NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - IUL Insurance: Recession-Proof or a Risky Bet for Your Retirement?

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Is indexed universal life insurance “recession-proof?” Learn how it really works and whether it belongs in your retirement plan. Hosts Sean Pyles, CFP®, and Elizabeth Ayoola speak with NerdWallet insurance writer Elizabeth Aldrich about what IUL actually is. Aldrich breaks down the zero-percent floor that sounds like guaranteed protection (but doesn't mean you can't lose money), the truth behind the "better than a 401(k)" and "tax-free retirement" claims circulating online, and the narrow circumstances where an IUL might actually make sense.  Read Lizzie's NerdWallet article on why “recession-proof” insurance is trending: https://www.nerdwallet.com/insurance/life/news/indexed-universal-life-insurance-trending  Enter for a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift card — and help us improve our show — by taking our listener survey! Find the survey and official sweepstakes rules here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSettbeI0yDf8tLt_Q772StVJoWs_Gm-pWa-gSn2fdWEc0XcOw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=102666646608198254961  Want us to review your budget? Fill out this form — completely anonymously if you want — and we might feature your budget in a future segment! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScK53yAufsc4v5UpghhVfxtk2MoyooHzlSIRBnRxUPl3hKBig/viewform?usp=header  To send the Nerds your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by Vinted. Sean, do you have clothes in your trunk that you've worn but have no idea what to do with? You know what? I do not because my car is super clean right now. But I'm betting that you do, Elizabeth. I sure do, Sean, unfortunately. And I've been wondering what to do with these clothes. And then I found out about Vinted. So they're like this secondhand marketplace app and their mission is to make secondhand your first choice.

Yeah, Vinted helps their members find great deals and easily. sell the clothes they no longer wear, and that helps give quality items a second life again and again. And it helps the planet, too, and we care about the planet, don't we, Sean? We do. Well, Elizabeth, whether you're clearing out a bag of clothes in your trunk that's been sitting there for months and months, or you just have pieces in your closet you don't want anymore, Vinted makes it super simple to refresh your wardrobe, earn extra cash, and give your clothes a second life. Plus, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn from every sale. And also, the app is free to download. I think that's a great perk. Vinted makes listing items quick and simple, and once an item

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What if an insurance product could make sure your family is taken care of after you're gone and provide guaranteed investment returns while you're alive? Well, if that sounds too good to be true, you might just be right. Welcome to Nerd Wallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions, and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Sean Piles. And it's me, again, Elizabeth Ayola. Our question this time around comes from someone named Jess. Here it is.

What are your thoughts on indexed universal life insurance? And how do you think about that in terms of incorporating it into retirement planning? Do you think it's something a mid-30s high-income couple should get? What are the pros and cons? Thank you, Jess. And joining us to answer Jess's question, we have NerdWallet Insurance writer Elizabeth Aldrich. Elizabeth, welcome to Smart Money. Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

So we have two Elizabeth's, whose last things both begin with A. Two EA is here. This could get a little confusing. Does one of you want to go by Liz for this conversation just to keep things simple and easy? Elizabeth, does anybody call you, Liz? I go by both. How about you? I go by both, too. How are we going to do this, girl? EA, Liz Elizabeth, Eli, Beth. I don't know. What are we going to do? Battle of the Elizabeth.

I could go by Liz. I can also go by Lizzie. Sometimes I go by that. So that's less confusing. I love Lizzie. I like Lizzie. Let's do that. Okay.

Let's do Lizzie. Well, Lizzie, thank you for joining us on some art money. Let's set some groundwork to start here. Lizzie, can you describe what indexed universal life insurance is and how it works? Because it's one of the more jargony terms in the personal finance world. It's a pretty complicated product. So I'll just zoom out and start broadly. An IUL is a type of permanent life insurance.

