Life insurance
Whole life insurance rates by age, against a life table yardstick
Type an age and a face amount to see the monthly premium at which, on average, premiums paid would equal the payout. Add your own quote to compare.
Independent site, not an insurer or a broker, and not a funeral home or a government agency.
Whole life: the premium at which you pay in what it pays out
Example, not your result yet· change a figure to see yours
Monthly premium where expected premiums equal the face
$70.22
| Years of premiums, on average | 29.7 years |
| Half of people your age live past | age 85 |
A yardstick from the NCHS US life table, with no interest, expenses or cash value. It is not a price: an insurer adds costs and invests the premiums.
Whole life insurance rates are not published by insurers in a form a site may reprint, so this page builds a yardstick instead. A whole life policy pays its face amount whenever death comes, in exchange for a premium paid for life or to a set age. On the NCHS United States life table, a woman of 55 pays premiums for 29.7 years on average before her death. Dividing a face amount of $25,000 by that many years of monthly payments gives $70.22 a month: the premium at which, on average, she would pay in exactly what the policy pays out, with no interest, no expenses and no profit. A real premium sits above or below this line. Above it, the insurer is counting on investment returns and costs; below it, the policy is cheap against the life table. It is a way to read a quote, not a price, and the calculator compares your own quote with it.
Data read and sums checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How the figures are worked out
The yardstick, by age
For a face amount of $25,000, paid for life: the average number of years of premiums before death, and the monthly premium at which those premiums equal the face amount. Scale it to any amount: double the face, double the premium.
| Age | Years of premiums, men | Yardstick, men | Years of premiums, women | Yardstick, women |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | 39.5 | $52.71 | 43.4 | $48.04 |
| 45 | 35.1 | $59.35 | 38.7 | $53.81 |
| 50 | 30.7 | $67.76 | 34.1 | $61.03 |
| 55 | 26.5 | $78.48 | 29.7 | $70.22 |
| 60 | 22.6 | $92.38 | 25.4 | $82.13 |
| 65 | 18.8 | $110.60 | 21.3 | $97.94 |
| 70 | 15.4 | $135.69 | 17.4 | $119.93 |
| 75 | 12.1 | $172.52 | 13.7 | $152.37 |
| 80 | 9.1 | $229.06 | 10.3 | $201.59 |
How the yardstick is built
Each year, a person who is still alive pays twelve monthly premiums. The chance of being alive at the start of each year comes from the life table, year after year to age 100. Adding those chances gives the expected number of years of premiums. A premium equal to the face amount divided by twelve times that number makes the expected premiums equal the face amount. The calculation ignores interest: an insurer invests premiums for years before paying, which lets it charge less than the yardstick, while its expenses, commissions, profit and the cash value it builds push the other way.
It also uses population rates. People who pass a whole life application tend to live longer than the population, so they pay more years of premiums, which lowers the fair premium for them; people sold policies with no health questions tend to live less long, which raises it.
Reading a quote with it
Type the premium of a quote into the calculator. It shows the age at which your premiums would add up to the face amount, and how much you would pay in on average. A quote far above the yardstick is a policy where the cash value, the guarantees or the insurer’s costs carry a large share of the premium; that can be the right choice, but it is worth knowing. A whole life policy also builds a cash value that can be borrowed against or surrendered; the cash value page shows how a surrender is taxed.
For small policies sold to pay for a funeral, the final expense break-even page asks the same question with the premium you were quoted, and the cover after 60 page shows how long cover bought late has to last.
Paid-up at 65 or 100
Some whole life policies stop the premiums at a set age, such as 65 or 100, while the cover continues. Fewer years of premiums mean a higher premium for each year. The calculator on the final expense page lets you set the age at which premiums stop and shows the most you can pay in.