Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:05 This is annuity straight talk since 2008. Your host Brian Anderson has helped clients nationwide navigate the complex market for annuities with Brian's assistance. Hundreds of clients have achieved a profitable and secure retirement. I would know because Brian has answered many of my questions concerning annuities and retirement planning so that you can benefit as well. Let's get started. Here's Brian. Hello and welcome
Speaker 1 00:00:46 Everyone to the annuity straight talk podcast. Got a great show for you today. You have the benefit of hearing from two of the smartest people you'll ever meet. My name is Brian Anderson. I'm here with the show Graham G. Hello. Hi. Why are you everyone? And so today we're going to talk about kind of building on what we talked about last time and how we learned about annuities and how we got into this. Right. And talk about the application and what, how the evolution of thought can help you as well. When you're trying to solve problems for retirement, looking forward to it, let's go. All right. Great. So one of the things I noticed early in my career is that I guess what people don't understand, consumers get this, you guys will sign up on websites and some places you'll know at annuity straight talk. We don't make a bunch of endless phone calls.
Speaker 1 00:01:30 In fact, most of the people that read my newsletter on a consistent basis have never talked to me, but that's different than other places. You know, your name gets into the wrong spot and you might get a phone call three, four, five times a day. And we understand that's an issue, which is why I've had a pretty laid back approach and a show. Can I kind of see that thing the same way? But what you don't realize is that we also, as advisors get calls nonstop from wholesalers who want us to rep their products, sell their products, right? So something you love about the business, right? I do. In fact, let's talk a little bit about, I mean, I love getting calls from these wholesalers and they're sharing ideas, but I wanted to also point out something very different about what's going on here with the annuity straight talk.
Speaker 1 00:02:11 So when some people who are consumers look for new cities, they're going to input their information into site or something, and they see something. And that triggers all those calls that we were talking about. Right? And so the problem in general is that there is a company that's doing the marketing, and then there's someone like myself who, as the advisor gets the information of the individual who was requesting information. And we look at this and say, okay, well, we need to follow up not knowing what the exact marketing message was, because they're separate the marketer's separate from me. Whereas here with annuity straight talk, we
Speaker 2 00:03:00 Are actually trying to say, we are delivering the message, right? So know what you're receiving.
Speaker 1 00:03:05 Yeah. So a lot of times the products or solutions that you will be given, came from a recommendation from a third party that knows nothing about you and has no idea what the situation is. The goals are. And it could be, Oh, we'll talk about this in a separate episode. But what it could really be is that that third party company needs to maybe hit a sales goal. And so, Hey, for this month, we're just going to show this product to all these people that ask for it. Right? And there's one thing. Now, product selection is one thing, but what's different is where there's always a consensus that I noticed even back 15 plus years ago, is all the wholesalers were talking about how there was a lack of consensus in regards to retirement income, right, for years. And this is what a lot of people have a problem with. And this is where the differences between the insurance industry and the investment industry are, this is where you can illustrate that difference is for the investment industry, really is for the accumulation of assets over time, which everybody does to get to where they can retire when you retire. And you're looking at preserving the assets, living off the assets, that's where the insurance comes in to protect the things that need to be protected. Right? Correct.
Speaker 2 00:04:20 You could use them interchangeably. Like for example, there is an investment approach on when we're talking about decumulation, you're going down the mountain. So when you're accumulating, going up the mountain, when you're decumulating, you're going down, the mountain one alternative is when you're in that decumulation
Speaker 1 00:04:37 Insurance products are kind of like having breaks.
Speaker 2 00:04:39 Yeah. They've got built-in shock absorbers right now. You could use investments and there's something called the systematic withdraw portfolio where you can take out a portion of the portfolio and use that. And hopefully you'll get the growth in the portfolio to offset some of the withdrawals.
Speaker 1 00:04:59 Right. But the big
Speaker 2 00:05:02 Wild card is whether that is actually going to work for someone who's actually in retirement. And so you'll see this stuff about the safe withdrawal rate, right. Where they've gone back in time and said, well, we think you can take this portion out. It won't blow up the portfolio, but the investments can work. It's just, there's a lot more variation about,
Speaker 1 00:05:24 Right. Right. And I think we're getting a little bit off track by going into the details. Cause we're going to do that one in the next episodes. Right. But this is kind of just what's that Ramian well, that's what you're supposed to do to me. See, I'm the brash like loud mouth and he's the calm collected level-headed guy is like, everybody's going to like a joke because he's so much nicer than I am. But the idea being that, uh, there always has been a lack of consensus about asset distribution and retirement. And Shoko alluded to what the investment industry, their approach to it, which again, we'll come into something we'll do in a little bit where we'll compare the insurance approach versus the investment approach. Right. But for now it's kind of looking at saying, you need to understand the things that guide the products that are available and how we've kind of figured out how to critically separate those four based on purpose and benefit that people are looking for.
