Said It Here

How to stop parents from buying unwanted life insurance

Parents often insist on purchasing whole life insurance or children's plans despite clear objections and attempts to explain the issues. This leaves people dealing with policies they do not want and unable to convince relatives to stop maintaining them.

Overview
People affected2 accounts across 1 forum
Workarounds found2 items attempted
Community agreement4 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Letting them pay the premiums while treating it as a gift and planning to cash them out later
    Did this help you?
  2. 2
    Trying to convince them to gift cash or fund alternative accounts like 529s or Roth IRAs instead
    Did this help you?

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/personalfinance2 people · September 2026

“No matter what I tell them about what I’ve read about whole life insurance, my parents insist on having whole life insurance policies.”source ↗

nguyem03 · r/personalfinance · 2 upvotes

“My parents opened Gerber life grow-up plans for both of my kids when they were born. There was no convincing them otherwise, and they maintain it.”source ↗

Sad_Education7851 · r/personalfinance · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised