A 6% Guaranteed Return?

June 18, 2015

Would you like a guaranteed 6% return on your investments? Is that even possible? I recently got a helpline call from a woman who thought it was. Her advisor had suggested that she roll her 401k into an annuity that paid “a guaranteed 6% return regardless of what the stock market does.” She thought the only downside is that she had to leave the money in the annuity for 10 years and that there was a 1% fee so the guaranteed return would be 5% after fees. Continue reading “A 6% Guaranteed Return?”

Are Annuities a Good Deal or a Rip-Off?

September 26, 2013

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Linda Robertson wrote a blog post about annuities, in which she described how happy her father was about a variable annuity that she sold him when she was a financial advisor. That may sound a bit puzzling since variable annuities have gotten a lot of bad press due to their high fees. But for those fees, you’re basically buying some form of insurance, which is why they’re sold by insurance companies. Here are some situations in which an annuity might actually make sense for you depending on what you’re looking to insure: Continue reading “Are Annuities a Good Deal or a Rip-Off?”

ABCs of Annuities

September 10, 2013

Although I haven’t sold insurance or investments for almost a decade in my role as a financial educator, my happiest client from those days is my dad, who purchased a deferred variable annuity from me. There is quite a bit of negative press about the high fees and long surrender charges with some annuities, but what makes my dad a satisfied investor are the safety nets provided from the benefits riders that can amount to an alphabet soup of abbreviations.  So what is an annuity, and how does it help my dad sleep at night without worrying about his money? Continue reading “ABCs of Annuities”