...and invest in mutual funds than it is to put so much money into whole life insurance?

No!

First off, it is foolish on the face of it that you can create an unassailable financial foundation by putting your money at risk in mutual funds.  One has only to look back over the history of mutual fund performance to recognize that to be an untruth.

We're not talking about the ‘hypothetical' performance of any one or all mutual funds.  The suggestion that mutual funds have delivered a ten or twelve percent return over the last so many years does not prove anything.  The fact that over that same period of time individual investor performance after taxes, fees, commissions, inflation, and the demands from life's surprisingly unsurprising surprises is about one percent seems much more relevant.

We are not suggesting that there's something wrong with investing of any kind or specifically investing in mutual funds.  Mutual funds may have a place in your personal economy.  To suggest that they can replace the real money that you need in the foundation of your personal economy is foolish.  That would be akin to suggesting that the first place you should begin an investment program is at the black jack and crap tables in Las Vegas.

Moreover, in my three plus decades of experience, I have never met a single person that followed that model and built an unassailable financial foundation, much less achieved wealth. On the other hand, I've met dozens - if not hundreds - who have found financial ruin at the end of that path.

The obvious problem with this strategy is that it doesn't build a foundation of secure money that you control. Instead, buying term insurance and investing in mutual funds puts your foundation money at risk and leaves your family security at the mercy of a tight budget both in the event of economic downturns and physical disaster. What are you going to pay first, your term insurance premium or the electric bill?

The idea that you can buy term life insurance and invest in mutual funds to secure your future and that of your family was a terrible idea when it was introduced to Americans by a high school coach with a part time insurance sales job in 1977, and it's a bad idea today.

It guarantees only that it guarantees nothing.