I work in an insurance related industry as an analyst valuing insurance products. I am not a salesman and I'm not affiliated with any carrier.
I was reading over some of these posts and I saw this:
"When I was sold the 500K policy I was told I'd only have to pay for 10 years (7K a year) and it would gain cash value and I wouldn't pay anything after the 10th year. Well, I guess we all know what happened on the 11th anniversary, I got the bill in the mail for 7K."
Assuming you earned no interest on your $7k per year premiums on this policy you have only paid in $154k over 22 years.
In order for this policy, as this point, to be a money losing endeavor you would have had to earn 9% annually on the $7k in some other investment in order to have actually lost any money.
9.00% 1 7000 $7,630 2 7000 $15,947 3 7000 $25,012 4 7000 $34,893 5 7000 $45,663 6 7000 $57,403 7 7000 $70,199 8 7000 $84,147 9 7000 $99,351 10 7000 $115,922 11 7000 $133,985 12 7000 $153,674 13 7000 $175,134 14 7000 $198,526 15 7000 $224,024 16 7000 $251,816 17 7000 $282,109 18 7000 $315,129 19 7000 $351,121 20 7000 $390,352 21 7000 $433,113 22 7000 $479,724
Remember, this is insurance, not an investment. But either way, it sounds like your premium % is about 1.4% and you're earning interest/dividends, so you probably have a cash value built up. Seems like a pretty good policy to me.