Not enough in safe growth assets

First things first: your retirement accounts get honest credit here. I own them myself. Many in the insurance world have a bad habit of trashing retirement accounts to sell insurance products, and that's a marketing tactic. You won't get it on this site.

The fair concern is concentration and timing. Contribution caps limit what you can put in, the money is generally locked up until 59½, RMDs pull it back out on the government's schedule, and a bad year does the most damage right when you start drawing income. Ask anyone who retired into 2008.

Diversification is the boring, correct answer, and a safe growth asset is the piece most portfolios are missing. A properly designed whole life policy grows every year, guaranteed, and behaves more like the safety of bonds, which can free the rest of your portfolio to take smarter risk. IUL puts a floor of zero under the down years while keeping some market-linked growth. Neither one replaces your investments. They're the counterweight that reduces the risk of the whole plan.

And beside the math, there's behavior. Staying invested through the rollercoaster is hard, and people tend to buy high and sell low. A safe pool of money nearby makes it a lot easier to leave the investments alone and let them do their job.