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Notes -
Minor note - not a nitpick, more of a clarification for people who want to prepare for such things.
The majority of life insurance that gets sold is what is referred to as term life insurance - this is typically what you see advertised where they name a stupidly high number for a very small payment amount, and salesmen play this out as a lie of omission and make people assume that the stated amount is what they'll get when they die(spoilers: they won't.)
That isn't to say there aren't times when term life insurance isn't an applicable economic tool, but it's rarely sold as such.
If you want guaranteed life insurance, you want whole life insurance. This will pay out, regardless of circumstances, will often be much cheaper the earlier you get it, and often can be setup to be payed into over a certain period of time, like a mortgage. Some of them even allow for early withdrawal of the life insurance amount.
If you want to setup any type of additional economic protection for the long run, get one of these, and get them early.
While one has to be clear-headed as to what life insurance actually is, I think for most people, it makes much more sense to get term life insurance: it's a hedge to provide for your loved ones in case of a tragedy and, ideally, by the time time you're old, your death won't represent a significant economic burden on your family. Whole-life is this protection, with some sort of inheritance scheme piled on top... unless you want to screw over one or more of your descendants, it doesn't make much sense to not just save the extra premiums that you'll be paying.
This, of course, assumes similar pricing practices and commission schemes, either product can be, in practice, a worse deal depending on market conditions.
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