That's an umbrella. a term. There are two main types of life insurance. You've got permanent life insurance and term life insurance. Term life insurance is the most common type. It's what most people have heard of. It's temporary coverage. So it lasts for 10, 20, 30 years, depending on the term that you choose. So for example, if you buy a million dollar 20 year term life policy, then that policy lasts for 20 years at the end of the 20 years, unless you renew it or buy more coverage, your policy expires and you no longer have life. And you no longer have life insurance coverage. It works a lot like other forms of insurance. It only pays off if you need it and you kind of hope that you don't need it because that usually means something bad

happened. Especially in the case of life insurance. Exactly. That means the worst happened. It's really just there to offer risk protection. And for most people, that's fine. That's enough. They only need risk protection and they only need it temporarily because in 20 or 30 years, their kids are going to be grown up and hopefully financially independent or they foresee their mortgage being paid off. They don't think that they'll still need that life insurance protection. Well, I used to have permanent life insurance, Lizzie. Tell us how that works. Give us a breakdown. Permanent life insurance, as it sounds, is designed to be permanent. It's designed to last your entire life as long as you pay the required premiums. So whether you die when you're 40 or 95, your family

loved ones or beneficiaries are going to get that life insurance pay out. It's generally quite a bit more expensive than term life insurance because of that. But for some people, that lifelong coverage is important. They might have lifelong dependence, maybe a child with disabilities, that they want to continue to be able to provide for throughout that dependence life. Or maybe they have a lot of extra money and they want to leave an inheritance for their family. Well, another key component of permanent life insurance is the cash value. that I can have. Describe how that works. Most permanent life insurance policies have a cash value component,

and part of your payments that you're putting into that life insurance policy are going to a cash account that earns interest, ideally grows over time, and can come with some tax advantages. If you build up enough cash value in your account, you can borrow and withdraw money from it within certain terms. So you kind of get to have your cake and eat it, too. People don't always like the idea of paying into a policy for life insurance when they're never going to get to use the money because it only pays out if you die. So this cash value component is really attractive to those people because they get the death benefit that goes to their beneficiaries after they die, but they also get this cash account that they can use to access some liquidity while they're alive.

And this is where things can get kind of complicated too, because if you do take a loan out, that could reduce the potential death. benefit. Yes, exactly. So there are definitely risks involved with this cash value component. You know, in theory, it grows, but it doesn't always grow. And if you're taking out a lot of money, that can come with risks like a decreasing death benefit. And other risks will get into, like potential tax risks and the potential to drain your life insurance policy. The cash value is what lured me in, honestly, but I signed up for this life insurance policy before I knew anything about investing, but I know we're going to get into that later. All right, now going down this insurance rabbit hole, Lizzie, can you explain how universal life insurance fits in? And what does the term universal actually mean? An IUL is also a type of universal life insurance, which falls under the umbrella of permanent life insurance. So it's a permanent policy that earns cash value. And the universal part means that there's a level of flexibility involved with this policy. The premiums can change over time.

The death benefit can change over time. the interest that you earn can change unlike, say, a whole life insurance policy where generally the interest rate you're earning is guaranteed over time. It's a flat rate and the premiums you're paying are also guaranteed over time. Or unlike a level term life policy where you go into it, you're paying X amount of money per month and you're always going to be paying that amount of money per month. With universal life insurance, that can change over time. Some people market that as flexibility because it gives you some degree of control over those factors. You can increase or decrease your premium payments or adjust your death benefit as your financial needs change. But it also means

there's this variability involved. It's not quite as predictable because your insurance company can also adjust your premium payments, adjust your death benefit if that's necessary to keep your policy afloat. Oftentimes IULs are sold with a projected level pre-exemptive. which means that you'll get this policy illustration that will say, here's what we project you're going to have to pay every month as a premium in order to keep this policy going. It might say we estimate that if you pay $300 a month, that's the premium that will keep this policy afloat. But in reality, that number is often going to have to change because sometimes the market might not perform as well as expected or insurance companies might need to increase. fees for a variety of reasons. Even though you might see a sales pitch that tells you're paying

$300 a month for this IUL, that's not necessarily always going to be the case. And 300 a month is still quite expensive. So the fact that it could be even more than that is a little troubling. These policies aren't cheap and they do come with some benefits over term life, like the permanence and the cash value component. But they are quite expensive. And yeah, the fact that those premiums, could even increase quite a bit if something goes wrong. It makes them very risky. It makes it very easy for most people to eventually hit a point where they can no longer afford their life insurance policy.

