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Why do Wives Prefer Annuities?

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Before everyone starts yelling gender discrimination, we know that husbands can prefer annuities too.

However, it is not uncommon for us to have a conversation with men who let us know right from the get go, “I don’t like annuities,” but I have to do something to take care of my wife if I’m gone. As guys, we typically think of ourselves as providers and view it as our responsibility to provide for our families. This should not be construed as being a denigration of  women (although my wife would tell me I’m digging myself into a hole right now) but rather a somewhat stereotypical view of men and stereotypes can have some basis in fact.

So why would many wives like annuities? Well, it’s not actually the annuities but rather what they offer that appeals to most wives. Annuities offer a stable lifestyle by providing a stable, safe lifetime income. Annuities are as close as we can come to a “set-it and forget-it” retirement.

Watch Dick and Eric explain to husbands why their wives prefer annuities.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Read the article that prompted this weeks entry.

Guess what? Your wife loves annuities

Recently, I was speaking in front of a national gathering of individual investors and traders about a topic that most of these market mavens cared nothing about … annuities.

Because this event was located in a tropical location, these future Gordon Gecko’s were accompanied by their wives, who just happened to be sitting by their loving masters of the stock universe during my presentation.

As it always happens when I speak at these events, as soon I start pointing out that annuities should be in place for lifetime income, lifestyle, and a worry free retirement that doesn’t involve the stock market, wives start elbowing their husbands as a reminder of who wins all arguments.

My 14-year-old daughter’s friend, Eloise, pointed out in a recent shuttle service I provided to their dance class, “every time my mom and dad argue about anything, it seems like my mom wins … so I think my mom has all the power.”

As my daughter immediately agreed and said that it’s the same in her house as well, I turned to Eloise and said that no truer words had been spoken, and that she is way ahead of the game with her insight.

As you know, your wife could give a hoot about finding the next great stock or guessing the future price of gold. Your wife cares about one thing and one thing only … lifestyle. Lifestyle to her is not a five-star mutual fund^. Lifestyle to your wife is knowing that she will have enough money to live comfortably if something happens to you. It’s being able to go see the kids and grand kids. Lifestyle to your wife has nothing to do with the Dow Jones or anything related to Wall Street. The only thing that she cares about (if she told you the truth, and might have already) is having enough money coming into the checking account for the rest of her life.

Here’s where the love affair with annuities comes in. When you add up your pension (if you are so fortunate), Social Security payments, and other investment income, there might be a gap in the amount of required that needs to be filled. Annuities are the only strategy that can provide a lifetime income stream that you and your wife can never outlive. When I mention that statement, that’s when your wife’s elbow hits your rib cage as a subtle reminder that this is the only type of investment she cares about. [Read more from MarketWatch on why Your wife loves annuities…]

Millions of Pensions Dumped – Can Annuities Fill the Gap?

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Every time you turn on the news it seems we are bombarded with information on pension reform or the scaling back of retirement benefits. In 2012 Ford and General Motors began offloading their pension liabilities and based upon a recent AON Hewitt survey many other business are considering following suit.

What will that mean for the retiree who counted on that lifetime income? What options will they face? Is it doom and gloom or perhaps a new opportunity to take better control of their own retirement?
Watch as Dick and Eric examine this changing trend in retirement funding, what opportunities it creates for individuals and how annuities may play a role in creating a pension styled lifetime income.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Over the last 12 months we have reviewed lump sum buyout opportunities with many individuals and discussed whether or not an annuity might work for their situation. When we ran the numbers – some individuals were better off with their company options when it came to **guaranteed levels of income… but until you run the numbers based on each individuals situation you can never be sure.
See the report from insurancenewnet.com that led to this weeks entry below.

Survey: More Employers To Offer Lump-Sum Payouts In 2013

LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill., Feb. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire/ –Last year marked a watershed moment in retirement benefits as numerous companies decreased their pension risk exposure by offering participants a one-time lump-sum pension payout. A new survey by Aon Hewitt, the global human resources solutions business of Aon plc (NYSE: AON), reveals more employers plan to follow suit in 2013.

Aon Hewitt surveyed 230 U.S. employers with defined benefit plans, representing nearly five million employees, to determine their current and future retirement benefits strategies. According to the findings, more than one-third (39 percent) of defined benefit (DB) plan sponsors are somewhat or very likely to offer terminated vested participants and/or retirees a lump-sum payout during a specified period, also known as a window approach, in 2013. By contrast, just 7 percent of DB plan sponsors added a lump-sum window for terminated vested participants and/or retirees in 2012.

“There is no question, employers are looking for new ways to aggressively manage their pension volatility,” explained Rob Austin, senior retirement consultant at Aon Hewitt. “In 2012, many DB plan sponsors were exploring options and planning their strategies—we think 2013 will be the year when many more actually implement large-scale actions such as offering lump-sum windows. Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) premiums will begin to increase in 2013 and 2014, which will increase the carrying cost of pension liabilities and give plan sponsors an economic incentive to transfer those liabilities off their balance sheet.” [Read More…]

Will a Collapsed Dollar Harm Annuities?

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Jack in CA asks; If the dollar goes into a nose-dive,  how safe will it be to own an immediate, fixed or hybrid annuity?

In figuring out how to best answer Jack, we have to speculate on the level or severity of the collapse – if we have total anarchy or a Zimbabwean type of inflation, the paper dollar would be worthless and so would most investments. Do we feel that is likely to happen in the near future? No. Now, that being said, common sense says that if you spend more than you make, eventually you will go broke and our government has to figure out a way to meet its obligations and payoff its debt.

Annuities; just like equities, bonds, and commodities; to name a few, can have a place in a well structured portfolio. Dick and Eric examine the potential effects that the collapse of the dollar would have on the annuity industry and address annuity strategies that are best suited for this particular situation.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Considering an inflation adjusted annuity? Check out this recent USA Today article from John Waggoner

Should you get an inflation-adjusted annuity?

An inflation-adjusted annuity aims to solve the problem by giving you an automatic cost-of-living increase every year. But the cost is steep.

Most people still have nightmares about math word problems: “If Nate has 37 red gumdrops and Hope has 43 blue feathers, what time will their train reach Altoona?”

If you have a 401(k) plan, you’re being asked to solve a similarly impossible problem: “Assume that R is the amount of money you’ll need to retire, X is the number of years you’ll live, Y is your rate of return, and Z is the rate of inflation. You have no idea what X,Y, or Z is. Solve for R.”

One solution is an inflation-adjusted annuity, which promises to pay you a sum that will rise with the cost of living every year until you die, much as Social Security does. Should you try one? Only if you expect to live long — and even then, you’d be better off waiting until interest rates rise.

The rule of thumb with 401(k) withdrawals is to start by taking out 4% of your portfolio the first year, and adjusting that amount upward for inflation each year. Most times, it’s too conservative: You’d need a $1.25 million portfolio to get an initial $50,000 annual withdrawal. But when the first few years are down years in the stock market, your withdrawals can simply aggravate your losses and increase the chance you’ll run out of money.

Because the stock market is unpredictable, to say the least, some people use an immediate annuity to smooth out some of the bumps in a portfolio. An immediate annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. You pay the company a lump sum, and they agree to pay you a set amount per month for the rest of your life. If you live to 120, you win. If you join the Choir Invisible the year after signing the contract, you lose, and the annuity company pockets your investment.

The payout is based primarily on an interest rate — what the company expects to earn on your lump sum. As a simple example, suppose you want to invest $100,000. According to Immediateannuity.com, a 65-year-old man could get $548 a month for life — a 6.58% payout rate.

The 30-year Treasury bond yields about 3%, and insurance companies are not magic yield-making wizards. Some of the extra yield comes from the money left on the table by annuitants who have gone to the great field office in the sky.

The rest comes from the insurance company’s own investments, which is why it’s good to choose a financially strong annuity company. You want a company that can still pay, even during economically stressful times. States do have **guaranty associations backing annuity policies, typically to at least $100,000, but it’s best to avoid shaky companies entirely.

While the annuity’s payout is decent, it’s fixed. Let’s assume that inflation averages 3% — the average inflation rate since 1926, according to Morningstar. The effects of inflation are cumulative: After 30 years of 3% inflation, your $548 will have the buying power of $220. Unless you plan to live on toasted plaster, you’ll have to find a way to offset inflation, and a fixed annuity won’t provide that.  [Read More…]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Dick: Today, we want to give a shout out to Jack in California.

Eric: You don’t know Jack.

Dick: I do know Jack. In fact, this is for and Jack and Sharon. Jack, hey, we appreciate the question. The concern today is what happens if the dollar collapses, what does that do to annuities?

Eric: Right. What’s it going to do to fixed index annuities and hybrid annuities? Excellent question. Now, we first have to define the collapse of the dollar I guess. If we look at it in a Zimbabwean sense . . .

Dick: Or Germany.

Eric: . . . where they’ve had, basically, a decimation of their currency . . .

Dick: Anarchy in the street.

Eric: . . . then the honest answer is nothing can save it.

Dick: Nothing’s going to save it.

Eric: In all honesty, it wouldn’t save the country. Social Security would be messed up. Your pension would be gone.

Dick: Right. Even having gold, you’d need to hire the A-Team to protect your gold.

Eric: Your interests.

Dick: I think that we’re all looking for that answer that is somewhere in the middle. We’re facing a lot of headwinds in our economy. Our government does not look very reliable, at this point, to make the right decisions.

Eric: Right. Peter Schiff is one of those guys that’s been calling for the collapse of the economy because of, basically, the overspending. I don’t think anybody would deny that, as a country, we’ve maxed out the credit cards. Until we start paying them down, we’re kicking the can down the road. We haven’t had a budget in, what, three years on a federal level.

Dick: The debt just keeps rising and rising, and it’s going to have to be paid back. The alternatives aren’t very good. You can raise taxes, which is political suicide, or you can devalue the dollar, which looks like everybody just raising their price. But really the value of the dollar is dropping.

Eric: Right. So your buying power is going kaput. Now, if I own an annuity, am I better off than if I don’t own an annuity?

Dick: Well, I’m going to answer that, but before I do, let me just say this, folks, the topic that we’re on today is complex. It is a very big concern that we talk about regularly with our clients. It’s very important that you do work with a good local advisor, somebody that actually gets it, works from a point of safety and diversification. That’s what we’re really going to talk about today. Your question, Eric, in terms of, if I have an annuity and the dollar starts to devalue, my question would be, same as yours: How far is the dollar devaluing, and did I set my annuity up to offset inflation?

Eric: Right. There are annuities that exist right now, hybrid style annuities, where the income rider is tied to something called the CPI or the Consumer Price Index.

Dick: Right. And immediates will . . .

