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I like the concept of insurance and having a term policy in a higher amount and a permanent policy in a lower amount. Your term policy premium is probably guaranteed for so many years. So how many more years is that premium guaranteed? Do you think you will need life insurance after that time? It also probably has a provision to convert some or all to a permanent policy without any underwriting. That provision has an expiration. So when is the expiration and how is your health if you had to go thru underwriting? These are things to consider. Permanent policies come in more than WL. There are ULs and VULs. You need to talk to your agent about the choices. With permanent policies in small amounts, I would not treat the policy cash value as something to tap into but rather merely a death benefit. Unless you have very large amounts of policy value, I would NOT borrow against it. It can and probably will come back to bite you with severe tax consequences. The very wealthy utilize life insurance and annuities. But they can afford them and therefore and take much better advantage of the benefits. The rest of us have fewer choices and unfortunately, term is the way to go. And even then, too many have no insurance or too little even if it's term.

Personally, I'd just round to 9, why turn a good employee into an unhappy employee over a few minutes? I'd rather raise an issue of her leaving early, if that's a regular occurrence.

Michael -- There are basically two reasons for life insurance (with reason number two possibly subdivided into parts A and B ). 1. People depend on your earnings for their support. This includes spouse (mortgage and car payments), and children (living expenses 'til self-supporting years, college/other educational costs). Even after kids are out of college, if your spouse can't afford the mortgage payments alone, there is a need for insurance. For this purpose, term is the best bang for your buck. Even if the term you got years ago has run out, chances are you can replace that with a new term (and probably for a shorter term! - the kids will be done with school in way less than 20 years, yes?) for a fraction of the cost of whole life. 2. Estate management. Depending on the size of your estate and cash reserves, this could split to include final expenses. Small estate, low cash --> small whole life for final medical and funeral/cemetery costs. Bigger estate, especially if non-liquid (like a business or farm) --> enough to pay projected estate taxes. In the middle --> some folks use whole life as a means of leaving an inheritance to their kids that they could not otherwise manage to scrape together. (One agent I knew years ago sold lots of WL policies to folks who wanted to leave their kids a million dollars but knew they could never save that amount.) So the first thing to think of is WHY you want/need the coverage. That will tell you what kind you need. Then you need to think amount. Assuming living costs -- how much to pay off that mortgage, and send the remaining kids to state (or private) schools? That's what you want to get. Maybe round up a bit for final expenses. If estate planning or leaving an inheritance - that's a whole separate discussion, which should include an estate attorney, a financial planner, and an insurance agent. Don't forget to include consideration of long term care costs - those can kill an otherwise sound plan faster than you can say "Bob's your uncle." Good luck!

Maybe you should offer candy to EIC clients' kids. It could be considered "due diligence" verification that they really had all those kids.

People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, People will never forget how you made them feel.