I also have been investing $400/month into my Roth IRA in mutual funds. During the 37 years I invest from age 23 to age 60, I am expected to have anywhere between $1.1 million (with average return of 8%) to $3.3 million (with average return of 12%). In the past 30 years, the S&P 500 had an average return of 10.99%. The S&P 500 lists 500 large companies in the United States, many of which you are familiar with such as Coca Cola, 3M, AT&T, Verizon, Costco, Best Buy, Citigroup, Exxon, The Gap, Hewlitt-Packard, and so on.

What is a mutual fund? In simple terms, there are a pool of investors such as me who invest their money through a portfolio manager. This portfolio manager will use these investments to buy stocks of different companies to meet the fund’s objective. There can be as little as 25 companies or over 100 different companies in a mutual fund. With so many companies or stocks in a mutual fund, a mutual fund is considered to be diversified. Diversification leads to lower risk because your investment is spread over several companies. The great thing about having a mutual fund is that you don’t have to worry about which stocks you should buy and when to sell. The portfolio manager takes care of all that for you.

Most of my clients also invest their money. Between my clients and myself, I have approximately $1.5 million of assets under management.

There is always a risk in investing, but with the education I provide to my clients, all those fears and concerns of the market goes away. Couple years ago, the US economy went into a recession and we are probably still in a recession. I got so many calls from my clients and asking me what to do. I ask them if they need the money right now? They all say no. I ask them do they remember me showing them the long term trend on how the market works? Some say yes and some forgot. Anyway, at the end, they all continue to invest because they realize it would be a bad idea to pull out of the market when value of their shares are so low. They also realize its very smart to invest in times when the economy is doing bad since they can buy more shares when price per share is low. The value of my account was down 26% in the beginning of January 2009. In the beginning of 2010, the value of my account was up 38%.

Anyway, besides helping my clients get life insurance and invest their money, I also help them get out of debt. I don’t think there’s really any companies that is really tackling the debt issue except for one company and thats Primerica. As time goes on, the savings goes up and their debts and other financial obligations goes down. Eventually all their debts are paid off. At this point there are at or just few years away from retiring. With no debt and no kids to take care of and with high abundance of savings put away for retirement, there should be no needs for having life insurance. If there is, they don’t need as much as they did when they were much younger. This is why I recommend everyone to get term insurance.

Of course there would be people, especially life insurance agents, to tell you to get whole life or universal life and try to trick you on how great these products are. They will say things that it builds savings and it has guarantee interest and you can use it for whatever purpose. So do savings accounts, money market accounts, and CDs at your bank, but the savings in a life insurance policy don’t work the same way that banks do. In life insurance, the so-called savings is really called "cash value." If you wanted to take money out from the life insurance policy, you have to put it back and pay loan interest of 8%. If you took money from your bank account, do you have to put it back and pay interest on it? No. But in life insurance, you do. If you die someday, the insurance company pays the death benefit to your beneficiary, but they keep the cash value. So why pay for two things in cash value life insurance (the life insurance and the cash value), and not just the insurance like term insurance, which doesn’t build cash value?

Is it me or do you find it odd that only life insurance have cash value and all the other types of insurance such as car insurance or homeowner’s insurance don’t build cash value? So why should life insurance build cash value?
References :

Ask yourself, what are you really looking for? Affordable protection?
Savings with protection?
Or protection with savings?
Note that AIA carries many plans which will address each of these needs. Please relay to your agent what you want and she will match the products accordingly.

Lastly, in buying insurance policies, the main thing is to ensure that you are properly financially protected. Therefore, you should be looking at the "Sum Assured". Check how much the amount is. Now calculate, if you were disabled or sick, will the payout allow you to survive for a reasonable amount of time?
Some people have many policies but their combined sum assure d is still very low=useless.
Some people have only one or two policies but their sum assured is very high. Therefore, the most important issue at hand is not how many policies you own but how much are you insured for.
References :
I am a Financial Planner in Singapore

I would guess that at the 20 year point, you’ll just about get your premiums back.

These policies are OK for long term savings combined with insurance. I would suggest looking instead at Variable Life (if such a thing exists in Malaysia) or buying Term insurance instead.

The benefits of what you have are premiums that are guaranteed for the rest of your life (hence the name Whole Life). At the guaranteed interest rate (in the US, most are 3.5-4%) the cash value will equal the death benefit at age 100 – again guaranteed. Any excess interest or dividends paid (in your case it will be called excess interest) – not guaranteed – will accelerate the cash accumulation (right now, in the US most of these policies are earning dividends that push the growth rates into the mid 6% range.

If you were in the States, I would say you most likely don’t have a great plan, but I don’t know what other types of plans are available in Malaysia.

Hope this helps.
References :
12 years Insurance Agent / Financial Planner

that was …
holy fuck

that was intense