Contrary to term life insurance where you have coverage within a specific time frame, whole life insurance provides death benefits regardless of when the death occurs, which actually is the reason why this type of life insurance is called whole life insurance.
Besides providing protection throughout your life, whole life also accumulates cash value where some policies also pay dividends (called participating policies.)
When buying insurance you have to make an informed choice about the kind of life insurance quote that you want to receive. A whole life insurance policy is one option, which as the name suggests will follow you throughout life. It could be a good option for if you are a younger person in good health and starting out in life because these things would make this kind of life insurance fairly reasonable; the premiums being relatively low.
The big benefit of whole life insurance is that it offers investment opportunities and you can draw money out when you need to. There are two major subcategories within the broad heading of whole life insurance that you can consider (even though there are many other variations exist); Universal or Variable life insurance.
The main difference between whole life insurance and term life insurance is the higher premium. The kind of insurance that you buy will depend on your situation in life, the amount of expenses that you perceive as accruing upon your death and your abilities to afford the amount of premium to be paid.