You're looking at a policy illustration, maybe your first one. Before you sign anything, ask the person who built it one question: how much of my premium sits above the target? The answer tells you more about what this policy will do for you than any glossy page in the proposal.
Quick background. Target premium is the level the carrier uses to set agent compensation and recover its own costs. It's a pay benchmark, not a funding plan. A policy built for cash value keeps the base premium, and with it the target, small on purpose, then routes most of your money in as paid-up additions. That split between base premium and PUAs is the single biggest design decision you'll make.
So what does a good answer sound like? Something like this: the base is near the minimum the carrier allows for your age and health, most of your funding goes in as PUAs, and the policy is set up to be max funded toward the legal limit in the early years. If instead you hear that the whole premium is base, or the agent changes the subject, keep asking. You're allowed to understand what you're buying.
And let's be fair about the money. Your agent earning a commission isn't a problem. Real design work deserves real pay, and I say that as a licensed broker who does this work. The question was never whether the agent gets paid. It's whether the design points at their benchmark or at your cash value.
Max funding has a legal ceiling. Push past the MEC line and the policy's loans and withdrawals lose their usual tax treatment, so a good design leaves margin. And any policy loan you take later reduces your available cash value and death benefit until it's repaid. Neither is a reason to skip the strategy. Both are reasons to design it carefully.
We keep a running list of questions for your agent, and the get started page walks the whole path. For the deeper education on what target premium measures, Lifetime LOC teaches it, and this week's LIFE Pod episode is Carlo and me talking it through out loud.