And at that point, you're at risk of losing your policy and losing all the money that you put into it. Great. Love to hear that. Which I mean, I don't love to hear that. That's not great to me. When I was going through my CFP studies back in the day two years ago, What helped me remember what universal life insurance is is that in the universe, things are always

changing. And so with universal life insurance, you can change all sorts of aspects of this policy. So that's one way to kind of remember what this is amid the many different types of life insurance. Another thing that can change a lot is the interest that you're earning on these accounts. And the interest component is really kind of the final part of indexed universal life insurance that we haven't touched on yet. Can you talk about how exactly it is indexed, Lizzie? So the interest that you earn on your IUL is index to usually a stock market index like the S&P 500. The money in your IUL is not directly invested in the stock market. And this is an important distinction.

Yeah, that's really wild to underline. Say that one more time to so we all really understand what that means. The money in your IUL is not directly invested in the stock market. The interest you're earning is simply tied to a stock market index. All that means is that the life insurance company is saying, hey, if this index, the S&P 500, for example, earns 5%, then your IUL gets earned 5%. And so that's what makes this still an insurance product, not an investment product. It's like an insurance product that's kind of masquerading a bit like an investment product. Exactly. And a lot of times you'll see sales pitches where it's very much marketed as an investment product, but it is not legally or practically an investment product.

Can you explain floors and caps when it comes to this aspect of the insurance policies, Lizzie? Your interest is tied to, say, the S&P 500, but you're not always going to earn exactly what the S&P 500 earns because IULs also come with floors and caps. The floor is your downside protection. It's usually set to zero. And what that means is that your IUL cannot earn less than a zero percent interest rate. So if the stock market crashes, falls into the negative, then the cash value in your account is just credit in 0%. So it's offering some protection for that downside risk. But then you also have a cap.

That's the ceiling on how much you can earn in your IUL. And from what I've seen, a lot of IULs will set that cap somewhere between 8% and 12%. And this limits your upside. That could be a significant miss on your potential for investment return. And so, you know, over the past 12 months, the S&P 500 is up about 20%, which is pretty remarkable. But if your IUL product doesn't even let you tap those gains, again, you're kind of leaving money on the table by not truly investing. Yeah, you're leaving quite a bit of money on the table. And your example, when it's up 20%, if your cap is 10%, you're only earning 10%.

And then there's one more kind of lever that insurance companies can pull to place limitations on how much you can earn within an IUL policy. and that's called the participation rate. Participation rate is a percentage of the indexes return that you actually get to keep. So sometimes it's set to 100%. That just means you get to earn 100% of the indexes return up to your cap. In that case, you don't really need to pay attention to it.

But often it's set somewhere below 100%. So if it's set to 80%, then you only get to keep 80% of whatever the S&P 500 earns, up to your cap. For example, say your cap is 10%, and the S&P 500 goes up 10%. You might think that you're going to earn 10%. But if your participation rate is 80%, then you're only going to earn 8%. Lizzie, why do you think these insurance companies put these caps in place? And I have some theories and it might have something to do with capitalism. I think you might be right. Again, these are just theories for me. I'm not an insurance company. But what? What?

these levers essentially allow insurance companies to do is have almost complete control over their earnings, over how much you get to keep of their earnings. And so if you get a lot of really good years in a row and you're earning a lot, but the insurance company is really struggling, that's a lever they can pull to say, hey, we need more money. We can take it from our IULs by lowering the cap or lowering the participation rate. It really just gives them control over your policy. One of the experts I talked to compared it to Vegas. When you go to Vegas, the house always wins. The house always has an edge over you. And that's kind of how it is with these IULs because of the fact that they can change these caps and participation rates. It means that they kind of always have the

edge over you. You're not ever going to be able to skim them out of their money and earn a bunch of, yeah, outperform the market for sure. They're not going to let that happen because that is going to affect their bottom line. Lizzie, you recently wrote an article about index universal life insurance called Recession Proof Insurance is trending, safety net or scam. By the way, great headline there. I don't know if you or your editor wrote that, but I really enjoyed it. So what makes this product, quote unquote, recession proof, and does that claim actually hold water? So when I was writing this article, I kept coming across YouTube videos, Reels, TikToks, podcasts of people claiming that, that IULs are these recession-proof miracle money hag.

