pb4uski
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
[cross-posted with the two above...]
pb4uski, this is a backwards look at return-to-date, correct?
Shouldn't the continuation decision be based on a forward-looking calculation, treating the premiums already paid as a sunk cost to be ignored? I would think surrender value is much more relevant.....
Yes Harry, I was just looking at inception to date return assuming that the policy was an investment just to see what the investment attributes look like.
And I agree that the past is sunk and the future is most important to the decision to keep or surrender. The OP indicates that COIs for the most recent year are $1,360 and I suspect those will only increase as the OP ages and further reduce returns.
There seems to me no need for insurance for federal estate taxes as the OP's estate is way below the $5m and even if the OP & DW were to die today the state estate taxes would be less than $100k. On the other hand the OP has a very low withdrawal rate so in the future the estate will grow and with it the state estate tax risk unless the state further increases the exemption amount.
The OP could ask his agent for a policy illustration showing the projected future values after fees at various rates of return to get a sense of the future of the policy as an investment. I admit to wondering if the OP could/would be better off trading this VUL policy for a second to die term policy (or at some future point consider relocating to a state with no estate taxes).
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