Category: Annuities
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Disadvantages of Annuities
I have had some posts recently that discussed the advantages of annuities. In the interest of being balanced I will share some of the disadvantages in this post. 1.High Management Fees – This depends on the annuity but in general annuities have high fees. 2. Surrender or Withdrawal Fees – These fees can be avoided…
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Talking With Your Family About Retirement
Americans for Secure Retirement (ASR) has suggestions on how to discuss retirement with your family. The questions they suggest you use to guide your discussion are: When am I hoping to retire?, Am I making use of an employer-sponsored retirement plan?, Am I on-track with my retirement savings?, What will my expenses be in retirement?,Where…
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Annuities Not FDIC Insured
Your annuities are not FDIC insured. If the insurance company goes bankrupt, you would likely lose a large portion of your investment if your state doesn’t have laws protecting you. Annuities are investments and while their rate of return is guaranteed contractually, the fact is your annuity’s health is tied to the health of the…
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Completely Understand That Annuity!
A couple weeks ago Chris Hansen and Dateline’s Tricks of the Trade did some undercover work looking at annuities, specifically indexed annuities, and how the salespeople were deceiving people about how expensive those things are if you withdraw too quickly. I didn’t watch the show as carefully as some others but I did get a…
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Four Annuity Fees : Insurance, Investment, Riders, and Surrender
Walter Updegrave has a great article out about how the SEC should force annuities to disclose all their fees in plain language, not the billion page prospectus they send and expect you to totally ignore. Anyway, a great part of the article is when he writes about the four types of fees associated with an…
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Ben Stein Advocates Variable Annuities
In his latest “How Not To Ruin Your Life” article, Ben Stein warns that eventually there will be a market correction that is based on fundamentals and not on emotion, like the latest little market dip, and that those close to retirement should consider variable annuities as a hedge against this. The younger and middle…
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Avoid IRA Annuities
When you retire, should you roll over your 401k into an IRA? Yes. Should you roll over your 401k into an IRA Annuity? Ummmm probably not, says Walter Updegrave. An IRA Annuity is basically an annuity held inside an IRA and it’s probably going to be too expensive for what you’re getting out of it.…
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These are Things Six through Ten of the Ten Things Your 401(k) Provider Will Not Tell You courtesy of those brilliant folks over at Smart Money. 6. “…but you still aren’t diversified.” One interesting tidbit out of the article was the fact that the two most popular holdings in 401(k)s are stable-value funds and company…
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Four Types of Annuities: Fixed & Variable Deferred, Fixed & Variable Immediate
USA Today posted an article today about the four types of annuities and admitted that, while they aren’t the best game in town, they’re the only vehicle, outside of pensions and Social Security, to guarantee a lifetime flow of income in retirement (and you could argue the guarantee-ness of your company’s pension and Social Security).…