In the example, how did the death benefit change under a substandard rating?

Richard CanfieldPodcast Host and IBC Advisor, Ascendant Financial · Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner | Author of 4 Books

Why Whole Life Insurance Isn't As Expensive As You Think

8 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:50

Richard Canfield argues that whole life insurance is often misunderstood as "expensive" due to prior conditioning about other insurance types. He explains that cost should be viewed relative to a fixed premium: if you keep the same premium but have a substandard rating, the insurer reduces the death benefit rather than charging a higher premium. In his illustrative example the offered death benefit fell from $500,000 to $376,000 while the premium stayed the same — demonstrating that the policy met the buyer's budgeted premium but delivered a smaller benefit rather than becoming "expensive."

Questions this video answers

It decreased from $500,000 to $376,000 while the premium remained the same.

Chapters

There's not a lot of difficulty there. So the difficulty level, I think, is quite minimal as far as it would be expensive. Again, a lot of people who are asking questions like that, it's because of past conditioning about what the insurance is like in the world of insurance for everything else that you do. But with this insurance, it's not the same because you want to pay a premium. What you're trying to do is pay a premium. And so there's no such thing as expensive. It's just a matter of for the premium I put in, how much death benefit do I get if I have that substandard rating? In our example, we went from $500,000 down to $376,000. The same premium dollar went in, which is what we wanted. We just got a lower death benefit for that amount. That's not expensive. That's simply getting your objective accomplished, which is, I want the whole life insurance. I want to get as much as I can. This is the dollars I'm working with. Boom. This is what the insurance company is willing to offer.