Retirement Savings Strategy

Throwaway account.

Recently met with a financial advisor who is a friend. I trust him and trust that he would make the best decision for me that he truly believes in for my future. He works for Northwestern Mutual.

I (23M) make $140k per year and wife (22F) makes $53k per year. We net roughly $11k a month after taxes. Our living expenses equate to roughly $4k every month between rent, utilities, groceries, and happy spending (no debt on cars, house, student loans, etc.). We try to keep this strictly under $4k, and anything left over goes into our brokerage account.

For retirement, my financial advisor has advised my wife to invest 5% in her company's ROTH 401k because that's how much her company will match, for me to invest the full $22.5k in my company's ROTH 401k (only 2% match) and for our final retirement investment, to invest in one million dollars worth of permanent life insurance for each of us with the intent of it being an ultra safe retirement account (and obviously with the perk of it is life insurance). We will withdraw from this once we hit whatever retirement age we want, and can alternate between withdrawing from this account, and our 401ks depending on how well the market is doing and if the 401k is up or down. The life insurance premiums equate to roughly $2100 a month. We have been paying into it for 3 months or so now. All of this retirement spending equates to roughly $4k per month.

That leaves $3k a month we are saving/investing in a brokerage account with intentions of eventually buying a house one day.

I again trust my financial advisor, but the permanent life insurance has horrible reviews everywhere I turn to read. I am fairly financially illiterate so I was just very trusting in him. Would we be better off having term life insurance for a short time period, and investing the remaining $1900 or so a month that was going into the permanent life insurance into our brokerage account? Wouldn't that also leave those funds liquid so we could pull them out for a house if we wanted instead of them being stuck in a retirement account?

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read and help.

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EDIT: I hope the people who commented will see this, if whole life insurance is so bad, is it better to invest all of that money that is being paid there into our brokerage account? Financial advisor friend is also in charge of the brokerage account and I'm not exactly sure what it's invested in.

Second edit to add: I hope everyone knows I am reading the comments and taking your feedback gratefully and seriously even if I'm not responding. Did want to ask though, is the roughly $6k a sad pile of money I have burned away, or is there any recouping that?

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