Eric: They have the ability to, basically, be indexed to that. So those products exist right now if that’s one of the things you’re concerned with. You can set it up. Now, you’re going to start a little bit lower, typically, than you would if you took a level payout.

Dick: When you turn your income on, it’s going to start at a lower level. Yes.

Eric: Right. Now, depending on inflation or that index, you’ll get bumps in your income as those things increase. There are ways to dial in from that, but you’re making a choice to trade, perhaps a higher level now for future safety and security if those things do happen.

Dick: The other aspect of that for those of you that have means, that have the assets to work with, annuities may be one small portion or one moderate portion of your portfolio. It is not the end all and the be all.

Eric: No. We you always talk about asset allocation or diversification. You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s really that simple. So having some hard currency. We’ve talked about if you’re worried about the economy as a whole and our domestic crisis, and you think companies here are going to be impacted, you may make the decision to make some investments in companies that are either multinational or overseas.

Dick: Right.

Eric: There are lots of options in securities, bonds, hard currency, gold, silver, platinum.

Dick: Take care of all of it. I don’t want to say in summation, but should we avoid buying annuities with the current economic situation and if the dollar is going to start to see this impact?

Dick: Well, Eric, I think that as we look at this whole situation, I think we want to always be cognizant of how long annuities have actually been around. Annuities go way back to the Roman Empire. That’s where the word comes from, “annua,’ annuity.

Eric: I “annua” that.

Dick: You “annua” that. Then, as we move forward into our modern times, we have annuity companies that have existed for 300 years. Do you think they have seen some devaluing of currencies?

Eric: Oh, yes.

Dick: Do you think they have seen some revolutions? The answer to that is yes, and even those that are quite plentiful in the United States, that are in excess of 100 years old. Insurance companies have a proven record of being able to withstand deflation, inflation, world wars. Not that in a total collapse, an anarchy type collapse that they’re going to be unharmed, but are they worth a diversification in your portfolio to have an allocation towards annuities? I think that any reasonable prudence would say yes.

Eric: Yes. It’s worth considering for a portion of your portfolio.

Dick: Yes. Hey, Jack, thank you for the question. The rest of you out there that maybe now have more questions, send them in, and we’ll get to them as soon as possible.

Annuities vs (IUL) Indexed Universal Life – How do they compare?

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What are the differences between a hybrid index annuity and an (IUL) index universal life policy? Wow! Steve, we thought we were about the only ones who ever discussed this. Great question! The answer can typically be found by beginning with the end objective. In other words, what is the end goal for these dollars and when do you need them?

Be aware that:

  •  Cap rates on IUL policies are about 3 to 5 times higher than those on index annuities;
  •  There are IUL policies which allow you to add a rider that will **guarantee lifetime income;
  •  IUL policies if configured properly can generate a tax-free income stream;
  •  An IUL may NOT be the right choice for your **guaranteed lifetime income…

Dick and Eric discuss the differences between index annuities and index life insurance; both have become increasingly popular for retirement planning.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Indexed Universal Life Insurance Policies: The Perfect Option for Professionals and Business Owners

by Timothy R. Fussell

For a professional such as a doctor, attorney or CPA, the Indexed Universal Life policy is perfect for your retirement needs. Often as a professional, you operate as a P.A. being taxed as a sole proprietor, an S Corporation or a C Corporation, and under the tax codes you are limited to retirement account choices. The SEP IRA, Solo-401k or the UNI-401k, all allow you to save on a tax-deferred basis; but the maximum contribution limit is still the same $49,000.00.

Now let’s explore the IUL (indexed universal life) and why it is a better choice. As a professional of these types, your income level is much higher than average, so you max out your contribution very early in the year. With the IUL, there is no limit on how much money you can contribute—the money still grows tax-deferred, but with a several advantages.

Now comes the great part! In the event of a business need, the money in your tax-deferred accumulation account can be used, through interest-free loans, for the purchase of new equipment, to expand the practice, or just to carry you through a tough time. At retirement the money is paid to you in the form of tax-free loans against your account value. The income would be a lifetime income with of loss in a down market, and at the end of the income, your death, the face amount of the life insurance policy would still go to your heirs as a tax-free death benefit. The tax-free death benefit would, at any time, be the security to your family that their lifestyle would continue in the same manner to which they had become accustomed—a **guarantee the retirement account cannot promise. If, through a consultation with your insurance professional, it is determined that your life insurance needs exceed the desired amount of contribution in the IUL, a term life insurance policy can be added to meet your life insurance needs at a lower cost.

A business owner has many of the same needs but also faces many different challenges. The IUL is even more exciting in these cases. All of the benefits listed above still apply to the business owner, but if you are an S Corporation, you could have the option of making the premium contributions as a draw against the profits of the corporation and avoid the self-employment tax/social security tax, which could add to the benefits of the IUL.  That alone is a 13.3% tax savings!

To a business owner with a partner or partners, another issue is presented that makes an IUL a perfect choice. Should a partner/partners die, you would have the need for a Buy-Sell Agreement to determine the value of the buy-out of the deceased partner/partners. The best way to fund the buy-sell agreement is through life insurance policies. The buy-sell agreement would either be a cross purchase buy-sell or a stock purchase buy-sell. These differ based on your corporate structure. Your insurance professional should have a working knowledge of the two types of agreements and work with your CPA and attorney to make sure they are set up correctly. [Read more…]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: Today, we’re examining indexed universal life and how it would compare to perhaps a hybrid annuity or annuities in general.

Dick: Right. First of all, let’s say, “Thank you,” Eric, to Steve.

Eric: Steve up in Wisconsin for submitting his question. Please continue to submit your questions, and we’ll examine them as the weeks go on. So for those of you that submitted questions.

Dick: We’ve got some already.

Eric: We’ve got some in the hopper, and those of you that have questions, keep them coming.

Dick: Today, in comparing indexed universal life and it’s also called equity indexed universal life or EIUL, but the more technical, correct term would be IUL, very safety-oriented product. It’s a life insurance product and there are a lot of good comparisons we can do with that and annuities, so why don’t we just start off talking about the life insurance part, the IUL.

Eric: We don’t talk about life insurance too much here, so let’s talk about one, why someone would even compare in the sense of I’m going to think of it in terms of, if I’m not going to select an annuity for retirement income would I select an equity or in this case, an indexed universal life policy.

Dick: Or if I was looking at growth compared to… Well, I’m just saying if I was comparing the two for growth. Okay, maybe I’m getting– go ahead.

Eric: You’re good at jumping ahead.

Dick: Jumping ahead of you.

Eric: Darn it. So what we want is trying to grow the policy to the largest amount, so that we can use it for a retirement supplement. Because, really here we are talking about the living benefits of the IUL, in this case, being able to use it as a supplement for retirement. Now what it has is the ability to have a double digit cap compared to with the low, single digit caps, of today on the annuity world or on the hybrid annuity.

Dick: And that’s large Eric, because when we look at the caps on most annuities, the fixed index annuities which are referred to as the hybrid annuity, the caps are down below 5.0%. Some substantially down in the 2.0-2.5-3.0% range, so when we start talking about the IUL, now we’re looking at 10-12-15% caps, even.

Eric: Right, so we have growth potential.

Dick: Potential, right.

Eric: Because here we’re talking about index games, there is not that **guaranteed rollup side. So on the hybrid annuity side you’ve got those income riders that have some of those **guarantees.

Dick: Contractual **guarantees for the future income.

Eric: So that is the one comparison on the caps side. Now what are we going to use for withdrawals on the life insurance side? How are we going to get money out of this?

Dick: Well, if we take actual withdrawals, we’re going to pay taxes.

Eric: Taxes?

Dick: So we don’t want to take withdrawals.

Eric: Well, then why would we even consider this?

Dick: And when we compare it with an annuity, when you take withdrawals out of an annuity, you pay taxes. But there is a really nice aspect to the IUL, and that is you can borrow out of it, and it is just like the old, traditional whole life policies you can borrow out of it and not pay taxes on it and IRS has allowed that. On borrowed money, any time you borrow money from a bank or anywhere, there is no tax paid on borrowed money.

Eric: Now do I have to pay this money back?

Dick: Actually, technically you do.

Eric: But when do you have to pay it back?

Dick: Through your death benefit.

Eric: And that’s the key element here. It’s really part of the death benefit and that’s what makes it, basically you’re going to pay it off at some point in time.

Dick: Right.

Eric: Those dollars that you’ve accrued are going to get paid back at the time, when you’re gone basically, as that death benefit is disbursed.

Dick: Right. One of the things that I want to bring out is that, if you want to use the IUL folks, you cannot use your qualified funds or your IRA money, unless you’re willing to just go ahead and pay the tax on it and move it over. Then you have to do a real analysis on how that might…

Eric: Just as a reminder neither of us are accountants nor tax professionals so we would advise you to consult your tax professional when it comes.

Dick: Although, we work with this every day and constantly talk about the taxes.

Eric: So now is the government going to come in and take my tax benefit away?

Dick: Well, that is a question we are frequently asked. I am asked that on The Raw, I’m asked that on life insurance or life insurance that’s being used in more of a retirement account type situation, and the answer to that is, it can happen. It could happen. However, if we go back and look at other times where Congress has stepped in or the government…

Eric: Screwed us?

Dick: … took advantage of us? Typically, they have grandfathered us, so that if we are in a situation where, in good faith…

Eric: Great grandfather’s covered, I get screwed.

Dick: So if we operated in good faith and set this up, and did it under the current tax provisions and laws and by the way, this is the IRC, Internal Revenue Code 7702 provision same type of thing that the IRC 401k, same area that comes from, it’s the 7702. So if you see the 7702 Plan that’s what they’re talking about.

Eric: He wants to be an accountant.

Dick: It’s very legitimate, it’s very real and it works and a lot of professional people use this, because they can put large amounts of money in. They keep their principal safe. They lock in their gains. They’ve got annual reset. There are some wonderful things about it, but Eric, who’s it going to work best for and at what stage?

Eric: You’ve got to be in your accumulation stage it’s probably the easiest way. So young professionals perhaps, I’ve heard it called a Big Boy Roth, because you can dump oodles and oodles of money into it and let it grow. There is not a limitation to the contribution amount. Now they have to be dialed in the right way and that’s one of the things that…

Dick: A little secret.

Eric: Yeah, strategy wise, usually you have the smallest amount of death benefit that you can have on life insurance.

Dick: Which means you pay the least amount for insurance and the agent makes the least amount on…

Eric: … commission. So you can see how there could be a confliction amongst the person that might be trying to talk to you about this, so usually we see only larger clients.

Dick: I like that word, though, Eric, confliction

Eric: Confliction. I’ve got an ointment that takes care of that.

Dick: Let’s trademark that.

