The arithmetic is easy. $18,000 on cards at 24% costs about $4,300 a year in interest. The same balance as a policy loan at 5% costs about $900. Move it and you save roughly $3,400 in the first year alone.
That math is real, and it's also the part everyone already gets right.
Credit counselors have watched this pattern for decades with home equity loans. The balance gets consolidated, the cards show zero, the spending that created the balance never changed, and within two years there's a fresh $18,000 on the cards plus the consolidation loan still sitting there. The household ends up with more total debt at two different rates.
So before the loan request, find out where the $18,000 came from. If it was a medical event or a stretch of unemployment, the cause is over and consolidating is a clean move. If it came from spending more than the household earns every month for four years, the loan buys a lower rate on a problem that's still running.
There's also a floor on how much of the balance to move. If the cards would take twelve months to clear on their own, the interest saved is small enough that a loan against the death benefit isn't obviously the better trade. The move pays for itself on balances that would otherwise run three years or more.
Then set the payback. Take the payment you were making on the cards and route the whole thing at the policy loan instead. At $600 a month, $18,000 clears in about three years and the death benefit comes back with it. Dropping to what the policy requires, which is nothing, is how a three-year loan becomes a fifteen-year loan.
Keep one card open with a low limit for the things that need a card, and take the rest out of the wallet. Closing them all drops your available credit and knocks the score down, which matters if a mortgage or a refinance is anywhere in the next few years.