So that's where the idea for the headline came from. And when they're selling them as these recession-proof products, one of the biggest things they emphasize is that 0% floor. And it makes sense because that sounds great. It does sound recession-proof. It sounds like if the market crashes, you don't have to suffer any of those losses. It's really appealing to people who are worried about a recession.

But the implication there is that IULs, don't have any risk, you can never lose money. And that's not actually true. You absolutely can lose money in an IUL. Yeah. Can you describe how you can actually lose money here? Because when the stock market isn't maybe performing well, you might have higher fees associated with this product. Is that right? Yes. So IULs come with a lot of internal fees. They come with the cost of insurance, which is a big one. People forget that it's an insurance product. So they forget that a lot of their money is paying for insurance and not for stock market returns, not for not going into an investment product. So that's a big fee. You've got a premium load to cover taxes and commissions. You've got

policy management fees. All of these can really add up. And again, some of these are levers that the insurance company can move if they need to make more money. The cost of insurance is one that they can change at virtually any time for whatever reason. And so those fees can shoot up. And in a bad stock market year, you might be earning 0%, but you're still paying a lot of fees. So the cash value, the interest you're earning, no, that's not going negative. But your policy as a whole can still lose money because the fees are draining money from an account that's not earning anything from the stock market. And that's a particular nuance that people won't be explaining in a 30-second TikTok or Instagram video.

And that's where things get really frustrating because having seen personal finance content for so many years online. It seems like almost every nine to 12 months, there's some new magic way to make money. Like infinite banking was one that we would hear about or people would go and deposit a check into their ATM and just put a bunch of money in and basically try to defraud their banks. That was one that was happening a year or two ago. So anytime there's some big claim of a product that seems like it's a guaranteed way to make money really easily, I would be highly skeptical of that. Absolutely, I agree. That is wild that people were going around writing checks to themselves. And a lot of times, yeah, these guaranteed claims going around on social media, you really need to pay attention to who's making these claims and what they stand to earn from them, why they're trying to convince you so hard. With IULs in particular, there are a lot of risks that they don't mention. They don't mention the fees. They also don't mention that these fees are usually front loaded onto the first 10 or 15 years of your policy.

So you're paying higher fees up front. And that gets really risky if the stock market has a couple bad years in a row during those early years of your policy. Well, then you're earning 0%. Your fees are particularly high. And you haven't had any time to build up cash value in your policy that the fees could potentially come out of. So now you're having to shoulder all the burden of those fees. Your policy is getting drained. and when the cash value in your policy isn't covering your fees and the cost of insurance,

you're eventually going to get a notice in the mail saying that your policy is in danger and you need to make much higher premium payments if you want to keep it afloat. And the worst part is that insurance companies don't always give you a lot of notice. They're not going to warn you in advance that, hey, your policy is starting to get drained. You might want to put a little money into it unless you're really paying attention and really on top of it, you're checking your policy and you understand your policy, you might not know until the last minute when all of a sudden your premium tripled. And if you don't start paying that right now, your policy is going to collapse.

And again, if your policy collapses, then you lose everything you put into it. So it's a very high risk. You took the words out my mouth. This sounds extremely high risk to me. I'm sure we're going to get into some pros, but all my ears are hearing right now are cons, especially because there are no caps on how much I can earn from my investments in the stock market. And yes, there are ups and downs in the stock market. But, you know, we all know the rate of return, so I'm not going to bore you with that.

