Inputting Paid-Up Whole Life Policies With Cash Values so their Growth Will Be Reflected in Net Worth

This is my first posting … have set-up my base case and all looks good after working through the Tutorial, Help and Forum notes. I appear to have resolved/corrected my initial input errors. My question is about paid-up Life Insurance with cash values …

1-My wife and I are 67 and 66 respectively … been retired for 5 years … living entirely on social security and investments

2-I have Whole Life Policies that are largely paid-up … premiums are $1,500 per year … death benefit $500K and cash values of $310K – earning consistently 5.5% to 6.0% growth.

3-We plan to set these aside as a contingency fund and allow the cash values and death benefit to continue growing … and would like to leave the accumulated assets for our heirs.

4-From the Forum, it’s clear that Insurance Information is for comparison purposes only … and that the program independently calculates insurance needs to ensure standard of living for the survivor, my wife in our case.

5-Something in one of the postings led me to believe that input of our cash values would be recognized by the program and it would assume the policies would be cashed-out ... and the cash proceeds would then be swept into our Regular Assets. I think this impression is incorrect since I could not see any evidence of the cash values appearing in Net Worth (pg 49-50) … nor being added to regular assets … nor to anywhere else. I only see them on the Regular Assets (pg 9) with the pie chart … and on pg 36 where the Term Policy portion of insurance is recognized and used in making the recommendation to increase or not increase insurance. So, I have now concluded that cash values are not used in calculating Net Worth … nor in computing any component of Income generation. Is that correct?

6-The program concluded that we do not require any insurance … but our plan is to keep the Whole Life policies since they are virtually entirely paid-up and have reasonably large cash values.

Ok then … if the above are correct, are the following also correct perceptions and appropriate actions?

7-I saw no recognition of the cash values in our net worth calculations … So, in addition to filling in the insurance screen, I also used the Real Estate screen to act as a surrogate for the cash values … and grew them 5.5% in perpetuity. The result appears to give the result I want. The cash values grow appropriately and result in a reasonably large amount of Net Worth at age 100. So, it seems to work … Is this ok or is there any reason to not do this?

8-Originally, I tried to use the Bequest function to ensure the desired funds would be available at age 100. That resulted in a large requirement for Life Insurance in order to ensure the Bequest bligation would be covered if I were to die … so I have eliminated the Bequest and the result is no need for insurance. Of course, this also resulted in the disappearance of the very large Term premiums that were required to pay for the insurance. Is this a correct conclusion?

9-Finally, are there any planning professionals that use ESPlanner from whom I might obtain counsel on a fee basis … i.e., to work with me and provide counsel as I work through our new plans?

Thanks very much,

Mike
MHF60@att.net