Speaker 1 00:06:17 So what's interesting is that all annuities are essentially built on the same foundation, right? There's an interest rate, a prevailing rate at the time. And then companies are going to place the benefit on whatever they want to for an individual product. I think one of my favorite things is pick an insurance company. We're not going to do insurance company specific. So we'll call it ABC insurance. All right. Just ABC insurance company. And if you go look in the database that insurance company will have 20 different annuities. Why does ABC insurance company have 20 annuities? Because go ahead. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:06:48 They don't know who that end market client is and what that particular person's looking for.
Speaker 1 00:06:54 Right? Yeah. Cause there's about 20 different general situations that retiree might find themselves in. There's a different product for a 50 year old than there is for a 60 year old or a seven year old there's products for asset accumulation and protection, there's income products, there's products that provide high income in the early years of the contract there's products that provide high income with several years of deferral. But there's one different situation. So you who's listening to, this could be retiring in three years, you're going to have a different solution than someone who's listening to this that's retiring today or, and even different than somebody that may be retiring and wants to plan for 10 years from now. Right. So what happens is there might be 20 products, but there's really only a couple of those that are going to apply to your situation. And I think
Speaker 2 00:07:42 Many of the companies, the insurance companies, they want to hit their own targets for production. Like just like an auto manufacturer feels like I'm the number one manufacturer of automobiles, but they have different models. Right? So an insurance company is no different. They want to have multiple models to serve different segments of the pie.
Speaker 1 00:08:04 Right. Okay. So I was going to ask you this, the show before we started and I'm going to give you the answer if you can't come up with it. Oh, okay. Well, okay. So what would you consider to be the two biggest complaints people have about annuity? So it was coming from the investment side. What do they say? And I kind of summarize them a little bit, but I'm sure we're going to say about the same thing.
Speaker 2 00:08:23 I would say the biggest thing would be the potential for the surrender charge. You're not able to potentially get in and out of that annuity as quickly as you
Speaker 1 00:08:34 Possible possible for anyone to know my answer to that is okay. Two things. And again, that's obviously a concern of course, but the two biggest things they talk about are that hidden fees will eat your money. Alive fees are going to destroy your account value. And number two is you're going to lose control of your money forever. Yeah. This is like a theoretical, like don't buy an, you're going to lose control of your money forever. Right. And that feeds into the surrender charges and all that stuff that are fundamental about it. Right. So when I talk about annuity solutions, it's saying, how do we get a contract that doesn't have fees? So those two things can be, and how do we look at an annuity and learn to use it so that we have control over the money. And we don't have to feel like we're letting go because a lot of people feel like they get an annuity, they're letting go. They don't realize all you're doing is opening a different account at a different institution, right? Online account access. You can see it, you can touch it, you can pull money out, you can put extra money back in it. Right. So that's kind of where I see. And obviously I'm not saying you're wrong, but that's kind of what I see from again, Ken Fisher was going to say that he wants to have control of your money. Right?
Speaker 2 00:09:37 Well, and the irony is, is that when you put money into the investments market, because of its very nature, the prices move around. You know, if you get into a prolonged period of a market downturn, you can similarly lose control of your money. That way it's, who took the money away was the market.
Speaker 1 00:09:57 Yeah. So it's misleading to say, you're going to lose control because there are several other ways you can lose control of your money with market volatility as well. Right? So anyhow, but this kind of leads into where I looked at kind of evolution of thought to solve problems with the basic structure of annuity. So if you don't like something about the annuity than get an annuity that doesn't have that negative feature and that would be maybe the fees, maybe a long surrender schedule, maybe lack of liquidity and all that stuff, right. There
Speaker 2 00:10:27 Are different products out there by different manufacturers and you can't just paint all of them with one brush.
Speaker 1 00:10:33 No, it's simple as that. Right? So if we look at, I guess, some of the solutions and how you do that. So this is one thing I've talked about for several years is the five keys to retirement planning. And one of them is income production. Number two is limiting market volatility. Number three is inflation is a big concern fees. So you want to make sure you manage fees the right way. And then a lot of people want to leave a legacy, but you need to consider legacy of if you don't want to. Right. So that's kind of like the nuts and bolts of it. And within each of those, there's a lot of different stuff. Obviously there's Medicare and long-term care and all that stuff. Right. So it's kind of, how do you want to deal with those issues? And that's where you use the annuity and the insurance aspect to protect what's most important.
