Financial products come in a wide variety of “flavors.” With life insurance, you can get coverage that is very plain vanilla, like a fairly simple term or whole life policy, or you can add layers and layers of nuanced features--as with Indexed Universal Life Insurance, or IULs. But my experience with IULs has taught me that the devil is in the details.

Here is a quick rundown of IULs and why you should stay away from them.