E29 - Stop Judging Whole Life Like an Investment

People say whole life insurance is a bad investment… a waste of money… even a scam.

But what if that entire conversation is built on the wrong question?

In this episode, I break down why most people misunderstand whole life insurance—not because they lack information, but because they’re focused on the wrong part of the system.

Using a concept inspired by Alex Hormozi — “sell the vacation, not the plane ride” — we unpack the real issue:

You’re being sold (and evaluating) the features… instead of the outcome.

We dive into:

•  Why comparing whole life to investments leads to bad decisions 
•  The difference between features (cash value, returns, death benefit) vs. purpose 
•  Why whole life isn’t an investment—and what it actually is 
•  How to think about capital, control, and flexibility the right way 
•  What questions you should be asking before using ANY financial strategy 

If you’ve ever wondered whether whole life insurance is worth it… this episode will completely reframe how you think about it.

 If this changed how you think about money, make sure to follow the show and check out the next episode where we break down how this actually integrates into real estate and business strategies. 

Learn more at www.jadenzubal.com | Follow @jadenzubal | Join the *Before the Returns Weekly* newsletter

📩 Questions or ideas? Email: jadenzubal.wealth@gmail.com

⚖️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

People say whole life insurance is bad, a waste, and throwing money away. Whether you think that is true or not, honestly, it really doesn't matter. Because I don't think people are actually looking at the right thing. What I mean by that is we're just not asking the right question. I'm going to riff on an Alex Harmozy quote just a little bit today, where he said something along the lines of sell the vacation, not the plane ride. What I think is happening in the whole life space fits that quote really well. Hello and welcome to another episode of Before the Returns. I'm your host, Jaden Zuball. And on today's episode, I'm going to dive into whole life insurance on a little bit deeper scale. What do I when I say sell the vacation, not the plane ride? This Alex Harmozy quote. Alex Harmozy is a really impactful sales guy, but I'm taking that concept and I'm really applying it to a bigger picture idea here, not to do with sales, but to do with the thought process that we have when we go into making financial decisions, specifically making the decision of whether whole life insurance is or is not a good fit in your life. Because to be fair, it's not a good fit for everybody. There are situations where it may not make sense. And a lot of that comes back to mindset, what are we trying to accomplish with it and why? Let's get into a little bit more detail on this and I'll try to explain more clearly this idea of sell the vacation, not the plane ride. If you've ever dealt with whole life insurance, if you've reached out to an insurance company, if you spent any amount of time working with insurance agents, what often comes up? Please comment below, send me a message, whatever. Let me know if I'm wrong here. But when you've worked with an insurance agent, do you talk about things like death benefit, cash value, how much money your family might need if something happens to you, tax advantages, or be your own bank? Okay, if you've gone to that level of conversation, what you're talking about in those things are features. You were talking about the plane ride. So you're getting on the plane and you're sitting in the aisle seat, or you're sitting in the middle seat, or you're sitting in the window seat. You're talking about these differences that happen on the plane. So in this case, the whole life policy is the plane. And you're just going over features and benefits. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, because that is covering the how-to of life insurance. Those are important things to talk about. They're important things to understand, but it's not the whole picture. When you only focus on that conversation, you're focusing on the plane ride, and nobody books a flight just to sit on the plane, get off, get back on another plane, and go right back home. It's not common for somebody to think, let me go sit on this plane for three hours, turn around, come right back, and that's it. That's my whole trip. But if you buy whole life insurance with that mentality of features and benefits only, that's what you're getting. What does that do? That causes a lot of misunderstanding. It causes a lot of problems with your financial picture. And that is going to be true regardless of whether we plug whole life in there, real estate, business, crypto, whatever you're doing. If you're just buying for features and benefits only, it's too short-sighted. We are missing the big picture. We are missing what is even the point of why you're doing that. It just leads to bad conclusions. This is where people focus on things like returns, speed, how fast am I accessing capital? And we bring comparisons into play. Compare using whole life to my real estate or my 401k or my brokerage account or whatever it is that you're doing. And we're going to get into deeper detail on that in another conversation. But never should those things be compared because they're they are not the same. They don't do the same thing. It's