Eric: So yes when your conflicted agent comes in and says…

Dick: Yes, we need to make sure you’ve got plenty of life insurance. Let’s not go too far on this, because there are times when a lot of life insurance is good for heirs and different things. But the way to make an IUL really work well, and again back that original question I had posed and that was, what stage, and I am just going to go ahead and answer it.

Eric: Say 15 to 20 years.

Dick: Yeah, 40 to 50-years-old, that you can really let it sit.

Eric: You’re 15 to 20 years from retirement. You have to have at least that amount of time really, for it to really function well and that’s the key, I think. Because at that point in time, it starts to get the extra dividends, the extra pieces, the extra credits that can make it really hum. Then you can have a rider on there that has a loan provision for life, so you can treat it very much like an annuity, but you have to have the forethought to have done these 15-20 years before retirement.

Dick: Correct.

Eric: So if they haven’t done that, income **guarantee-wise.

Dick: It’s really based more on potential. Yes, now let’s talk briefly, because this is a long video, let’s talk briefly about the annuity and why the annuity would have certain aspects…

Eric: Advantages?

Dick: … and advantages over the IUL, because the IUL is pretty cool the way it works.

Eric: They’re very cool. I love them. I would say **guarantees though, especially **guaranteed lifetime income, for someone that’s nearing or close to retirement is the key. I don’t want to say it’s the singular piece, but it is the first and foremost.

Dick: Because with the IUL I have to have potential for growth, I have the potential for growth, and I have to get the growth through that potential, but with the annuity I have a contractual **guarantee.

Eric: Yes, and that’s the key. We’ve talked about the hybrid aspect, you also have other annuities such as immediate annuities, where you’re going to have payouts of your principal plus, **guaranteed for life. Now the insurance aspect without a rider, you could actually run out of basically, enough account value, because you have to keep the insurance in place long enough to die, because if you don’t die with any insurance left, you haven’t paid off your loans.

Dick: And probably, Eric the best advice that we can give you, beyond the general information we’ve just given you is work with an adviser who really understands how to compare these two, and, maybe it’s not one or the other, maybe it’s some of both.

Eric: Yeah, could be. It depends on your end goal. What do you want these dollars to do for you? So work backwards and work with an expert.

Dick: Steve, thank you for this question, and those of you out there who have questions, we’ve probably caused you in this video to have some more questions. Feel free to send those in to us and we look forward to answering them.

Eric: That’s right. As you can see, we’ll tackle just about any question as long, as it relates somewhat, to our annuities world. Thank you very much.

Dick: Thank you.

 

 

Is it Unfair to Compare Annuities to Investments

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Is comparing annuities to investment choices a mistake? A recent Market Watch article stated that was just one of the three major errors made by both financial professionals and consumers when evaluating annuities.

Eric and Dick examine comparing annuities to investments in this weeks video review.

**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Three annuity mistakes to avoid

What not to do when evaluating annuities for retirement

By Andrea Coombes

If you’re comparing annuities to other investment products, you’re making a classic mistake—and it’s just one of three major errors that consumers and financial experts make when evaluating annuities, according to a panel of experts at a recent MarketWatch Retirement Adviser event in New York that focused on income strategies.

“Both immediate and deferred annuities have been shown to have a very positive role in an overall retirement-income strategy, but the deployment of these instruments is often hampered by some very fundamental misunderstandings,” said John Olsen, president of Olsen Financial Group, and author of a number of books on annuities, including “Index Annuities: A Suitable Approach.”
The panel, moderated by MarketWatch senior columnist Robert Powell, also featured Farrell Dolan, principal with Farrell Dolan Associates, and David Blanchett, head of retirement research at Morningstar Investment Management.
Mistake No. 1: Unfair comparisons

One such misunderstanding—and it’s often made by financial experts, Olsen said—is to assess the value of a variable deferred annuity as though all of its costs “are nothing but pure overhead.” That can lead consumers to view such annuities as unreasonably expensive. [Read More…]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: Today we are going to talk about whether it is unfair or fair to compare annuities to investments.

Dick: Eric, I think that it’s the hardest thing in the world for all of us to stay off of comparing annuities to investments, and I think it is unrealistic to think that we would do any comparison; however, I think that’s where we get in trouble.

Eric: It’s the expectations game. So often when people come to us, they’ve been conditioned to talk about return, whether it be from a mutual fund^, savings account, whatever. Everything’s about return. What’s the return?

Dick: They spent their whole life accumulating this money so their focus has always been on that.

Eric: They are trying to figure out how can I get the biggest return rather than mitigating the risk necessarily with an annuity to get the biggest return in dollars, rather than return in rate.

Dick: What inspired us this week, reading this article by Andrea Combs that really gets into some of the things that we talk about on a regular basis; and that is why do we buy? Why do we choose annuities? There’s contractual **guarantees, there is cash flow, and that is what she really gets into, that there’s this transition that we go through that cash flow becomes king. Longevity of knowing that we’ve got money, no matter how long we live, and there is a third aspect which is maybe a little bit more parallel to investment, that is where you require secure level of growth, contractual **guarantees.

Eric: I like the idea of just saying it transfers the risk from me, as the investor or individual, to the insurance company. They are going to take care of doling out my allowance each month, hopefully, and that’s the income stream that I have confidence in. They’re insuring my future income stream, is how I look at it.

Dick: Past wisdom from the investment world has been that if we draw our portfolio down by a certain level, say 4%, 4½, 3½%, everybody’s got their own view of it, that somehow we can continue to do that and be invested. The last decade has shown us that that really can’t be relied upon.

Eric: In an era of 5% CDs, it’s easy to say, “I can pull of my 5% and never touch my principle.” If you looked today, if you can find a 5% CD . . .

Dick: It’s not there.

Eric: I could sell a few of those, if I could find a 5% CD. That world no longer exists, that safety, security aspect of getting those returns, necessarily. This is where if you need those returns that are a larger withdrawal than just pulling out your principle, and a lot of people do today, this is where annuity comes into play.

Dick: I was just going to say, again, talking about not being focused on the return. Unfortunately so many times folks, annuities are sold based on comparing them to investments, and especially the indexed annuity or the hybrid annuity where it’s stated that you’ve got upside potential to a downside risk; there is truth to that. The upside potential is pretty minimal, and the idea that it has outperformed certain investments, certain indexes, S&P 500 over certain time periods in history, it was ever intended to do that.

Eric: It’s not what they’re geared for. We’ve talked about it in the previous videos, in order for you to be happy, you look at the **guarantees. If you can be happy with what the **guarantees are offered through an annuity, then anything that you get above that . . .

Dick: It’s a pleasant surprise. It’s good news. You’ll never be surprised by an annuity by it going the wrong way. I have to qualify that a little bit. We’re talking more about fixed annuities here and not as much about variable annuity#. Because a variable annuity# is an investment, and yet, it does have some **guarantees.

Eric: It can have some **guarantees.

Dick: It can have, so there is some aspect about that that you have to say, “Maybe for some people, a variable annuity# may fit,” but again that’s a whole different discussion.

Eric: Sure. In her last point, she talks about annuitization, which is a really interesting aspect. We’ve talked a lot about hybrid annuities and the fact that you don’t have to annuitize necessarily, to get the same benefit that you would from annuitization. Her focus is on the stream that’s provided from an annuity.

Dick: For all practical purposes, we’ll just assume that her annuitization would also mean turning on income for life; a different terminology. We do find that with clients that . . . what would I call it, Eric? The depression mentality, where we can live off less so we’re going to, and yet, they’ve set this annuity up so that we can turn it on and turn on this income at a certain point of time and relax, enjoy what we have, and know we will never outlive our money. Yet we have these clients who have a tendency to hold back from that.

Eric: I think nobody wants to give up their principle. You worked hard and earned these dollars, nobody likes the idea of just . . .

Dick: Spending it.

Eric: You give it all to the insurance company and you get that allowance. That’s what really annuitization really is; it protects you on the income side. The income rider on these hybrid annuities does something very similar in a sense: Guaranteed income for life, but still allows you to get access. If anything is leftover, that can go on to your heirs. That’s, I think, the aspect about that type of annuity that’s really popular.

Dick: I think it helps people who wouldn’t normally annuitize to go ahead and take their income stream, because they know that they still have some access to the account value.

Eric: I think it’s really one of the things that we are finding really attractive right now because it does allow that flexibility. For people that are used to this return mentality that we’ve talked about, they still have that opportunity to hold on to those dollars a little bit. Not necessarily get the best return, but to get that income stream, have that safety/security.

Dick: Eric, when we talk about comparing annuities to investments, what’s the balance?

Eric: You have to look at the diversification. For me, when you’re looking at those two things, you have to look at protecting the foundation, and that’s where an annuity comes in. After that, hopefully investments can play a part in controlling for inflation and being out there.

Dick: Maybe a healthy way to compare annuities to investments would be in your own portfolio, in terms of what proportion of your portfolio do you want in security and safety for that income foundation or death benefit-type foundation as compared to what portion are you willing to put at risk?

Eric: Exactly. It’s to protect the foundation. How do you want to protect it? Are you comfortable protecting it in the headwinds that we have going on, or would you rather protect it with a rock-solid foundation?

Dick: I agree. Thank you, folks.

Eric: Thanks for tuning in today.

Hybrid Annuities have too many moving parts… Says Who?

By

What makes a Hybrid Annuity different from a Fixed Annuity? Answer: index strategies, an income rider, and the contractual **guarantees associated with the income rider.

What makes a Hybrid or Index Annuity better than a standard fixed annuity with an income rider? Answer: the opportunity to participate in the potential upside of index gains that can exceed the interest earned by a fixed interest only annuity.

The **guarantees may not be “sexy” but they form the foundation of why someone should consider a hybrid annuity. We all like the “potential” to do better — Dick and Eric tackle the moving parts of a Hybrid Annuity in this weeks second segment of this two-part series.

[embedit snippet=”video-specialist-button-hybrid”]

 

**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Enjoy our short Fog Lifter video…

“The Power of Indexing and Contractual Income Guarantees”

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Are Hybrid Annuities too Complicated?

A common complaint leveled at hybrid annuities is that they are too complicated and have too many moving parts. The Annuity Guys®, Dick and Eric, discuss why many folks in the media and investment world like to hobby-horse this point while missing the real reasons why these financial products work so well as a foundational allocation in thousands of retirement portfolios. The secret is “the non-moving parts otherwise known as contractual **guarantees.”

Contractual Guarantees – absolute **guarantees, no-moving parts.

Hybrid/Fixed Index Annuities – allow for upside potential of specified moving parts in addition to absolute contractual **guarantees.

Income Rider – addendum to an annuity contract **guaranteeing a future lifetime income plus additional benefits in some income riders (this is a contractual **guarantee).

