Thanks for saying so :) After doing my research and from personal experience, I don’t think Whole Life makes a lot of sense for the majority of the population. Here are my responses.

1. Agreed, insurance is just that. Insurance. It’s not an investment. Therefore, people should treat it like an investment. Whole Life is marketed as an insurance product that also provides you investment returns. But as you saw, the returns are dismal. I’d rather pay 1/10 the price for insurance and invest elsewhere for better returns.
2. I received dividends from my policy so it was a participating one. Even so, my returns were sub-par even when compared to their own projections.
3. I obviously agree with this point (since that’s the main point of the article). But barring an economy worse than the Great Depression, it would still be better to go without the Whole Life policy.
4. Right now, my main concern is making sure my family is able to get by financially if something were to happen to me (which is the point of insurance). Between my cheaper term life insurance and my savings, my family could get by for at least a year. The taxes for my situation would be minimal. If you’re looking to leave an inheritence, even after accounting for taxes, the Whole Life policy is lacking.
5. Agreed, if I were to pass during a bear market that would be unfortunate. But I didn’t say I got rid of insurance. I just got rid of my Whole Life insurance. I still have a term policy that would pay money upon my death so this isn’t a concern.
6. By the time my term policy is over, I’m not planning on needing insurance. As I said in #4, the point of insurance is to make sure my family could get by financially without me. By the time my term policy is up, I’ll be in a position where I won’t need to buy life insurance.
7. See #6
8. This is a slight variation from #6 and #7 but essentially the same. Changes like that don’t happen overnight and should be planned for accordingly. With regards to the standard of living, I simply choose to spend far less than I make and keep my standard of living relatively low.
9. Yes, that’s exactly what I did in my analysis for these articles. Once Tommy hit retirement age, she stopped paying premiums since her dividends covered her payments. She possibly could have actually stopped paying them sooner (I don’t remember the numbers now) but for the purposes of comparison, I had her paying the premiums until retirement. The benefit of having insurance for life is near zero (for me) since by the time I get to that point, I wouldn’t need insurance anymore (see #6).