The best part of whole life is being able to add to it above and beyond the base premiums to increase cash value. Those funds are added after tax, grow tax free and can be withdrawn tax free. Lots of people is the cash value of their whole life policy to act as a buffer for years when the market is down and their other IRAs, 401(k)s etc are under performing. You can take the minimum from those accounts and supplement with the cash value acct to stretch your IRAs further. Another option is to convert you cash value at retirement into an annuity. The plan that this contract is supposed to deliver will be client directed, so you can invest the money anywhere you want and can use what ever risk index you’re comfortable with. There’s really a lot of options with a whole/universal life policy. Dave Ramsey is for people that live under mountains of debt and don’t know how to use debt for their own benefit. You’ll never hear him giving financial advice to people with six figure incomes and seven figure (or higher) retirement accounts.