Features, Benefits, and Facts:

  1. Annuity Owner Remains in majority control of the annuity’s cash account value during the surrender term and has 100% control after the surrender term.
  2. Full account value of the cash account passes on to heirs with no surrender or penalty charge.
  3. Guaranteed growth in deferral **guaranteeing a minimum future income. Example: Initial Premium $100,000 + 5% bonus **guaranteed growth of 7.2 percent deferred for ten years = $210,000 income account value producing a of $12,600 per year at age 70 with a single life payout.
  4. Payout percentages from the income account are based on age and a single or joint income need. Example: age seventy single payout 6 percent or joint payout 5.5 percent
  5. Fees for riders can be based on the cash or income account value and are charged to the cash account. Fees typically range from half of one percent (.5%) to one and a quarter percent (1.25%). This does not reduce the **guaranteed growth of the income account.
  6. May have a death benefit allowing the income account if it is larger than the cash account to be distributed to heirs over a five-year period.
  7. May have an increasing income as an inflation hedge.
  8. May have a Long Term Care Benefit.

Index Strategy Moving Parts:

(Index examples: *S&P 500, *Dow Jones Industrial, *Trader Vic (Commodities), *Barclays Capital Aggregate US Bond, and literally any third-party index may be specified as a measure for crediting interest).

[Read More…]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: Today, we’re going to talk about hybrid annuities. Do they have too many moving parts? Sounds like a flashback to maybe a previous episode.

Dick: Like one last week that we said ‘are they too complicated?’

Eric: This time, we talked about at the very end, all the moving parts. Now we’re going to get a little bit more detail as to, do they have too many moving parts?

Dick: That’s a good question, and I think that some folks would say, yes, it’s too complicated. There are too many moving parts. I think that you have to really weigh over who’s saying it and why they’re saying it; what their motive is.

Eric: Yeah. The first thing we should start out is where we started last week, in saying, why does somebody buy an annuity to begin with? It’s contractual to **guarantees.

Dick: Right. Exactly!

Eric: Safety, security, predictability. That’s why we like the hybrid annuities, is for those contractual **guarantees.

Dick: The moving parts, as we discussed last week folks, the moving parts are those things that are in addition to the contractual **guarantees; so those are the potential of the annuity. If you can be satisfied, and this is what we do with our clients, we help them to see where the contractual **guarantees actually do meet all of their concerns and their objections. Then if they can get some additional potential on top of that, then that’s a win-win.

Eric: Right. Let’s start with the base here. Typically, we’ve got this fixed indexed annuity as the base.

Dick: Right. That’s our chassis.

Eric: That’s our chassis. What then goes into making a fixed indexed annuity a hybrid annuity?

Dick: Typically, it will be an income **guarantee, and that income **guarantee will give a lot of different benefits, primarily knowing what your income is going to be at some point in the future that will help to offset inflation and know that you’ve got some type of increasing income at some point in time.

Eric: Right. We talk about that income rider quite a bit because of what it offers. It’s one of those things that’s attractive to people because they remain in majority control.  We’ll go into detail in the article about what majority control means. It’s also a way of taking assets and being able to pass it on to a beneficiary or heirs.

Dick: Yes. It’s not like the immediate annuity where you give the lump sum away. There’s a count value.

Eric: Too often, people want the annuity, but they don’t want to give up that control.

Dick: Correct.

Eric: That’s what that hybrid aspect brings to this chassis.

Dick: It does.

Eric: Payout percentages, as good, better than . . .

Dick: Payout percentages, as compared to an immediate annuity, if you’re starting an immediate annuity today and you’re starting a hybrid annuity today, the payout percentage will typically be a little bit less. The beauty of it is, the immediate annuity pretty much has to be started within 12 months of the time that you’ve signed up or been approved for your immediate annuity. However, with a hybrid annuity, the idea of deferral says that it’s going to pay out a lot more at some point in time.

Eric: Right. If you’re just looking for the most money you can get right now and you don’t care about anything else, then look at an immediate annuity.

Eric: If you’re wanting flexibility plus those **guarantees, that’s where the hybrid comes in.

Dick: Not only that, but there situations where the immediate annuity isn’t that much more.

Dick: Folks are more interested in that account value, if they don’t use it all up, going on to the heirs.

Eric: Right. That’s been one of the biggest reasons people are drawn toward the hybrids. The income rider tends to be the first piece that we highlight. Is it a moving part?

Dick: No. That’s what’s good about the income rider, is that it is a contractual **guarantee. That is part of that chassis that is **guaranteed.

Eric: I would say, if you’re looking at a fixed indexed annuity, what makes it a hybrid is, again, is adding that income rider component, that **guarantee of income in deferral. Basically, you’re building that account base in deferral.

Dick: Another aspect that lends itself to the hybrid aspect of the annuity is the idea that you can get some upside potential without the downside risk. You’ve got a little bit of that variable annuity# flair to it with that. That’s where the confusion tends to come in.

Eric: Yeah. We’ve talked about this before, too. People will call up and we’ll talk to them and say, “I’m interested in a variable annuity#.” In the mindset of somebody, the variable aspect is because it has the potential of having varying rates of return.

Dick: Right, some increased potential.

Eric: Right. In this case, an indexed annuity has varying rates of potential, sometimes based off of, basically, those indexed components.

Dick: In the early days, Eric, of indexed annuities and what we now call hybrid annuities a lot, they were sold and people purchased them, or wanted them, based on these indexes that did have all of this fluctuation and movement in them. The reason for it was because it did protect the downside, it did give them upside, and the fact of the matter is, there have been many time periods when this type of an annuity has out-performed the stock market, but it was never intended to do that in the first place.

Eric: We’ll tell you right now, if your intent is to go out there and beat the market, don’t buy one.

Dick: Don’t buy one.

Eric: That’s not the purpose for a hybrid annuity.

Dick: It’s possible that you can do it.

Eric: Over a period of time.

Dick: But it’s not the reason. It’s not the purpose.

Eric: Right. Because what you’re trying to do with a hybrid is limit your downside.

Eric: You’re taking away that downside risk of being in the market because your principal is protected.

Dick: Exactly. Eric, we’re not doing a very good job of getting to our list here.

Eric: I was going to say, we’re going to get to the second point here very soon. It’s talking about some of the moving parts that are truly involved in the indexing components.

Eric: Dick’s done an excellent job of laying out an article here, so if you haven’t had enough time to watch us, you’ll see below, or in the links below.

Dick: Read it more in-depth.

Eric: We’ve got some additional details. Caps.

Dick: Caps, okay. My cap’s hanging right there. Let’s tie the caps into; first of all, what’s an index? Most of you folks understand that when we talk about an index, this could be any type of index. It could be an index . . . let’s use the popular ones.

Eric: S&P, NASDAQ.

Dick: Dow Jones, The Trader Vic’s. You could use a gold index. You could use a bond index; any degree of creativity.

Eric: Exactly. The index could be literally the temperature outside each day. It’s a benchmark on which you can measure something. The most popular ones are those that are tied to the stock market.

Dick: They do buy call options on these indexes, so that is the purpose, why we choose an index. When we look at the caps, folks, if the market goes up 10% in a given year, and your cap is 3% or 4%, which is about where caps are now. We have some exceptions, where caps are higher, but somewhere in that 3% to 4% range, market goes up 10%, how much are they going to get, Eric?

Eric: If the cap’s 3%, you’re going to get 3%.  That’s the limiting factor. You have no downside risk. If the market’s down 10%; 0. You’ll hear a lot of people talk, “Zero is your hero,” because you don’t have that backslide in case you had multiple down years. You don’t have to worry about recovering from a backslide. The worst that’s going to happen is that you stay on a level plane.

Dick: Right. One of the things that we didn’t really touch on, which I will just drop back to for a second here and then move on, that is one the income rider. Typically, that will have somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe a 7% **guarantee; 6%, 7%, we’ve even seen 8% for some time periods, which was a **guarantee. Even though you might have a 3% cap on the indexing for your cash account, your index account could be significantly higher.

Eric: That’s why that income rider is so popular, because while it’s in deferral, you can get those **guaranteed growth periods.

Dick: Right. If we move into the spread?

Eric: Personally, I’m a big fan of the spread; and that’s not peanut butter and jelly, necessarily. I like spreads because with a standard fee, you have typically a percentage that’s pulled out every quarter, of your account, period after period. Let’s just use a round number.

Dick: You’re referring to the income rider.

Eric: Income rider fees.

Dick: Right. Okay.

Eric: You could have fees for other things, but the income rider fee, which is what makes a hybrid annuity really a hybrid, is having that income rider. There’s typically a fee associated. If that fee is ½%, that ½% is going to be pulled out on a regular interval, ir-regardless of whether or not you’re getting a gain.

Dick: Whether you had any interest earnings or not.

Eric: That’s correct. Spreads on the other hand, are typically higher than fees. A fee may be 50 basis points, ½%. You may see a spread of 1½% to 2%. The deal with the spread is the company only takes their portion if you have a gain. You’re giving up the first portion of any kind of gain that you could receive.

Dick: Right. Your account value cannot go backwards if you’re not earning with a spread.

Eric: That’s right. If you had 12 consecutive, or 10 consecutive, years of getting 0 return, whatever you put in principle-wise, would be **guaranteed to be that same level.

Dick: Right. I think that the spread has a definite place, and it should be considered in the overall picture. As we’ve experienced with certain annuities that don’t have a spread, their contractual **guarantees are so much higher for the income. Since that’s the client’s primary objective, then it makes sense to go with the fee over the spread, using that particular annuity. You have to weigh it against all those factors.

Eric: Exactly. Typically, you’ll see the spread number being higher. It’s just attractive when you’re looking at predictability, that you know that you’re not going to have any kind of negative impact just because you don’t have a return.

Dick: Another idea of using the spread is when the market has . . . when you’re using it in indexing, and maybe you’re doing an average of a year’s worth of indexing, and they will say, “If your average growth of the index for the year was 10%, you’re going to have a 3% spread.” That means that first 3% of that 10%, you don’t get.  On the other hand, if that year there was a 5% negative growth, or 10% negative growth, then your 3% spread would not be applicable, because there’s no earnings, no growth there.

Eric: Right. Where we typically see the spreads are on something that have more upside potential a lot of the time.

Dick: Right. Did I actually do the math where I said, “If you’re up 10% and you have a 3% spread, you would have 7% gain”? Let’s move on and talk about participation.

Eric: That’s the easiest thing, in the sense of it’s taking a percentage of the growth and you get a participation percentage, typically. Back in the good old days, it might have been 50%. If the gain was 10% of the market, you would get ½.

Dick: I was always a fan of participation, but because of the financial crisis we’ve been through, the Great Recession, we’ve seen all that pare back to where participation rights are now down around 25%. The market goes up, let’s use that 10%, it’s easy to figure. If the market goes up 10% and I get 25%, what did I earn?

