Which one is better, that's pretty much a circumstantial question. it depends on your need. insurance, term / whole is something that you buy to full fill your personal and financial need, it also depends on how much can you afford and for how long. since am in love with these financial tools, am gonna give you a lesson 101 in life insurance :)

i believe you'r in mid 20's, single, if you were married, ud be talking about this with your husband and not here :). If you'r purpose of buying a life insurance is solely for the reason that , in case god forbid something happens to you, which is you die , you want your beneficiary to get the money, then you should buy whole life insurance. now yes you might argue, why cant you buy a term, 5 yr, 10, 20, geez now days they even have 30, and your argument could be right, but can you guarantee, that you'd die within 5 yr or 10, or even 30 :) NO.. well unless ur planning to commit a suicide, but then remember theres a 2 yr exclusion period, after two year you could try that too :)

let suppose you own a house, ur mortgage is 250k, 15-30 yr term, then if your purpose is to have a life insurance, enough to pay off the house, incase you go to god, then you should just buy a term, long enough to cover the term of your mortgage, coz then that would be ur primary reason. 

now lets suppose, you just opt for a term, say 20 years, ur 22 now, after 20 years, u become 42, and your insurance is gone. but your need is still there, and if you'r not healthy by then, then even if you want to buy whole or term, ur premium will be way too high, atleast 350-500 a month for prolly a 250k, policy. which in 20 years wouldnt be a whole lot, may be a lot to go shopping but not a lot to cure financial burden. 

now there are several term insurance, than you can buy as term, but you have an option to convert them to whole life in future, you can opt that now. since it will be cheaper, you dont have to worry about the big payments and so forth. 

if you'r already making money, then just go buy a whole life, you can start with small amouth, with option to increase the amouth ( face value) in future. that will give you an option to increse the policy as your need gets larger . 

now there are other insurance, such as variable whole life, universal whole life and so forth, that you can buy, very similar to whole life, and your premium, or i should say portion of ur premium will be invested in stock market, or mutual funds within the policy,so you can actually still have the face value as a benefit, and accumulate money too, tax deffered ( now thats a diff lesson ) 

theres one other benefit of whole life, lets say you buy a whole life, 250k policy, you'r premium will be about 150-200 a month. how the whole life works is, as you pay, i guess about 10-12 years. the policy will be fully paid for, meaning, the cash value of the policy, will by itself generate sufficient money to cover your premium. 

remember these whole life policy isnt just designed to pay only if you die, you can actually accumulate money within the policy that you can borrow in the future. ofcourse if you do not choose to pay after 10-12 years, your policy would still be valid, but then you wouldnt accumulate cash value, as you would if u kept paying the premium. 


anyways, more than life insurance you should think about openning, ROTH IRA FIRST...open a savings account, save atleast 4-6 month of your expense, and go on from there. 

in the mean time, if u have to, then buy term insurance. afetr u get married, then your situation would change, then you can buy whole life :)

sorry for the typos . 
and yea term you can buy for any, if u buy whole life, buy from mutual companies , the ones that are not traded , such as NYL, MASS MUTUAL, MUTUAL OF OMAHA