Can you cash out a life insurance policy?

If you have a life insurance policy with cash value, you can “cash it out.” Cashing out terminates the policy.

But cashing out life insurance doesn’t mean you’ll get 100% of the cash value. You’ll generally receive the cash minus a surrender charge, if there is one, and get what’s known as the “surrender value.”

Cash value life insurance often has a “surrender period,” such as 10 years. After that there’s no surrender charge for cashing out. Check your policy for the surrender period.