It took me about 3 seconds after looking at the policy and how much he paid into it over the years to realize that he had spent a small fortune on life insurance and would never get it back. He was in his late 50s when I first saw it. He had got the policy when he was in his late 20s or early 30s.
If he had a term policy and invested the difference to his universal life policy and earned a very average rate of return on his investment, he would have had a few hundred thousand dollars. Instead he had a crummy cash value of $65,000. He'd paid in almost a hundred fifty thousand over the life of the policy. It was so said to see that.