Speaker 2 00:11:22 I want to go down the list and dive into them a little bit, like say income. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:11:26 Sure. So if you run the numbers, you can look at one of my favorite ways to look at is let's say you're looking for guaranteed lifetime income and you put a hundred thousand dollars into an annuity and depending on your age and whether it's a single or joint life payment, let's just say it's a 65 year old buying a contract right now. You can probably get about 5% of the premium, the amount you put into it. You get 5% of that, an annual basis for the rest of your life. Right? If you can get 5% payout, the way I look at it is that would be the same as putting the money under your mattress. I call it the mattress strategy. Okay. So he take a hundred thousand dollars instead of putting it into an annuity, you put it under your bed in a fireproof safe, of course, then it's guaranteed.
Speaker 1 00:12:13 And if you do that, you can take $5,000 out of that every year and the money going to last for 20 years, right? So essentially for a 65 year old, all the way to age 85 and annuity is no different than putting money under your bed or in the bank or whatever it is. But if you can take that money and apply a growth rate to it, then you're going to have a substantial remainder at age 85. And you could use the projection of that remainder to either increase income or leave a legacy. But either way you have a lot more control over the asset the whole time, because you didn't surrender it to an insurance company in exchange for a payment, correct?
Speaker 2 00:12:50 Correct. I think it's like, trade-offs right. I mean, you could put it under the mattress at age 65 and take that money out. Ratedly over every year you have complete control, but what are you giving up? You have to assume that inflation is running at zero over 20 years. And also what if you live to age 90, right? Those are some issues that you would run up against with mattress money.
Speaker 1 00:13:16 Well, absolutely. Right. Which is why you need to apply the growth rate to it. So this is again, the idea of exploring an alternative, not saying that the alternative is the only way, correct? Correct. And a lot of times I've heard people in the past. And in fact, I had somebody last week, come in and say, we looked at the numbers for guaranteed income. And I was disappointed in what I could get. There has to be a better way to do it. And there is another way to do it. If you want to. Obviously I consider the guaranteed income homes to be in a worst case scenario, right? If all you have is a hundred thousand dollars and you absolutely need $5,000 a year, you can't afford to take any risk on the outcome. You probably got to buy it, you annuity, but if you need 5,000 a year and you want it and you've got 250,000, you can probably put that a hundred thousand in a safe place where you have a little bit more control over it.
Speaker 1 00:14:02 And you can potentially be in position if rates rise to reposition the money. Right? Correct. So again, it's not the only way, but another way of looking at it and it becomes extra important. If you look and you say, well, if you're 63 or if you're 65 and your spouse is 62, what your payout rate might then be 4% correct. Then it takes even longer to get your money back. But there's a lot of people that love the idea of the guarantee. And don't want to have to think about it, worry about it or anything like that. So that's fine too. But again, to understand a different solution. I think
Speaker 2 00:14:35 If we're going to talk a little bit about those guarantees that are in the annuities, and again, the guarantees are based on the claims paying ability of the underlying insurance company, right? The couple of trade-offs like you're talking about is that it's sort of that worst case scenario, because at the end of the day, the insurance I've heard one person, this industry referred to it as you want your money to go away. So you can get into the insurance company's pocket. Right. Because now all of a sudden they're providing that longevity fund so that if you live an extra long life, it's coming out of their reserves, not right. Right. But the insurance companies typically know actuarily speaking, that they will be able to preserve their reserves. Right. So that's why they lower the amount that's able to be taken out. Right?
Speaker 1 00:15:22 No, absolutely. And I've got a lot, there are a lot of case studies on the website, so this is good time to remind everyone that you can go. If you want to talk about this in your situation, you can always go to the annuity straight talk website, the green schedule, a call button that's kind of on the top right side of every single page. And you can use that button to get on the calendar with the show or me, or you can also call the 800 number. That's (800) 438-5121. So let's look at a simple example in the next one where I talked about annuities by the numbers, and I've done this several times and I've got specific examples, right. But this was a gentleman who'd been on my website or had been reading my newsletter for a couple of years, but it was his time to retire now.
Speaker 1 00:16:04 Okay. And he and his wife had earmarked $230,000 of their savings and they wanted to produce $1,200 per month in retirement. Okay. When he emailed him to ask about it, I kind of generally know like you do, you know, Oh, that's reasonable or it's going to be close. Right. And so I knew he was going to be pretty close to getting what he wanted. But when I went out and looked at the market, I was asked, he was kind of surprised that for based on their ages, he was only going to receive 950 per month if he got the biggest one. And I think we might've found one that's a little over a thousand as well. So it was an index annuity because those currently the index annuities with the guaranteed income are paying higher than single premium immediate annuities. But he was pretty disappointed because it would mean for him to get $1,200, he was going to have to spend more of his assets.
