Next up is a question from the captain.

My elderly parents have a small whole life policy they've held for 35 years.

How can I help them evaluate whether it makes sense for them to maintain the policy, cash

it out, or something else?

Yeah, this is a really difficult question because insurance products are not all the same.

They're not all created equal and even insurance policies that are put in force today are not

the same as ones that were put in force 30 years ago. So unfortunately, we won't be able to

directly answer your question for like, okay, how do you do this? But the analysis that you need

to go through are some pro and con analysis because there's a really good chance if your parents

have been paying into this whole life policy for 30 years. There's a chance that is maybe what's

called paid up, meaning no additional premiums are required. No additional money has to go into it.

It might be self-sustaining that they could just stop putting money into it and the cash value

therein that exists will be enough to pay for the death benefit for the remainder of their life.

So basically, it's a self-funded paid for life insurance policy. The other alternative is you

can look at surrendering it and you got to see what the cash value is and what sort of cost would

be associated with that. And you basically have to do a T chart, right? Pros of keeping the policy,

cons of keeping the policy. And then, unfortunately, I think I got to call the insurance company

and ask them what options are available because sometimes you have to do this. You have to say, okay,

hey, this policy is not yet paid up for the death benefit that exists. How much paid up insurance

would there be if I wanted to convert this to a paid up policy? And like, about $100,000

death benefit, maybe there's a $70,000 paid up option, we'd have to put more money into it.

So you really have to do this for this cost-benefit analysis around what options are available to you

...