Dave Ramsey is a somewhat well known financial pundit who preaches a lot of things I agree with. He believes Americans are too dependent on credit cards and aren’t all that responsible when it comes to how they use money in general. Dave Ramsey is also known to have some very strong opinions regarding life insurance, of which I agree to a point but feel he resorts to ad hominem. He claims that all life insurance which isn’t term is “garbage”. He did in fact use the word “garbage” which seems like an incredible exaggeration when you look at the difference between the most competitive universal life policy and the most competitive thirty year term policy within the same underwriting scenario. In the video shown below he clearly states that with permanent insurance you only receive 5% of the benefit per dollar. This can proven wrong with my life insurance quote engine located on nearly every page of my website. Using some simple math and research, I can say that this statement from Dave Ramsey is empirically false.
Proving Dave Ramsey Wrong with Math
The difference in price for an exceptionally healthy forty-year old man to purchase a thirty year term policy or a universal life policy with a fixed price until age 121 is about four fold on a $1,000,000 death benefit. So the term coverage death benefit comes at a price of about 25 cents on the dollar when compared to the permanent policy. While this does make a decent argument for term coverage, it certainly makes you wonder where Dave Ramsey’s fact checkers are, since as I stated earlier he claimed it was 5 cents on the dollar. He also acts like the price is an apples-to-apples comparison. Yes, the universal policy is more expensive, but if the hypothetical 40 year-old in this scenario were perfectly healthy and tried to buy that same universal life policy at the age of 70, he wouldn’t be able to purchase it for less than $25,000 per year (based on current underwriting and cost analysis). This means it will cost almost as much per year to start a universal policy at seventy years-old than it was to own the term policy for an entire thirty years, but if the policy had been universal life from day one, it would be roughly 1/5 the price to maintain it. What if the insured wanted to maintain coverage until 80 due to having long term agricultural loans or just wanted the coverage to pay estate taxes? Once you acknowledge this you start to see the over simplicity of Dave Ramsey’s knee jerk argument.
What’s Right about Dave Ramsey’s Life Insurance Argument
Buy term and invest the difference is not a bad philosophy. If you are a middle class family who simply wants to cover a temporary liability, such as a mortgage or children, then it makes perfect sense to opt for the cheaper and simpler term coverage to protect you today. Dave Ramsey would be completely objective in saying that. He is also correct in stating that there is a significant difference in cost between the two options and that many life insurance agents are simply bias towards believing permanent coverage is the answer due to their own benefit. The problem here, as you can see in the video above where he vindicates the man who emailed him a question, was that he has such a one track mind. It’s as if he doesn’t believe estate taxes or liabilites will exist if someone dies at the age of 90, or that no one wants to have the long term safety net of a permanent policy. Hey Dave, I’m a licensed agent and I have a whole life policy, yet I don’t think it’s the right option for most people. I am objective enough to understand that there is no one option for everyone.
A Clear Example Where Dave Ramsey is Wrong
Recently I placed a life insurance policy on a retired man in Michigan. His wife wanted to purchase a permanent policy on him because she wanted a safety net to protect his pension. The pension did have an option to purchase their pension coverage which would have continued providing her payments after her husband’s death, but it was actually cheaper to purchase a permanent insurance policy through me. To put a term policy on this man in his 60′s would have cost over half as much and would not have provided much value if the man died after the age of 80. Buying term and investing the difference doesn’t make much sense when you are in the wealth preservation stage of your life either. This couple purchased a policy through my service and now have a guaranteed premium on their policy until the age of 105 and the ability to keep the coverage in force until the age of 121. They know his pension is now protected, they saved money, and they couldn’t have accomplished the same goals with term coverage. Here is a clear example where Dave Ramsey’s claim that term coverage is the right option 100% of the time is blatantly wrong.
Just for the record, nearly all the coverage purchased through YourLifeSolution.com is term life insurance. This article is merely to point out the lack of intellect in Dave Ramsey’s statements, and to show that there are cases where permanent coverage is objectively a great option.


