Endowment life insurance

chesky369

I've been paying into an endowment life insurance policy for the past twenty years - approximately £10 (started at £13) per month. I think that means I've paid in about £ 2,400-ish. Just had a letter from Prudential saying I can expect £ 5,240. I'm actually quite pleased, since other people I've known have only managed to get back a little more than they've paid in but what do others think? Was this worth my while or would I have been better saving it?

dunstonh

20 years ago you didnt have a lot of choice. There were no PEPs or ISAs. It was just endowments/MIPs. So, whilst today there modern options are a lot better, you have to look at the time you started it and that is all there was.

Pru was a good choice as most of the other home service insurers have closed their doors for new business and pay rubbish rates.

The premiums shouldnt have changed although what may have happened was the frequency altered from 4 weekly to monthly (or vice versa).

At 10pm over 20 years, that maturity is around an average return of 7.1% p.a.

chesky369

thanks dunstonh for the percentage - I couldn't work it out myself. they actually gave me a reduction for starting a direct debit - when it originally started 20 years ago, I use to pay 'the man from the pru' every month and he wrote it in my little orange book; however about 12 years ago I think they went through a bad time and 'the man' and his ilk simply disappeared and the payments weren't collected - I used to write to them in a state thinking that they'd say I hadn't been keeping up the payments, so eventually they agreed to a DD.