I sell these policies, so read this with that in mind. But after years of doing it, I've turned people away more often than you'd guess, because a policy sold to the wrong situation fails, and a failed policy costs the client real money and me a reputation. Here's who I think should wait.
If you don't have an emergency fund, wait. A policy's early cash value runs thin by design, and it can't be your crisis cash in year one. The first surprise transmission repair either gets paid from real savings or it gets paid by gutting the policy you just started.
If you can't sustain the funding for at least five to seven years, wait. These contracts reward the person who shows up every year through the slow early stretch and punish the one who quits in year three, when costs have been paid and compounding hasn't. Starting a policy you'll abandon is strictly better left undone, a theme the surrender conversation makes painfully clear.
If your income swings hard and the design has no flexibility built in, wait, or fix the design first. And if you're carrying high-interest credit card debt, that fire needs putting out before you build anything beside it.
Last one, and it matters: if someone pitched you this as a way to get rich, wait until you've recalibrated. It's a place to store and grow money safely, with guarantees, liquidity, and a death benefit. Steady is the promise. Rich quick was never on the menu.
An agent who thinks everyone should own one of these is a salesman, whatever his title says. The product has a right fit, which deciding what the policy is for maps out, and respecting the wrong fit is what makes the right one credible. If you read this list and none of it describes you, then the waiting-costs-money math in what waiting a year costs applies to you in full.