NY whole life insurance - is it a good choice?

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[INDENT] RRK,

Can you help me with this please? I have invested in a whole life insurance from New York life. This product is offered in US and I have taken the policy for a Death benefit of 250,000. NYLife, being a mutual company offers dividends and currently the dividends are used to purchase additional paid-up benefits (Death benefits and Cash Value). I always thought that we get both Cash Value and Death Benefits, but realized that Cash value is not really ours (bummer). I have paid premium for 5 years ($3000 / year) and right now the cash value is about $9500.

The cash value will break even with the premium paid by 13th year (about $39,900) guaranteed. The expected cash value around $41,500. It is also projected that at 13th year, the dividends will be sufficient to pay the premium, so the policy becomes self-funding (something called POP). So I am thinking that since it is self funding, I will continue to pay till 13th year and then let the dividends take over. This could of course change in future years. Or cash it with no loss in principal and a costly lesson learnt. Can you please weigh in your inputs? Greatly appreciate it.

The reason I researched again was that I was thinking of taking whole life insurance policy on my kids name to fund their education with it in future. Now I am not sure if that is a good idea.

Thanks in advance for your help. [/INDENT]