Eric: 2½.

Dick: 2 ½%, okay.

Eric: I got my calculator in my pocket.

Dick: You’re good, Eric. Okay. We already touched on the average a little bit, in using the spread, so maybe we’ll move on to the next one. This one’s very interesting. This one, I see messed with a little bit. When I say messed with, folks, I see you messed with a little bit, unfortunately, from advisors that overstate this particular strategy.

Eric: Are we talking about the monthly sum?

Dick: Monthly sum. The monthly average.

Eric: Look at the potential.

Dick: It does have good potential. It just doesn’t usually work out, Eric.

Eric: 2% a month. There’s 12 months in a year.

Dick: If I get 2% each month, and I add those together, that means I’ve got 24% potential. If the market goes up 24%, and it does at 2% a year, I get all 24%. Is that correct?

Eric: 2% a month.

Dick: A month, yeah, keep me straight.

Eric: For the whole year, I’ll get 24%. That’s my potential in a given year.

Dick: What’s the worst thing that can happen in that year? If you’re going up 2% every month, what’s the worst thing that could happen maybe in that 10th or 11th month?

Eric: That’s where the market loses 20% in one month.

Dick: That couldn’t wipe it all out, could it?

Eric: Yes, it can.

Dick: It can?

Eric: There’s no downside protection.

Dick: Folks, that’s the problem. The monthly sum and the monthly average has a cap on the upside, but it has no cap on the downside. The companies have figured out that, yes, there are some years where you really do capture and you get those big, big returns, and it feels good and it looks good. There are times to actually use this strategy.

Eric: Now is probably one of them, actually.

Dick: It very well could be.

Eric: I always call it the homerun versus the single. We talk about annual point being the single. You get lots of singles, but the monthly sum is truly going for the homerun. We have seen returns out there in the 14%, 15%, 18% range.

Dick: Right. More often than not, what do we see?  A big 0. We may see a client go for 3, 4, or 6 years before seeing any interest crediting to their account, and that’s pretty tough for people. They’re not going backwards.

Eric: Right, and we should qualify that. While you’ve got not downside protection on the month within the index, that doesn’t apply to the account value. The account value, the worst it’s going to do, again, is 0. Even if your index finishes down on the year, what will be applied to your account is basically 0 gain.

Dick: Okay. Now we come to a very interesting one, Eric, called the blend.

Eric: The blend, the blender.

Dick: We put it in the blender. We’ll do one of these. Here we go. Let’s make this real simple. A blend is like a balanced portfolio: You put 50% in stocks and you put 50% in bonds. However in this case, what we’re doing is we’re putting 50% in some popular index. It’s not really going in the index, as we’ve discussed many times. It’s using it as a measure. We’re putting 50% in towards an index and we’re putting 50% into . . . I’m just using 50%, folks. It could be 30% or 40%, but it all equals 100%. 50% into a fixed rate of interest. We’re just saying ½ the account goes into fixed rate of interest, ½ the account goes into stocks.

Eric: Right. Then you dump them both in the blender.

Dick: Right. Exactly. There’s no cap on the 50% where the stocks are at.

Eric: Which is what makes it attractive to [inaudible: 16:08]. You’ve got unlimited upside potential on the blend side. They all have limiting factors.

Dick: It’s tricky.

Eric: What’s in that fixed rate bucket is typically, right now it’s at 1% or 2%. The best that 50% is going to do is 2%

Dick: Yeah, 2% or 1½%.

Eric: You can get 10% or 20% over here, but it has to be then blended with that fixed rate bucket.

Dick: Typically, you could take, in a year where you had the market up 10% and you had a 2% bucket and you had a 10% bucket, and they were both equal in this case. You put in the blender, you stirred it all up, what are you going to come out with?

Eric: 6%.

Dick: About 6%. Boy, you are good. Folks, we’ve done the math for you on these. When you’re on this website, we’ve got some formulas, and we broke it down in simple terms so that you can read it slowly and get a good understanding of what we’re talking about.

Eric: We try to give you at least a cursory idea of what to expect when you’re seeing some of these terms flown about.

Dick: We’ve probably . . . hopefully, we have not. Hopefully, we haven’t thoroughly confused you. What we really want you to take away from this is that these are the moving parts that give you greater potential. These are not the specific reasons, for most of you, why you would actually buy or choose to allocate to a hybrid annuity.

Eric: If you’re buying for these bells and whistles, the fit’s probably not right.  If you’re buying for the base chassis, and you can live with that **guarantee from the income rider and from the annuity aspect and the income side, or the estate planning side, whatever that need is, if this fits your need and you can just understand that there’s the potential for a little bit more extra.

Dick: This is where a good advisor comes in, because they can look at the potential, they can look at what’s going on in the economy in general. Folks, they can help you make a good decision on which way to go in this indexing. Even if the indexing really produced nothing and you had good contractual **guarantees, which is what you should have your sights set on, you’ll be satisfied.

Eric: Exactly. Buy for the basics, and be happy with the extras.

Dick: Right. Exactly.

Eric: Hope we’ve broken down and explained to you the ‘says who’ portion.

Dick: Yes, ‘says who’. Look behind the veil a little bit and see who’s telling you that they’re too complicated, because maybe from that person it is too complicated. For someone who understands a hybrid annuity and what it does for the client, it can be very effective as a good retirement financial tool.

Eric: Thanks for tuning us in today.

Dick: Thank you.

Annuities – The Best Financial Product No One Wants!

By

Why would an insurance actuary call annuities the best financial product no one really wants? And why would he go on to say that in retirement he might not even purchase an annuity himself even when he knows they make good sense?

Dick and Eric discuss why individuals purchase annuities – even though they don’t want to…

**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Annuities: The best financial product no one really wants

“Annuities are not sexy. You hand over your money to an insurance company who then puts you on a seemingly stingy allowance for the rest of your life”

People who save through RRSPs have a choice to make when they retire. They can transfer their RRSP balance to an RRIF and draw it down at their own pace (subject to a minimum) or they can buy an annuity.

The simple fact is, an annuity may be a great idea, but hardly anyone buys one.

It is easy to blame low interest rates, which depress the amount of annuity income one can buy these days. But annuities were not in vogue even when interest rates were much higher a dozen years ago.
‘Let me be honest. When I retire, I am unlikely to buy an annuity myself, even though I’m an actuary and know all the advantages’

Economists have come to refer to this phenomenon as the “under-annuitization puzzle.”

Buying an annuity seems like an elegant solution since it removes the risk of outliving one’s assets (what actuaries like to call “longevity risk”), it eliminates the hassle of making investing decisions after retiring and the income stream it provides is super safe (it really is, at least in Canada). So why are they so unpopular?

In recent years, however, the economics of annuities have improved greatly. Annuities in Canada now generally return 95% to 100% of premiums paid. In fact, with the recent fall in long-term government bond yields, annuities now return more than 100% return of premiums paid in many cases. The economics, then, can no longer be blamed.

Another often-cited reason for not annuitizing is that the retiree wants to leave a large lump sum to a survivor in the case of early death. This argument, however, does not hold up on closer examination.
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Even when people have little or no interest in leaving assets behind for their heirs, they tend not buy annuities. Moreover, annuities can come with generous survivor income options, if one is prepared to pay for them. Another excuse shot down.

There are other explanations for this puzzle, including: The desire to have money on hand in retirement for a rainy day; the recognition that income needs might vary and the fixed income from an annuity might not match up well; and a reluctance to give up the chance to do better by investing in equities within a RRIF if stock markets do well.

Let me be honest. When I retire, I am unlikely to buy an annuity myself, even though I’m an actuary and know all the advantages.

I would be the first to admit this reaction is not entirely rational. The reason, plain and simple, is that annuities are not sexy. You hand over your money to an insurance company who then puts you on a seemingly stingy allowance for the rest of your life. [Read the Full Article from Fred Vettese at the Financial Post]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: The topic is annuities. The best financial product no one really wants.

Dick: Can you imagine that no one would want an annuity, Eric? Is that a true statement?

Eric: No, the people I talk to every day, everybody wants an annuity.

Dick: But that’s different. Folks, the people that we talk to may be someone like yourself that’s actually went to our national website, as Eric likes to remind me, international website.

Eric: International website.

Dick: But goes to our website and they’re already in the mindset of annuities.

Eric: Right, they’re doing their research. They’re doing the background on why this might work for them.

Dick: So we might be just a little bit skewed, do you think?

Eric: We’re taking it based off an article, and interestingly enough, it was written by an actuary who works for an insurance company. His comment and I love this, “Annuities are not sexy. You hand over your money to an insurance company who then puts you on a seemingly stingy allowance for the rest of your life.” Well, that sounds pretty pathetic, if you ask me.

Dick: I do have to say that, before I knew much about annuities, many years ago that never entered my mind, never crossed my train of thought. Would I rather have a new car, a new house, or an annuity?

Eric: Rather than an annuity. That’s not fair. Everybody would rather have a new car or a new house.

Dick: That’s right, and really when you think about it, and that’s a lot what this article gets into is we built this money up. We accumulate this money and we like the idea of hanging onto it, controlling it, investing it, whatever we choose to do with our money, but to hand it over to an insurance company and let them give us money back, it’s kind of a transitional state that we go through to make these types of decisions, and there has to be a pretty good reason behind it.

Eric: I come from a family of educators. I’ve talked about that before.

Eric: You know right now in Illinois, we’re fighting. They’re fighting to maintain their pension. Well, what’s an annuity really?

Dick: It’s a pension-style income.

Eric: I mean for today’s 401k investors they’re basically, when you get your retirement you’ve got this lump sum. Do you want to keep the lump sum or would you rather have a pension?

Dick: The vast majority of retirees before they retire and they have this choice, not all companies give this choice; but there are a lot of corporations that will give the employee the choice of a lump sum or a pension. Now the vast majority choose the pension. They’ve worked their entire life.

Eric: For the seemingly stingy income for life?

Dick: Yeah, and yet, even those that would take the lump sum, in many cases will turn right around with that lump sum, and buy a commercial annuity that they feel is a better option, than maybe the pension the company was going to offer. So we tend to get it when it comes to that lump sum that comes from the employer, but yet many times we’ve worked all of our lives, built up all of this money and what’s the purpose of it?

Eric: It’s mine. I want to keep it.

Dick: What’s it supposed to accomplish?

Eric: That’s exactly it. It’s just future spending. It’s not savings. Its future spending is what we’ve save for, but we don’t think of it in those terms. We think of it as “This is money I saved. I don’t want to give it to somebody and then have them, give me a seemingly small allowance.”

Dick: Right, and that’s where the insurance company’s job, their job is to look at risk, to manage risk, to know what’s realistic. You’ll have to read this report, folks and kind of get the gist of what this person’s saying, because he actually is an actuary and he’s really laying out that these insurance companies don’t always win on this stuff.

