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Actually, the wealthy (as a group) are one of the best prospects for a savvy life insurance salesman. Many wealthy people own large amounts of life insurance for complex estate planning (as opposed to pure financial protection) purposes.

As far as pure financial protection is concerned, I agree that term insurance is generally cheaper coverage. However, term insurance may or may not offer guaranteed annual renewability or conversion privileges (at a price) to whole life coverage over part or all of its policy life, which can become a rather important consideration for an older person whose health has deteriorated to the point that he is no longer insurable (like me) or is rated for coverage at an outrageously expensive premium. Also, term life continues to escalate in its (annual) cost, the older the insured gets, to the point that it may become simply too prohibitive in cost to maintain, in which case, you are left holding nothing but an empty bucket, just at the wrong time in life -- when the odds of the policy holder's survival are rapidly diminishing (as opposed to some sort of escalating cash value balance, year after year, in the case of whole life insurance). Nor does term life insurance necessarily maintain a level death benefit, the older the policy gets, unless you pay part of your premium specifically for that stated purpose when you initially sign up for the term policy.

Sometimes some form of whole life insurance (such as so-called "universal life" or "paid-up life at age XX"), with a guaranteed level premium throughout the life of the policy, can in fact be cheaper than term insurance, over the long run: After a specific number of years of paying in your full annual premium on such a whole-life policy (say, seven or ten consecutive years or more), it builds up a sufficient cash surrender balance that, together with conservatively-forecasted but reliable historic dividend payments, the total compounding effect can result in sufficient monies accrued to borrow the full premiums due in subsequent policy years, over the remainder of one's reasonable life expectancy. Yes, you really can. (For example, I'm currently carrying a $1 million dollar level-benefit life-paid-up-at-ninety policy which I haven't had to pay any annual premiums into for the last ten years. The cash value of the policy is being borrowed against to pay the premiums due. Of course, if I outlive age 90 (not a reasonable risk in my state of poor health), the policy will expire worthless, its cash value exhausted. Not to worry. If I croak before then (as I expect), my estate planning is all neatly funded, and if I don't, then everyone else will be so durned old, it won't make any difference to them whether they inherit a dime from me!

Young married persons seeking life insurance coverage generally need (and can frequently afford) only pure protection for their families, so term insurance is probably their best bet. They should be wary of signing up for group life through their employer, however, depending upon the average age of those working at the company. If you are one of the few young workers, amid a bunch of old farts, you can probably do better buying a personal term policy on your own rather than subscribing to group rates which are scewed toward a much older policy holder base.

You can structure your own mortgage insurance policy to mirror the life of your projected mortgage obligation balance due, for the next ten or fifteen years, using a decreasing term life insurance policy. At best, that's all the mortgage insurers will try to do to cover you anyway, and they'll generally charge you through the nose for it!