It doesn’t take much to make an individual investor uneasy about the market these days, especially when retirement savings are at stake. Just scanning today’s headlines is like taking a walk through a minefield of trigger words: interest rates, tax laws, international politics, the Affordable Care Act. But while Main Street is testing out casserole recipes in anticipation of a stock market wake, Wall Street’s whooping it up with daily happy hours to toast new record highs. Wh

“Cash value” has a nice ring to it when you’re thinking about buying life insurance, but you’ll need to do some careful analysis to learn whether a cash-value policy is worth the cost. The phrase “cash value” refers to a savings component of permanent life insurance, such as universal life and whole life insurance. The price you pay for these policies goes toward lifelong insurance coverage and funding of the cash-value account. This is different from term life insurance, whi