So tell us, Lizzie, are there any good things or I would say pros of having an IUO? There are certainly some pros. I would say the 0% floor is a real benefit. I talk about how that doesn't mean you can't lose money. But it still does offer a good amount of risk protection in terms of not having to say. suffer big stock market losses. And this is rare for a product that is indexed to the stock market or has the potential to sometimes earn stock market like returns. You're usually not going to get that kind of down side protection. So that's definitely a pro. The returns that you're

earning are also real. And even though there are a lot of limits placed on those, that you offer some level of participation in the stock market. And your earnings and the IUL grow tax deferred. So there are tax advantages involved. If you want permanent life insurance, if you're the type of person who has a need for that, then the fact that these policies are permanent and they are intended to last for your whole life and you can leave an inheritance to your family that's shielded from taxes is also another benefit. So Lizzie, obviously, this is a pretty complex topic. We'll back in a minute with more about indexed universal life insurance. Today's episode is sponsored by Rula. That's RULA. That's RU-L-A. You know,

Elizabeth, sometimes talking with someone outside of your friends or your family or your partner can be really helpful just to get a perspective on the things that you're going through and process the tough things in life. And this is where Rula comes in because finding a therapist is hard enough, but finding one who actually takes your insurance, well, that's where most online therapy platforms fall short. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription. Rula does things a little differently. They partner with over 100 insurance plans making the average co-pay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense for your pockets.

Now, think about it. You use your insurance benefits to maintain your physical health, so, I mean, like, why would you not do the same for your mental health? And Rula isn't just affordable. The experience is actually tailored around you. Other online therapy platforms might match you with the first available provider, whether or not they're actually the right fit. Rula considers your goals, preferences, and background to provide you a curated list of licensed in-network therapists who are actually aligned with what you need. Go to Rula.com slash smart money to get started today. That's Rula.com slash smart money for quality therapy that's covered by insurance.

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Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. participating A&W locations in Ontario. Lizzie, a lot of folks on social media were claiming that indexed universal life insurance can be preferable to a 401K for retirement investing, something that I'm clearly, obviously, very skeptical of and for good reason. What are people saying about that online in more detail and why do they think this might actually be better than a tried and true retirement account? Great question. It's definitely smart to be skeptical when someone is telling you that

an insurance product is better for retirement than a dedicated retirement account. An IUL is not a retirement account. It's not an investment account again. It's a life insurance policy. And a lot of these videos online are claiming that an IUL is better for a 401K. It's the best way to provide yourself with a safe, tax-free retirement. And they usually use two arguments that have to do with both market risk and taxes. The argument around market risk just goes back to that 0% floor that you can't lose money in an IUL, even though you can, but you don't have to suffer from market crashes with the IUL.

We've already talked a little bit about why that claim isn't fully true, even though, yes, during a market crash, you're not going to go into the negative. You can still lose money. Plus, there's that cap on growth and that opportunity costs there where you could have taken that money and you could have been doing. invested it into a 401k or some other type of retirement account and done really well during good stock market years. Instead, you put it in this IUL and now you're not able to earn and grow that money as much as you would during those good stock market years. So there's a cost, an opportunity cost involved with these products that you don't see with a 401K. And then there's the tax component. And the way that these videos talk about the tax benefits,

of IULs is a little misleading. They call it tax-free retirement income because you can take tax-free loans from an IUL, whereas if you have a 401K, the money that you withdraw in retirement, if it's a traditional 401K, is going to be taxed. But you're still taxed the same number of times, regardless of whether it's a 401k or an IUL.

With a traditional 401K, you get a tax break up front when you put your money into the account, and then you're taxed on the money when you take it out. And an IUL is just the reverse. You're taxed on your money before you put it into the account, but then you get a tax break on the money coming out of it. If you prefer to have tax-free withdrawals in retirement, there are other options that are specifically geared towards saving for retirement.

You can use a Roth 401k or a Roth IRA, and you'll get that tax-free growth, but you won't be having to put some of that money toward insurance fees. Expensive insurance fees that will be going up over time. Oftentimes on a financial product is trying to do two things at once. It doesn't really do either of them very well. And an IUL can be a really good example of that. The money that you're putting into it isn't just going toward retirement.

