It’s not because of surrender charges, fees, or lower returns. It may be because the benefits of a fixed index annuity with an income rider can simply sound too good to be true:
Every single thing the insurance company promises and guarantees you is in writing in your annuity contract including your principal being protected against all stock market losses, your income being guaranteed for as long as you live, all remaining assets passing on to your beneficiaries, how you access your money, the fees you pay, and how you earn interest in your account.
Hey, we get it, talking about huge gains and making a lot of money is a lot more fun than talking about big losses. We have previously discussed that huge gains may happen for the moment, but they can just as quickly and easily disappear if your assets are left “naked in the market.” You may get a good gain in one (1) year or two (2) years only to have the gains and part of your original principal wiped out with a big loss in year three (3). We have found that the vast majority of brokers and advisors love to talk about big gains, but they don’t like to talk about big losses. This blog was written for retirees, so your focus should be on risk mitigation first, and return second. Why? Because our clients, retired people just like you, do not want, and literally can’t afford, to lose any of the assets they worked so hard to accumulate. They want to make competitive rates of return, but they do not want to take excessive risks in doing so.
Probably a thousand times, sometimes you hear it twenty times in a day. Well, that should be great for investors. What we found is most retirees and soon-to-be retirees don’t feel like their portfolios have hit all-time highs. Do you?
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If you own an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), 457, TSP, retirement account, managed portfolio, brokerage account, or just have money in the bank, you don’t want to miss this educational dinner event!
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There are many opinions and differing answers depending on the study and the participants. We have reviewed many of these studies, with some focusing on risk, some on investing, others on generating income, several on longevity, and many on the fears and concerns retirees have about their money in general. While all of the studies differed, we noticed a common core, basic similarities, in the results of the studies we reviewed. We found retirees want seven (7) main things from their money:
If you can’t answer basic questions about your retirement, how can you expect to succeed, feel secure, and feel confident you are making the right decisions about your money? You can’t feel good about it. If you can’t answer basic questions about your money, it means your plans for retirement are based on hope and luck. It means you are hoping you will be lucky, and things will work out. Your broker or advisor might seem to know a lot about your portfolio and managing the assets because that is what they mainly talk to you about. Your broker or advisor may say you are diversified, state they have great money managers, let you know you are positioned for good rates of return, tell you if you want less risk they can put a larger percentage of your assets in bonds, and will often confirm you can expect an 8%-10% average annual rate of return. However, when you ask the important questions about your money, they don’t have any answers. Moreover, your broker or advisor has never put your plan in writing. This means your current broker or advisor is comfortable with you basing your plans for retirement on hope and luck. Are you? In our 50+ years of experience, we have found there is certain data (see diagram on following page) you must have to build a secure plan and to be able to stop worrying about your money:
In our book, Momma’s Secret Recipe for Retirement Success, we share our “7 Rules To Live By For Retirement Security.” Today, we want to focus on one of them: The importance of having a comprehensive written retirement income plan.
What is a safe rate of retirement income withdrawal? What does the phrase “safe withdrawal rate” mean to you? Most people would answer, “the amount of income you can withdraw from your assets without the fear of running out of income during your lifetime.” This seems cut and dried. But you have to look at what the word “safe” means to different people.
“Safe” to some people might actually mean “safer than something else,” such as you stating that you are “driving safe” because you are going 80 miles per hour while everyone else on the road is driving 90 miles per hour, but the posted speed limit is 65 miles per hour. And then, “safe” to other people might mean the chance of anything negative happening is 0%. In planning for retirement, safe better mean safe, something you can count on for sure. Safe better not mean “kind of safe.”
In past articles, we shared everything you need to know about the very first step in creating a comprehensive written retirement income plan: the Retirement Income Projection. Next, we discussed the second step in your planning, the Income Tax Analysis. If you didn’t get a chance to read those articles yet, you can start here.
In this final installment of this series, we give you details about the third step in your comprehensive written retirement income planning: an analysis of assets to beneficiaries. Having a comprehensive written retirement income plan you can rely on is incredibly important to your financial health in retirement, so let’s take a look at this final step.
