This one is sure to hit home with a few critics but there’s an important lesson here.  Surrender fees are probably the biggest negative that come with annuities.  Since most other investments have nothing like it, declining fees over the years are new to everyone who is a first-time user.  There is a reason they […]

About a week ago, someone signed up on the website, maybe read a couple emails and watched the Flex Strategy videos.  Rather than schedule an appointment to see whether it would work for him, he went and posted a question on the Bogleheads forum.  You can only imagine the response he got from all the […]

Boy would I ever love it if there was a best time to buy an index annuity.  Let’s say there was a three month period in the year that always produced the best returns.  I’d work 18 hours a day and seven days a week then spend the other nine months fishing saltwater flats and […]

It’s a common misconception that truly comes from an uneducated place.  You’ll often hear, “annuities would be fine if not for the hidden fees.”  In almost every case that is nothing more than a scare tactic because all but one annuity that I’ve seen has the fees clearly disclosed up front.  There is a reason […]

This started just one year ago.  A standard case came across my desk and I showed one couple how my approach might give them more control over retirement assets.  They had been to a seminar and got the usual pitch.  Being a few years from retirement they had already decided to protect some assets and […]

It’s time for me to pick on a couple different products that have proved to not be worth the hype.  About once a month, on average, I get an email touting the incredible opportunity of some new contract or index.  I look at all of them just to see if the claim merits me adding […]

I’ve never been too successful talking about interest rates.  Most people have a pretty light appetite for fundamentals which unfortunately leads to the majority settling for something less than the best deal available.  So I’m going to give a simple example of how recent conditions have changed annuities in a way that will underscore my […]

One year ago I wrote a quick story about Bill.  We had been working together for about a year after he called asking for help with a retirement plan.  Initially he was looking for guaranteed income and came with a long list of requests in regards to benefits and company rating.  I came back to […]

Take a look at the chart below and you’ll see the values of the S&P 500 since 1996.  This was recently released from JP Morgan and I grabbed a screenshot in order to point out a few things.  It maps out the high and low points or extreme volatility of probably the second best market […]

Back when this website was launched the main objective was to catalog my notes, research and ideas about annuities.  A different point of view and some basic math exercises will prove that a good strategy beats any product.  So it stands to reason that I never consider it a good thing when someone buys the […]