Do I need whole life insurance as a student? I feel like dropping as the premiums are too high but my parents depend on me for income in the future and my agent thinks I should lock in now?

Keep in mind, no one here is going to pay you for critical illness in the event of diagnosis. As such, I would avoid making decisions without first understanding your cash flow and needs.

If you do the numbers on whole life and term, and you add critical illness, the term makes little sense. Invest the rest has no guaranteed level, unlike participating funds. The industry has evolved and the landscape has changed. The narrative needs to change. Even IFAs are advocating whole life for CI - the reason is simple, the numbers work.

You are paying 7.2k on insurance premiums for protection, I will expect that your annual income to be at least 6,000 per month after CPF deduction, meaning your gross should be at least $7,500.

If that is not happening, you are likely overpaying for insurance.

Pruman is not compulsory. It is a product that is geared for protection for male illnesses and should be treated as a supplement. PruTriple Protect and PruLife serve very different objectives.

To address your health lock-in factor. You can simply use PruTriple Protect. It has a provision of conversion after 5 years where if no claims are made, you can do a conversion to a comparable term or whole life policy. The only reason why you want to lock it in today is that the premiums are cheaper today as compared to the time of conversion. Health lock-in factors can be cheaply executed and do not require a large sum today for an income in the future which is not guaranteed.

But if your want is simply to buy insurance because you are very concerned about health issues then stay in your purchase. Remember, no one here is going to give you money at that event. You make your own bed and live with it.

Follow me here.

Seems like your agent had been enjoying squeezing you dry.

You are paying more than what you "earn" on the scholarship allowance. The cashflow don't make any good financial sense.

Your main concern for whole life plan is due to your parents depending on your income in future. How old are they now? Average life expectancy to factor for is around 80 - 85yo.

If they are (assuming) 50 now, you only need to protect 30 - 40 years for them at best. You don't need a whole life plan for this purpose.

I'd suggest you to get a term life plan instead to cover yourself (and maybe your future kids) till age 65 - 80?

You can be looking at reducing your premiums by as much as 3 times and at the same time getting really meaningful and significant amount of sum assured (say $1M).

The downside is that there is no cash value for Term plans. Explore BTIR.

You're a law student, I believe you can do better than this.

Final point to note: don't put all your eggs in 1 basket.

• Look around other insurer's products too for better deals. There are more cost-effective options out there.

• Understand what plans you are buying and decide if they REALLY makes any sense to you.