smaller payment. If you invest the difference you end up not only with better coverage, but a better cash value from the difference if you don't die (which is what we all hope for anyways). As JackiYo said, your insurance should be designed around replacing lost income/value.  You should get 10x your annual income in term life insurance. Term life insurance is just that - life insurance that pays out if you die, just like car insurance pays out if you have an accident. Like car insurance, it's easy to compare amongst term life insurance policies - you can even compare quotes online.  Whole life insurance is life insurance plus an investment component. The money that you pay goes to pay for your life insurance and it also is invested by the insurance company. Insurance companies love whole life because it is not a commodity; they can come up with a large variety of variants, and that fact plus the fact that it combines insurance and investment means that is very difficult to compare policies. Not to mention that fact that none of the companies - as far as I can tell - publish their whole life insurance rates, so it is very difficult to shop around. We provide business insurance at competitive  business insurance service rates to customers across the country. We can offer an assortment of answers for address their budgetary needs or business needs.  We are reliable for the best insurance policy, you can trust at the Oxford Risk LLC. We have cheapest policy for business. As you know, business insurance policy is supportable for us such as U.S. property/casualty insurer for business insurance Fairlawn Ohio capital strength should enable them to withstand near-term volatility related to hurricane events, but a major catastrophic hurricane could change that, according to a new report.We know getting insurance for your business is not always the easiest thing to do. With so many terms of any business and always coverage. Business owner's insurance policy is often the most convenient way of protecting your business's physical and financial assets. There's a cool calculator at Money Chimp that lets you plug in a start and end year and see what the compound annual growth rate of the S&P 500.  The default date range of 1871 through 2010 gives a rate of 8.92% for example. Something you need to take into account when comparing returns to a whole life policy is what happens to the cash value in your policy when you die.  Many of these policies are written so that your beneficiaries only get the face value of the policy, and the insurance company keeps the cash value.