not this or this, it's both. But this is where I hear things like this low, it doesn't outperform. And why would I do this? And those are valid questions. If we're making comparisons, I think I've said this before, but why in the world would I ever choose whole life insurance that's paying me five to six percent over a real estate investment that's paying me 14%? It's not a it's not an either-or conversation because they're doing different things. And again, this is why booking the flight and getting on the plane and then just coming back home is the wrong way to approach it. We don't get on the plane for that. We get on the plane to go and enjoy the vacation, enjoy the result that we achieve. And this happens because people are judging it as an investment, not as what it's actually there to do, not as what it's meant for. Okay. And this is why I feel like this conversation is so important and we need to have it more often, because it's so common for there to be false promises or information given on life insurance that just doesn't make sense. It doesn't resonate with your average investor or your average business owner. Because I would venture to guess that the audience, the people listening to this, the people that are listening to these agents, sit back and say, okay, this is what you're telling me it can do. Why would I do it? What's the point? So the reality is, like when I buy real estate or when I buy my plane ticket or I go buy a new car or whatever, yes, the features and benefits matter. I do care whether I sit in the middle seat or the aisle seat. I like the aisle seat personally. I choose that every day over a window seat. But what I care most about is that the plane gets me to my destination and that I get to enjoy whatever I'm going to that place to do. That is the approach that we should take with our investments as well. I go buy real estate. I'm not buying the rental property because I love to mow lawns every day and I love to fix bathrooms and fix all the things that come up in the rental property. I'm buying the rental property because of the end goal. The end goal is this is a way to build wealth. It's a way to protect my net worth, protect my resources, create additional cash flow. Like there are specific outcomes that I'm looking for. Same thing with the whole life insurance. Things like policy structure and internal numbers are just which seat am I sitting on in the plane? Those things matter. They're important. We need to figure them out. But in the end, we've got to focus on the outcome. What is the outcome that we're actually trying to achieve? Things like control, access, flexibility, stability, and confidence. How confident are we that this vehicle achieves this outcome? In the end, we don't want the policy. We want what the policy allows us to do or what the policy helps us accomplish. So where's the disconnect? What does it look like when only the plane ride is sold? Well, that's just simply missing the purpose and then using it wrong. If we don't fully understand the purpose and the strategy, first, the product doesn't matter. The product is just a byproduct of what we're overall trying to accomplish. So this creates things like early frustration, regret, it's just not working, things like that come up in our mind. So it's not as simple as the product just failed. It's that the expectations of what the product are and what it does were not correct from the start. Because very simply, whole life insurance is a place to store capital, place to protect it and grow it with some tax benefits, and when done correctly, to have access to that capital for use in our actual investments, because the whole life is not the investment. So think of it as something that's there to make the rest of your decisions better, but not replace them. Right? When I talk to a real estate investor or a business owner, I'm not gonna tell them stop investing in real estate or stop putting money into your business so you can do this policy. Absolutely not. That's horrible advice. No, what you should do is use the policy to enable your real estate investments and enable your business to be more productive. So if you're only looking at the plane ride, you're gonna miss the point. The real question should be what are you actually trying to build with your money? Then we can determine if this fits or not. So if you're looking at whole life insurance or anything like it, you're looking at different financial strategies in general, don't just look at only how it works. Ask specifically, what does it allow you to do? What is the end result of this thing that I'm setting up that I'm putting my time and energy and money towards? Because in reality, that's the part most people never get shown. And I can speak to that with all the confidence in the world. I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've talked to a thousand plus people about these strategies. And I can say with confidence that in most cases, the times when it doesn't work are the times when it was a focus on features and benefits, not on the results. What is the result we're trying to get so that we back into it the right way, and we know we can actually accomplish those things with it. So if this made you think about whole life insurance or money differently, follow along, watch more of our videos, our podcasts, our resources, check out some of the details and let us know what you think.