Eric: And he talked about annuities are much better—the design and what they payout in today’s era, is much better than they were 10-20-30-years ago.

Dick: Right, a lot’s changed.

Eric: You really do have an actuarial advantage to buying an annuity and he admits that, even though I know this advantage exists, I’m not so sure.

Dick: I might be standoffish when I first retire, but maybe as my age advances I’m going to be more apt to do this. This kind of brings me back to a lot of the buzz that is out there and things we talk about with the hybrid annuity but one of the things that appeals so much to folks, on a hybrid-style annuity is that they are able to control that lump sum. What we call majority control the first 10-years or so of an annuity. You have some surrender charges, so you control about 90% of it during that first 10 years, and those surrender charges decline, so after 10 years, you control 100% of it and you still have a lifetime income. And yet, if you haven’t used that money in your account, it can all go on to your heirs, your spouse, whatever is important to you.

Eric: Exactly. In his life point, I guess in summation here he talks about you know what? Everybody has, even if you have that lump sum investment you have, usually a portion that’s in equities and you have a portion as you get closer to retirement that we should all be moving into those fixed payments, bonds, CD-style. What would be wrong with taking those more conservative assets, turning that into an annuity and then just truly letting your equities run, and knowing you have that **guarantee that income coming on?

Dick: Well, Eric obviously this is what we talk to our clients about. We talk to them about balanced allocation. Not putting everything into annuities, not necessarily having everything in the market. Finding that balance that works for each individual, and so to me, he’s right along the lines of what we continue to explain to people.

Eric: Exactly, yes. He takes care of the foundation very well.

Dick: So Eric, would you say that an annuity is something that no one wants?

Eric: All right, there are a few people that want annuities.

Dick: Well, folks we’re not saying that an annuity is going to be the end-all and the be-all or exactly what you need, but you do want to look at it closely and determine where it might fit into your overall financial picture. We really appreciate you spending the time with us, today.

Eric: You have a great afternoon.

 

 

 

Study Finds Near Retirees Get Crushed! Can Annuities Help?

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A recent headline from the Yahoo Daily Ticker caught our attention – American Incomes Are Falling And Near-Retirees Are Getting Crushed: Study.

The report was based upon findings from Sentier Research, a data analysis company, and (to the surprise of no one who works with individuals in or nearing retirement) they found that the inflation adjusted incomes of those age 55-64 were down nearly 10 percent from December of 2007.

Dick and Eric examine how interest rates hovering near zero have impacted savers and near retirees, in addition to discussing how annuities can be utilized in these situations.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

An excerpt of the Yahoo report.

Annual incomes in the United States have dropped sharply in recent years, and near-retirees are getting hit the worst.

That’s the conclusion of a new study by Sentier Research, which looked at the trend in median U.S. household incomes since 2000.

Twelve years ago, after adjusting for inflation, the median household in the United States earned about $55,000 per year, reports Catherine Rampell of the New York Times, citing Sentier’s data.

Now, the median income has fallen to about $51,000.

The two age-groups that have been hit the worst in this period are households led by those in the 55-64 age group and those in the 25-34 age group. The incomes of the near-retirees have fallen by nearly 10% in the past three years.

This data explains why our economic recovery is so sluggish. [Read the Full Article]

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Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Dick: Today Eric, we’re going to talk about a subject that . . . we’ve just looked at a study, and this study basically talks about those folks that are near retirement just being crushed by all of the negative economic factors that have happened; their income, their assets, and different things. I guess this is something that you and I have experienced our own practice with this age group.

Eric: In fact I just talked to a gentleman earlier today who talked about, the last 12 years in his 401K, it’s just now back to where it was 12 years ago. Here’s a generation, he’s in his mid 50’s preparing for retirement, what’s he going to do? He is literally grasping, because what he anticipated having and what’s reality right now just aren’t happening.

Dick: When you look at the way 401Ks have been affected; IRA’s, 401K’s, all of this qualified money, you look at the property values, retirees, or those near retirement in that age group, and this age group we’re talking about is about 55 years old to 64. They don’t have that equity in their home anymore.

Eric: We all approached homeownership. For a lot of us, it’s our biggest investment. We put dollar after dollar into our houses anticipating when we get to retirement the equity is there. With the depression in the housing market, boom, that option for a lot of us has gone away. Not only do we not have the amount of equity, in some cases, we don’t have any equity.

Dick: It can be negative equity.

Eric: It’s been just devastating. The study talks about, the [inaudible: 01:51] Research Study, they’re talking about declines for this 55 to 64-year-old households are age range, the average income. When you factor the median adjusted income, so you’re looking at it at inflation-adjusted number, incomes dropping since December 2007 to now; almost 10%.

Dick: Pushing 9.7%, I believe it was.

Eric: If you think about the cost of gasoline, the cost of food, the things that impact our lives, I see it, I feel it, so you know as you get closer to a fixed income . . .

Dick: You start to sense the old idea of stagflation: Inflation is increasing, and yet, the incomes are decreasing. We find ourselves in a position of saying, “Where do we turn?”

Eric: You’re traditional, ‘I am going to put it in my [inaudible: 02:40].’ As you’re getting closer to retirement, you’re supposed to become more conservative, you don’t want to lose money; you don’t want to go backwards.

Dick: Based on our fed direction right now.

Eric: We’re all going to be saying, ‘We were Bernake’d.”

Dick: We’re being penalized if we’re in this age group, because the savings rates are so poor.

Eric: We keep on saying we’re trying to boost the economy; we’re trying to get the engines fired.

Dick: At the expense of what? Our retirees

Eric: We’re killing our retirees. The headline was ‘Crushing the Retirees’. They are literally getting crushed by 0-returns in their options.

Dick: When we turn even to annuities, and that’s our headline up here, ‘Can annuities help?’ Annuities are affected by these low interest rates.

Eric: Yeah. Let’s be honest, these insurance companies utilize investment vehicles as they hedge.

Dick: Bonds, treasuries, and the like to . . .

Eric: To take those dollars, they grow them, and that’s how they return those dollars back to those retirees. They’re getting the same level of constraints placed on them as many of these individual retirees.

Dick: Eric, one thing that I’ve seen and I think it’s unfortunate; I’ve seen some retirees, or those that are near retirement, they panic a little bit. I can understand why they panic. They want to make up, maybe for lost time or they want to make up for market losses. Whatever has caused this, sometimes they’ll tend to take more risk on than what maybe they should.

Eric: That’s the black/red syndrome. If you keep betting red, it’ll hit red sooner or later, won’t it? If you’ve given away all your chips, you can only spin the wheel so many times before you’re done. It’s the gamblers mentality. Like the guy I talked to, 12 years to get back to where we were 12 years ago. He’s not where he thought he’d be.

Dick: You really have to start where you’re at. We have seen those folks that were fairly-well positioned, that came through the financial crisis very well, but those are few and far between as compared to those that were following some of the traditional methods of investment and found themselves not doing so well.

Eric: They always say, ‘There’s something that makes money in every economy, for somebody.”

Dick: Timing.

Eric: The hard thing is, as we’ve got people in this age range, what’s been my . . . if we look at an annuity that’s going to be a potential for some of these folks, I like for someone who still has over 5 years of, basically, working years left.

Dick: Before you’re going to need to turn on that income stream.

Eric: Let’s look at hybrid annuities, because they have those **guarantees that it will roll up and defer.

Dick: They increase your income dramatically if you can leave them alone.

Eric: Right, and that’s the key. You have to be able to leave it alone. Let it set in deferral. For people that are panicking because they’re getting close and they don’t want to sit in the market and have another 12 years of 0 gain . . .

Dick: Or go backwards.

Eric: . . . it’s an option. It’s an option for a portion of those dollars. As I say, we talk about the foundational aspect of income. You’ve got Social Security in a pension, and then if you can stack a . . .

Dick: That’s going to get you to that number that you need.

Eric: Your basement, cover the foundation.

Dick: It’s going to cover the basic needs of life.

Eric: That hybrid is one of those options; it works well in that situation. If you’re a little bit closer to retirement, there’s other options in the annuity world. It’s the immediate annuity; it’s your self-directed pension plan. You can turn it on, you can set them up so that you get little bumps in your income, or you can set up so that you just turn it on, you can set and forget it. It’s there as long as you are. Then there’s, of course, the pre-issued side if you’re looking for . . .

Dick: With the pre-issued I think that a person would look at maybe just taking the yield off of the interest that’s coming in off of it and preserve that principle to reinvest into another pre-issued annuity or some other financial vehicle that’s available at the time, that’s a better choice.

Eric: It’s the old CD mentality, when you’re going to take your interest earned and use that as your income stream.

Dick: The big difference right now between the pre-issued and the CD is about 5% or 6%. It just depends on the situation.

Eric: Those are annuity options, and obviously, there are other investment options out there, as well. You have to balance: Guarantees, its risk/reward. That’s why we like annuities for that foundational aspect; it takes a little bit of the risk out.

Dick: Exactly. Eric, when we start to think in terms of retirees getting crushed, and what is the answer, I think we, folks, we want to state pretty clearly that there really are no silver bullets; there’s no perfect answers. There’s different financial vehicles such as annuities or could be bonds.

Eric: Paying stocks.

Dick: That are going to be the best in your situation. That’s where it really takes a good advisor to help determine what is going to best in your situation.

Eric: It’s weighing your options. We’re not a big proponent of putting all your eggs in one basket. We like asset allocation, diversification of assets, and asset classes. Look at what’s available to, and then make that decision based off those factors.

Thanks for tuning in today.

Dick: Thank you.

The Love Hate Annuity Relationship

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Every financial product has negatives and positives, how these products are presented or utilized by companies and advisors can lead to a vast array of emotions and opinions…. Hence, annuities are no stranger to this love/hate relationship.

Dick and Eric discuss some of the rumors that annuities face that often lead to the conflicting opinions among individuals considering an annuity in retirement.

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Below are some excepts of an article by “Coach Pete” D’Arruda president of Capital Financial Planning and host of Financial Safari Radio broadcast the stimulated the idea foe this weeks commentary. [Full Article]

Annuities Have a Negative Perception

Despite their benefits, annuities have received negative attention over the years for a number of reasons, including rival products seeking to discredit them, poorly constructed products in the space and inappropriate sales of the products. It is imperative potential annuity investors have all the right information on hand to make an informed decision.

While annuities are not for everyone, those who can benefit from them should not let common misconceptions dissuade them from using an annuity as part of a comprehensive financial plan.

The Top 5 Rumors About Annuities

  1. Every issued annuity is a variable annuity#.
  2. The impact of inflation is too great for fixed annuities.
  3. With penalties and surrender charges, annuities are just too expensive.
  4. Never use your IRA money to invest in an annuity.
  5. With a big name comes a better return.

