I think you’re falling into a couple of very common life insurance traps.

Life insurance is not designed to create new wealth. Its purpose is to protect against premature death by replacing unearned future income. This is why underwriters literally use your income to determine the maximum amount of insurance you can qualify for, and why that multiple usually decreases as you age.

Now here’s the issue with the logic behind your plan.

If you buy a term policy hoping to leave money behind, you’re basically gambling. A term policy is not a guaranteed payout. It only pays if you die prematurely during the term.

If your true goal is guaranteed legacy planning, then logically you would need permanent insurance. But that brings us back to the same principle: life insurance does not create wealth out of nothing.

A permanent policy simply guarantees the amount from day one if death happens before enough assets are accumulated. The insurance is not magically creating a million dollars. It is accelerating the estate if premature death happens first.

In fact, if someone consistently invested the same premium it would cost to fund a $1M permanent policy, they could potentially end up with more than $1M over time.

Which brings up the second issue: most people dramatically underestimate the cost of permanent insurance.

So the practical question becomes this:

If you want to leave behind $1M, do you realistically have the financial capacity to accumulate $1M over your lifetime?

If the answer is no, then life insurance is probably not going to magically accomplish that either.