The reason you are thinking it looks good is that you are combining a number of different strategies and pulling out the positives of each, while overlooking the negatives. Tease that apart and the numbers aren't so great.
Start with the whole life policy. That is actually three things: a term life premium; a commission to the broker; and a cash value. Say you do $10K/yr. Say $1K goes to term life, $1K goes to commissions, and $8K goes to your cash value. In fact, that's pretty generous for the early years, which tend to be far more fees and less cash value. But we're making this up here. After 5 years, you have around $40K in your cash value. Compare that to buying your own term life insurance and investing the rest: you'd have $45K in the market. In fact, the difference will be even bigger than $5K, because your cash value will grow at that guaranteed rate, while over the long term, what you invest in the market will grow at a faster rate -- and your heirs will have the full value of the life insurance at the end of the day, too.
That is completely separate from investing in real estate, which is its own great way to make money, because it lets you use leverage and have other people pay your loans. You can fund it any number of ways -- sell your investments, take out bank loans, take out 401(k) loans, whatever. Borrow from yourself and pay interest to yourself? Sounds like a great deal, right? But look at a 401(k) loan: you are taking money that is in the market, selling that part of your investments, and then paying that back over time. So really, you are giving up market earnings on that part of your investments and effectively converting it into a bond, with your only returns being the value of the interest you're paying yourself. How is that different or better than simply taking out a bank loan at current 3% (deductible) interest rates and leaving the rest of your money in the market?
The "sell" of these things is the "guaranteed 4% return." But read the fine print very, very closely. 4% of what? What happens when the market drops? What happens to that math when you take out a loan to fund your real estate purchase? If you take out all that money, what do your heirs actually get -- and do you then need to pay for even more life insurance to make sure they're covered if you're using yours as an investment vehicle?
But hey, do your own analysis. But don't base it on the rosy projections -- base it on whatever someone will actually guarantee you, in writing. Because that's what you're going to get. And compare that to what you could do yourself at Vanguard -- because that's really what this option is comparable to. Then evaluate any real estate deals on top of that -- borrowing from the cash value (using math that is, once again, based on the guarantees), vs. taking out a commercial loan vs. borrowing from your 401(k) or other options you may have. Oh, and don't forget to evaluate the cost of any life insurance coverage you need to make sure your family is covered.
The truth is you build wealth one day at a time. There are a ton of people out there selling ideas to move that timetable forward. But I'm very, very suspicious of anything that looks like three-card monte -- particularly when it's being sold by someone who makes a commission every time you move the cards around.