Remember that securing **guaranteed retirement income in this volatile, low-rate environment is difficult – but not impossible. Do your research, tune out the conflicting opinions and don’t be afraid to ask the tough questions of your financial planner. It’s absolutely possible an annuity should be part of your financial plan.  Get your hands on an Annuity Owner’s Manual before purchasing an annuity and learn the good, the bad, and the fine print before you ever invest your money. [Read the Full Article]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: Today we’re going to talk about the love/hate relationship that people have with annuities.

Dick: Why does that happen? I mean what is this love/hate relationship? But it really is there.

Eric: It is. We were reflecting on an article by Coach Pete, who’s on radio in the financial safari down there in North Carolina.

Dick: His radio station is really picked up all across the nation too, so a lot of people hear him.

Eric: He gets questions occasionally. One of the questions was, “What’s the true story?” Talking about the negativity of some of the annuities. Really, it’s looking at why annuities are so negatively portrayed in the media and these attempts to discredit annuities sometimes by their rival products.

Dick: I think it’s also important to recognize that there are these positive articles about annuities. There’s a lot of emphasis, even from the federal government, now that annuities could make a big difference. But yet we get a lot of negative press.

Eric: Sure. If you think about it, annuities compete for the same slice of the pie as mutual fund^s, stocks, bonds, and CDs. I mean all those pieces are options for people when they’re trying to determine where to put their retirement dollars.

Dick: Do you think that some people just might try to color it, I mean the wrong way, for personal gain?

Eric: I have never seen a mutual fund^ company advertise ever. Well, maybe . . .  You have to realize there are competing opinions, and everybody wants to think that theirs is the best. Yes, insurance companies compete against investment companies and the such. So there are conflicting opinions and approaches. You see sometimes people tend to go negative. We’re in the political campaign era. We don’t see any negative campaigning going on. I think that’s part of or one of the reasons that some people have such a negative opinion about annuities. That creates that hate relationship.

Dick: From our own perspective, when we’re working with folks that are just kind of entering that realm of understanding annuities, many of their questions center around variable annuities# because that’s all they’ve read about in the press. They don’t know the difference between the variable and the fixed and the immediate. They pick up this negative connotation that’s continually put out there by the press.

Eric: His first point was, yeah, every annuity is a variable annuity#. Well, that’s not true, but a lot of people confuse especially the variable annuity# and the fixed indexed annuity.

Dick: Correct. They have some similarities.

Eric: Exactly. If you use the S&P as a benchmark, well the S&P is an investment product, right? So they think that it’s invested in the S&P.

Dick: Yet a fixed annuity is just what it says. It’s fixed. It’s safe. Your principal is **guaranteed, which is the opposite of the VA.

Eric: Exactly. In a variable annuity#, your principal can go up and down with the performance of the underlying sub-accounts or the investment accounts.

Dick: Where with a fixed indexed, you’re not really invested into that index. You’re just using it as a gauge of rising and falling.

Eric: Exactly. That’s where the confusion comes in. It’s not necessarily a fixed return that you’re going to get with an indexed annuity. But the safety aspect of every fixed annuity out there, the worst you’ll do is a zero on the return.

Dick: Your principal is always protected.

Eric: It’s protected.

Dick: The other thing, Eric, that we run into a lot with the VAs is the idea that, “Hey, aren’t these annuities all high fees?”

Eric: Right. With a fixed annuity, everything’s built in. It’s what you put in is what goes in. There’s no load fee. That confuses the mutual fund^ aspect. “Well, what’s the load I have to pay? What’s the upfront cost?”

Dick: Sure. Right.

Eric: With fixed annuities, it’s all factored into the performance of the product. What you put in actually goes into your annuity.

Dick: I do find that from folks that are just setting up an annuity that they are kind of amazed. “Okay, so I give you $100,000 or I give this company $100,000 and then they give me a bonus. I start off with $105,000 or $110,000 in this annuity. And I don’t owe you anything?”

Eric: Yeah. “How much do I have to pay for that?” The insurance company has already factored that into the program.

Dick: Right. Yet, it is a little different with the variable annuity#, or a lot different, we should say. I’m just saying in the sense of the fee structure. With the variable annuity#, the fees are going to be right there on your statement. For the most part, you’re going to somewhere from 3% to 5% maybe, depending on the riders.

Eric: Depending on the riders. I mean you could get one of the barebones ones that have very low fees. But most of them, if you’re really looking at the income **guarantees or the death benefit **guarantees, you’re going to have significantly higher fees.

Dick: Yes.

Eric: All right. Rather than just focusing on the variables, we can talk about some of the other misconceptions. What about inflation? Can a fixed annuity combat inflation?

Dick: I think the answer to that is obviously yes.

Eric: Why is that obviously yes?

Dick: Well, there are different ways that you can either defer a fixed annuity with a very high rollup rate, high growth rate for future income. You know that when you turn that income on, that’s going to be an offset against inflation. Yet, there are also ways to actually have cost-of-living adjustments.

Eric: The other aspect that combats inflation is if you’re looking at something that’s going to be in the equities market, you have risk involved with the volatility of the market. That’s one of the things. You don’t have to worry about inflation on the side of you haven’t worried about taking a loss.

Dick: Yes. A lot of times there’s just this automatic assumption that if your money is in the stock market, it’s going up 8% a year. If we look at the last 10 or 12 years, you’ve made virtually nothing. There’s also the possibility that your money goes negative. Now how well does that keep up with inflation?

Eric: Oops.

Dick: Not good.

Eric: No, not good at all.

Dick: It’s not good for sleeping at night.

Eric: We’ve talked about, in previous videos, strategies for addressing inflation with annuities, whether it be through laddering. There are tools out there that can help you combat inflation with annuities.

Dick: Right, and I would, folks, recommend that you go back and look at some of the other videos that we’ve done on laddering annuities and various aspects of inflation.

Eric: Sure. All right. The third point he makes is with penalties and surrender charges, annuities are just too expensive. He points out that this is partially true. There are surrenders. There are penalties. Depending on the annuity you select, I mean it can have surrenders. I can think of one off the top of my head that has a 16 year surrender. So they are out there. There are surrenders.

We’ve talked about this also in previous interviews. Why are there surrenders built into it? It’s because these are not short-term products. If you’re buying it for the wrong reason . . .

Dick: Well, these companies have to secure the clients’ money. The money goes into long-term bonds, very high-quality investment vehicles, and US Treasuries. The idea is, to protect everyone, these surrender charges have to be there.

The key to setting up an annuity properly is making sure that it does meet the objective, that it meets the long-term objective. Then you’re not going to be in a situation where you’re going to suffer a penalty or a surrender if it’s done properly.

Eric: Exactly. I think that’s the key. If you look at something that has a ten-year surrender, it’s typically a long-term product. It’s been designed. Annuities are designed for lifetime income. They are safe, secure vehicles that have longevity, basically, as part of the quotient of what they’re built on.

Dick: I think the idea of the 10 years or 12 years or 8 years, whatever the surrender aspect of the annuity is, gives the client a sense of, “Well, if things change or I would change my mind, I have this escape.” But most folks that set up an annuity really look at the benefits way beyond 8 years, way beyond 10 years or 12 years. They want this to carry them through their entire retirement. It truly is a long-term solution to a long-term problem.

Eric: Exactly. That is really the solution it should be solving. It’s not a vehicle where you are going to trade in and out of different annuities each and every other year. If that’s your intent, you’re looking in the wrong spot.

Dick: Right. Go ahead. I was going to say let’s talk about what makes people love their annuities.

Eric: Well, they take out volatility of the market performance. If you’re concerned about volatility, people typically do that. The income aspect, you have for life. There’s a novel idea. Those are the two big ones that jump into my mind right off the bat. So **guarantees . . .

Dick: Safety. I can say this, Eric, from experience with clients, many times going into it the thought of, “Should I do an annuity, shouldn’t I do an annuity,” there’s hesitation. There’s this love/hate because of all of the negative press and propaganda from all directions.

Eric: What’s coming in. Yeah.

Dick: Correct. Yet, what I find is that those folks that actually have an annuity, that have had it for several years, especially those that have come through the financial crisis, that they’re very satisfied. There is an appreciation and a love for that decision that they’ve made. Very seldom is anyone not satisfied.

Eric: I would agree. If you buy it for the right purpose, if it fits like a glove because it satisfies what your need was, then you’ll be happy. That truly is where people who have purchased it and got what they wanted and are happy. If they educate themselves going in and understand what it’s going to accomplish for them, then they will be pleased with an annuity. Most often, you’ll love the fact that you’ve made that decision because, in some ways, it’s sleep medicine.

Dick: Yeah, it is. It’s sleep assurance. It’s sleep insurance in many ways. I know that we could end it right here, but let’s hit it on the other side of it. Let’s talk about the hate. Why would you hate an annuity?

Eric: You bought for the wrong reason. You thought you were going to buy it now thinking the rates were awful, and all of a sudden rates go up higher. “Oh, if I would’ve waited, I could’ve gotten a better rate.”

Dick: Or you like maybe living on the edge a little bit, you know?

Eric: You like volatility.

Dick: You like the up and down of the market, taking that calculated risk, hoping for the best.

Or you’ve got this discretionary money that you could put into the market. It wouldn’t hurt anything. You stuck it in an annuity, and now that annuity isn’t performing at the high level of the market.

Eric: Right, you have an annuity. You have the safety **guarantees. You’ve eliminated the risk. All of a sudden, everybody else is talking about how the market is doing . . .

Dick: They’re making all this money.

Eric: Oh, I’m making so much. You missed out. Timing is everything. But, you know what, the timing of an annuity is you’ve taken that **guarantee, and you shouldn’t have to worry about it.

I guess I’m not being negative enough.

Dick: Well, thanks folks for tuning in today. We hope this helps you in your overall decision to kind of balance all of this information out there, both positive and negative.

Eric: Well, we hope you don’t hate us, but I don’t know if you’ll love is either. Thanks for coming in.

Dick: Bye-bye.

Is a Pre-Issued Annuity right for you? – Part 1

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This is a two part blog on Pre-Issued Annuities. In part 1 we will examine some of the reason why someone might consider a Pre-Issued Annuity for a portion of their portfolio.

Is a Pre-Issued Annuity right for you? If you think like most people in this low interest rate environment the answer is a resounding YES!

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**Guarantees, including optional benefits, are backed by the claims-paying ability of the issuer, and may contain limitations, including surrender charges, which may affect policy values. During this segment, Dick and Eric are referring to Fixed Annuities unless otherwise specified.