It's paying for your life insurance. Whereas a 401K has one job. It is to accumulate money toward your retirement. Lizzie, don't you think it's important who is saying that 401Ks are potentially better than IULs? because oftentimes we're consuming content online and we're not checking people's credentials. We're not seeing if these are people qualified to speak on these subject matters and also if they have a stake in it. It's very important, too, when you're seeing these videos, click on the profile, see who is making them, go to the link in their bio, see what their credentials are and why they're selling these products,

why they're pushing them so hard. Is it because they stand to make money off of you if you buy them? usually in most cases I found that they are selling IULs because they want to make money off of you and it's a problem in particular with IULs because they exist in this weird regulatory limbo. They're in kind of a gray area where they're not an investment product but they're often being marketed and sold as an investment product because they're not legally an investment product They don't fall under the same regulations as 401k or an investment account would. And so the people selling them aren't held to the same strict requirements. They don't have to have the same credentials as someone selling an investment product.

And they also don't necessarily have to keep your best interest in mind when they're recommending products to you. So it allows these people to leave out a lot of information and essentially misleads. consumers, whereas investment products, you know, are regulated more heavily and people selling them aren't able to do that as easily. Since it's not an investment product, it's not a retirement product, to just this point, where should it fit into your retirement planning if you are going to use an IUL? That's something that while I was writing my article, I talked to a lot of experts about, and the general consensus there was that IULs are a very niche product.

They're very specialized, and most people do not need them as part of their retirement portfolio. There may be some people out there for whom an IUL makes sense. Those people should be people who understand the IULs and how they work, and they generally should have already maxed out their 401K and other tax-advantaged retirement accounts. And if you've done all that and you still have money left over and you're looking for, a place to put it and you have a need for permanent life insurance, then an IUL might make sense for you as long as you understand what you're getting into. Another expert I talked to a CFP and life insurance analyst mentioned that they are good moderate risk profile products. So if you're looking for a product with moderate risk because of the caps and floors, there's downside protection,

but you're also not investing in something that's going to earn you a type of aggressive returns, then it's good if you're looking for something that's offering moderate growth and can limit your downside a little bit. Well, let's zoom out a little bit and think about how life insurance fits into people's general financial planning. And I always recommend people think about the goal behind any kind of financial product, but especially life insurance before they acquire it. Is there a goal of life insurance to protect their family's financial security in the event of their death, or are they trying to build wealth or a way where they can take loans

out in retirement without any sort of interest? Like you said earlier, Lizzie, accomplishing both of those things at the same time is really challenging. And Nerdwallis Houseview tends to be that most people are actually really okay with just a term life insurance policy because they are so much less expensive and people's needs are going to be changing over time. They might not need a life insurance policy up until the day they die. Can you elaborate on this a little bit? As Sean said, our house view is that for most people, term life insurance is the right choice. It's temporary. You're not going to have lifelong coverage, but again, most people don't need that. So if you have 25 years left on your mortgage and a newborn and you think that your mortgage is going to be paid off in 25 years, your child is going to be grown and financially independent and you're planning to have some money in savings, some money in a retirement account.

that can help protect you, then in 25 years, you might not need fat death benefit anymore. So getting a policy with a 25 or 30-year term is sufficient and generally so much cheaper than a permanent life insurance policy. A lot of times if you are a healthy adult in your 30s, even 40s, you can get a term life insurance policy for $20 or $30 a month, which is less than I spend on cold proof. So they're very important. products. They're very low risk, especially compared to something like an IUL. And they're very straightforward and simple. You don't have to understand all the ins and outs of how a policy is being charged fees and earning money. It just does one thing and it doesn't well.

From one Elizabeth to another, thank you, Elizabeth Aldrich, for coming on and explaining to us the complexities of IULs and reminding me that I don't need one. Thank you both so much for having me. That's all we've got for this episode. Remember folks to send a us your money questions. We need them. We love them. We read and listen to all of them. So leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-7306373. That's 901-730 nerd. You can also email us at podcast at nerdvault.com or drop a comment on Spotify or YouTube. The Smart Money Podcast wouldn't be what it is without you. So join us next time to hear about how one family is helping their father recover from sending all of his retirement savings to someone he met on

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