Term and whole life insurance both pay a death benefit to your beneficiaries, but everything else about how they work — cost, duration, and what happens to your money along the way — is fundamentally different. * Term life covers you for a fixed period, typically 10, 20, or 30 years. If you die during that term, your beneficiaries get the payout. If the term ends and you're still alive, the coverage simply expires — there's no payout, no refund, nothing carried forward, unless you renew or convert the policy. That structure is exactly why term life is considerably cheaper than whole life for the same death benefit amount. * Whole life insurance is permanent — it lasts your entire life as long as you keep paying premiums, and a portion of every premium payment goes into a "cash value" component that grows over time. That cash value isn't just a number on paper: you can borrow against it, withdraw from it, or use it to help cover premiums later in life, giving whole life a savings-like feature term life doesn't have at all. * Premiums behave differently over time, too. Term life premiums are typically cheapest when you're young, but they usually jump significantly if you renew the policy after the original term ends, since your age and risk profile have changed. Whole life premiums, by contrast, are locked in at a level rate for the life of the policy, never increasing regardless of your age or health changes. * The practical rule of thumb: term life tends to fit needs with a natural end date, like covering a mortgage or the years until kids are financially independent. Whole life tends to fit permanent goals, like leaving a guaranteed inheritance or covering final expenses whenever death eventually occurs — but that permanence and cash value come at a real cost, often several times what a comparable term policy would charge.