Once you understand the high yielding yet safe nature of these financial vehicles it becomes apparent quickly that most of us have money that would be well suited to this type of strategy. The biggest question most individual investors have is how do I get started  without making a mistake that I will regret. The key is using an expert that specializes in this field having a legal and fiduciary interest towards you as the client. The best advisor for this will have experience in the industry, inside sources for access to the best available contracts, and be a practicing attorney to follow and assure the validity of the court order process.

PRE-ISSUED ANNUITIES ™ have several positive attributes in common that make them currently in high demand:

  •     High Yields – typically 4.5 to 8.5 percent.
  •     Safety – payment streams are **guaranteed by highly rated insurance companies
  •     Safety – Court order process protects both buyer and seller
  •     Safety – Issuers – regulated by State Insurance Commissions with **guarantee associations .
  •     Fixed and reliable income streams
  •     Diversification for portfolios of sophisticated investors
  •     Truly a non-market correlated asset
  •     IRA or Qualified Account compatibility
  •     Estate transfer to heirs
  •     Twenty year plus successful transaction history

Is a PRE-ISSUED ANNUITY™ right for you? [Read More…]

Annuity Guys® Video Transcript:

Eric: Today, we’re going to talk about pre-issued annuities, safety, and high-yield. High yield; we’re chasing numbers right now. In this day and age, everybody calls up and they say, “Where can I get . . .” and of course, it used to be, “Where can I get 5%?” now it’s, “Where can I get 3% or 4%?” Is there a place we can get 5%? Especially when they call us up, and based off the Annuity Guys® website, we get a lot of call that say, “Give me a number. Give me 5%”

Dick: This is probably the most frequent call that we get, folks. A lot of folks that are looking for CD alternatives, because CDs, as you know, Eric, what are we now? About 2% would be the max, 2 or 2½ on a really long-range CD. What we’re seeing more frequently is maybe ½%.

Eric: I was going to they all start with a dot in front of the number, unfortunately; 0.8.

Dick: Then when we come down to the new-issue annuities, new-issue annuities, again, are severely affected by this low-rate environment, which may be with us for quite some time because of our fed.

Eric: Just recently, companies are coming out and making predictions that this is the rate environment; get used to it. We’re going to see this for the next 2 to 3 years.

Dick: I’ve often brought this up, but Japan has seen this for the last 15 to 20 years and they’re the second-largest industrialized nation, their GDP, in the world. Is it possible that this becomes an extended 5 or 10-year cycle, because we’re trying to get out economy booted up and it doesn’t happen? Where can good, honest people go to get a good, fair return? That’s the big question.

Eric: The retail environment has always been, “This is what’s available to the consumer.” The nice thing is we’re breaking down some barriers and we’ve got some things that were just available for institutional buyers, banks, multimillionaires, basically people of means, or institutions of means, they dabbled in these markets before. Now you’ve got access for the consumer market.

Dick: If we go back and just do a little brief history, we’ll do something more in-depth later, but just a little brief history. Pre-issued annuities, which are called structured settlements.

Eric: Secondary market annuities.

Dick: Lottery annuities.

Eric: Life-contingent annuities.

Dick: Pre-owned annuities. There’s so many different terminologies, but pre-issued is a pretty accurate way to describe these annuities. Someone bought this annuity originally and they don’t need it anymore, or they were in an accident, they got some type of a settlement, or they won the lottery. They don’t need the income stream, but they do need some money upfront. Folks, you’ve probably seen Imperial Structured Settlement and some other ones out there that regularly advertise on television. Some of these will come through that type of avenue, or distribution. The whole idea of this is that somebody is willing to sell their payment stream for considerably less than what it’s worth, in terms of those final payments throughout the maturity.

Eric: It’s basically, ‘I have an income stream or an annuity that I’m going to eventually get this much money for. I’m willing to sell you that payment stream, or that lump sum, and you’re going to give me a lump sum now.’

Dick: You might sell $200,000 worth of payments for $100,000, that I’m going to collect over a period of maybe 10 years, which comes out to in the neighborhood of about 7%, maybe even a little more than that. That’s a way that I can get a very substantial yield and you can your lump sum of money that you need, that’s kind of the gist of how it works. Like I said, going back in history, a lot of these companies that you see advertising on television to buy these large settlements, they will actually package these up, securitize them, sell them to institutional investors, pension funds and the like, and investment banks, and they have lots of large buyers standing in the wings. Guys like you and I, Eric, and our clients, we couldn’t have access to these, just maybe 5 years ago.

Eric: The market wasn’t there. We didn’t even know it existed, probably, until the advent of . . . from an individual consumer talking to our clients.

Dick: Folks, what really happened was we went through this financial crisis and all the credit dried up, and now all of a sudden, these institutional advisers, Eric, they just weren’t walking in and buying these bundles of securitized pre-issued annuities, so what were they going to do? They found a new avenue to sell it to.

Eric: Yes. Now we have a lot of brokers, independents, going out there and basically finding these pieces out there that are available for purchase. They’re buying them and remarketing them. You’ve got brokers online that are all over the place.

Dick: There’s some negatives that we probably need to talk about, but maybe, let’s break it down and let’s talk about positives and negatives.

Eric: Let’s highlight just first the positives, Okay? Yields: We’re in a low-rate environment right now, so a new-issue annuity, if just were looking at a [inaudible: 06:11] or CD-style, you’re only going to see a return in that 0 to upward . . . 10 years will get you almost 4%. Here, we’re looking at yields.

Dick: We start at 4, 4.5, and we’re well-connected, we know the source that we can go to. We can do considerably better, and on some of different types of pre-issued annuities, they’ll pay out a little more, like the life-contingents. We can get upwards of 8.5% over a good length of time. It’s a huge difference in yield.

Eric: So the yield is much higher.

Dick: Yes. Then we come down to safety.

Eric: We got multiple levels of safety. Who may buy these, who’s underwriting all these contracts? Where are they coming from?

Dick: The ones that we recommend, or the attorneys that we work with, recommend are really coming from A-rated, A+ rated, A++ rated . . . I guess we can do a little name-dropping here, but maybe Allstate, Prudential . . .

Eric: John Hancock.

Dick: These are really strong quality companies.

Eric: We’re not just picking for our clients, it’s not just taking anything, there is a certain requirement of what we’re looking for, from a safety standpoint. They’re safe from the underwriting of that. Somebody owns these annuities. How do they get transferred into my name, if I want to buy them?

Dick: That’s another layer of protection, another layer of safety, and it’s the court-ordered process. When this whole industry got started, like we talked about, approximately 20 years ago or so, it was a little bit like the Wild West, and it was anything goes. A lot’s changed since then, and there’s been some rulings and things that protect the person that’s actually trying to sell their lump sum. Now, this all has to go through a court-ordered process. It really protects both the buyer and the seller. It’s also very important that you have some type of legal representation as it moves through that process, that it’s done where all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed properly.

Eric: That’s safety from . . . so you got a court agreement that’s been placed, so the contract is basically a court-underwritten piece?

Dick: Exactly, and it really directs the insurance company, the A-rated or A+ rated company, where there payment streams are now going to. By court order, they are to pay those to the new owner of those payment streams, not to the new owner of the annuity. The owner of the annuity remains the initial person that had the annuity issued, and that’s why we call it a pre-issued annuity. It was issued previously, and all this person is doing is selling their payment stream.

Eric: It’s not taking the ownership away; it’s really just taking the ownership of the income stream and passing it off.

Dick: Exactly. Then we have the layer of safety that all of these A-rated companies, I should say highly-rated insurance companies, they are regulated by the states, The State Insurance Commission.

Eric: The State Guarantee Association.

Dick: They each have a State Guarantee Association. I would say, folks, you have to individually look into that, what your state does, but it is another layer of protection. You’ve really got about 3 very serious layers of protection. There’s another 1 or 2 that we could talk about, and I’m not going to get into it, it’s a little bit more complex from the structured settlement side, but there’s another layer of protection, sometimes, that becomes into play.

Eric: Are these like just buying them off the shelf, in the sense of who’s buying them?

Dick: This is the trick. Folks, you can go out and Google ‘pre-issued annuities’, you can look structured settlements and the like, and you will find some companies available out there on the internet that have a retail list of what’s available. Unfortunately, the best pre-issued annuities typically never hit the internet; they’re actually taken right from the source when someone wants to sell their payment stream or their lump sum. Again, this really makes a difference if you can be connected to a good attorney, someone who knows right where the source is and can kind of cut out the middle man, cut out the brokers that are in between, because typically, you’ll have anywhere from 2 to 4 brokers involved in sharing the profits before it actually get to the clients. The more that you can cut out of that, the higher yield you’re likely to have.

Eric: Less hands in the pockets, the more [inaudible: 11:26]. These are sophisticated instruments. How would they fit in a portfolio, in a sense? Is it . . .

Dick: This is still, even though there’s a certain level of sophistication to it, it’s like anything that you do in the investment world. If you look at your prospectus what, how many pages are in an average prospectus, Eric? You’re securities guy?

Eric: The phone book? [inaudible: 11:54] pages.

Dick: 100, 150.  You could say that investments are pretty technical, pretty sophisticated, and that would be true, we’ve just become familiar with them, we understand them; our stocks and our bonds, that type of thing. These, likewise, once you understand them, you realize that they’re very safe. The companies that are backing them, you can actually know your yield. You have a very reliable payout in the income stream. There’s really no volatility in it like there would be in an investment?

Eric: I think the key here is diversification, just like anything out there; it’s a key piece, to diversify your portfolio. You said it; it’s a non-market correlated asset. In today’s market, as we watch it bounce like a Wham-O ball, up and down, it’s taking that volatility out. You know exactly what you’re going to get from either the lump sum aspect or the payment stream aspect, so it becomes a nice piece to smooth out the waves with the rest of your portfolio.

Dick: I think we should also mention that it’s IRA-compatible. You’d have to setup a self-directed IRA, which there’s many different custodians out there that’ll help you with that, and we can recommend one to folks that we work with. It is just nice to know that it’s IRA-compatible. Then if you would end up passing early before you’ve received your lump sums or your payment strings, it can be paid directly to your estate or to your heirs.

Eric: Lots of pieces out there that make it an attractive option, especially for these people that, for me, this is for somebody who’s been in the CD world for a long time. They want safety, security, but they want a larger return, and it’s something that’s just going to be parked there.

Dick: It could be for somebody that’s been in the stock market, that are reaching, that are near-retirement age. They’re wanting something that’s much safer, takes the volatility out of it, but they still want to get the yield. That’s all the good things we’ve talked about.

Eric: There are some limitations. Those are on the con side.

Dick: We have to be fair about it.

Eric: We don’t have to, but it should, it makes the video that much better when we’re balanced.

Dick: Fair and balanced. We don’t want to take this away from Bill O’Reilly.

Eric: That’s right.