Speaker 1 00:16:54 Correct. And this is kind of that scenario where you look and say, I was hoping to get more. Right. So first I looked and I calculated a breakeven. And if he took the $950 per month, he would have to take income for 20 years in two months before finally getting aggregate payments that equal what he put into it. All right. So by the age of 85, it's just like the example before he'd be 85 years old before finally, beginning to profit from the contract, getting into the insurance company's pocket. So this goes back to my roots where I started calculating different ways of doing it. Right? So if you look at a fixed annuity, you can get about 3% on a fixed annuity. And let's say it's for 10 years. And so if he did a 3% fixed annuities, instead of taking the nine 50 per month via a guarantee payment from the insurance company, he would just take a free withdrawal from the contract, right after 20 years at 3%, he'd still $103,000 remaining in the account.
Speaker 1 00:17:51 Right? So they're more control over the money potentially with the ability. So he was in 10 years, we're looking 20 years. If rates were up at 10 years, he could have taken a higher rate. Okay. That's just, if you want to go the guaranteed 3% route, okay. Now, if the yield bumps to 4%, there'd be over 150,000 left. And at 5% he would barely invade the principal. Okay. He didn't pay a fee. He had control of his money the whole time. He did not surrender a penny to the insurance company. So which scenario it is a deeper into the insurance company's pockets, right? We're not talking about market-like returns to beat the guaranteed income contract. We're just talking about giving people more control over the money. Okay. But if you want to get more than 3%, you got to use an index annuity because you need the basis protection on the downside, but you need a little bit more upside to get over the three, four or 5%, but I would consider 3% to be the hurdle rate.
Speaker 1 00:18:44 Agreed. Okay. So what was interesting about this particular person is when he finally told me where he was going to bring the money from, he had three different accounts. He was going to aggregate and about a third of the $230,000 was already in an index annuity that had four years left to surrender, but he told me what he put into it versus what was in it now. And he'd had it for 10 years and I calculated that he had received a five and a half percent rate of return on the index annuity over 10 years. He already has what he needs. Right. If he just puts the remaining one 70 in, he knows to expect the five and a half percent. We know if he gets three he's better off or he'll be fine. Four. He's great. Correct. So he should have all the confidence in the world that the contract's going to perform over time to produce the result that he wants. And he doesn't have to surrender an annuity to do it. Right. That's the best strategy. Yep. So that was my solution for him to say, I know you're disappointed, but Hey, if he's going to get five and a half percent, obviously he could probably bump up school withdrawals to 1200 bucks a month when she think. Correct. Yep. So he's already part of the way there, but didn't realize it yet. Well, I liked the fact that
Speaker 2 00:20:04 One of the negatives we've heard about in general for some of these products are that they're sometimes designed to be there for a short period of time and then something else comes into play. So here you actually said, stay with where you're at because it's been delivering what you need for your plan.
Speaker 1 00:20:26 Absolutely. And that's kind of how I see it. Now that situations where you won't beat it going the growth route is if it were a single life payment, his payout would be roughly about 1% higher, right. Or if you defer it for four or five years with the guaranteed increases, sometimes the payouts high enough that we can't reasonably projected growth. That's going to get there. There are situations where you run the numbers and you'll find that the guaranteed income payment is good enough that you can't expect to do better elsewhere. And that's typically a single life payment scenario or a large deferral, or if you're buying one of these in your mid seventies, typically the parent rates go high enough where it's a pretty good bet to go with the insurance of guaranteed payments.
Speaker 2 00:21:09 I think what you're hitting on is depending on the individual circumstance we can look at, does this existing product make sense? Does a newer product makes sense, does a product with an income rider, not an income rider. This is where it's really beneficial to know the lay of the land. And to say to that individual based on your specific circumstances, this is what makes them
Speaker 1 00:21:35 Absolutely. And just the idea being that if you're not looking at the alternative, you're potentially leaving something on the table. So why wouldn't you want a second opinion? And if you don't want to talk to a show, can Seattle or me and Montana, we'd be happy to qualify a local advisor for you. So don't be afraid. We want what's best for everyone. Schedule a call button on annuity, straight talk.com to the right of middle on any page on the site. We'll get you an opportunity to go on the calendar of myself or a show. And a, you can also call (800) 438-5121. Can we talk a little bit about, we go
Speaker 2 00:22:11 Back to those five things that you were focused on, like the income market volatility, inflation fees and legacy, and within a new cities. I think if it were, it's a fixed annuity or say an income annuity, we're going to get away from the market volatility. But within the, say the fixed annuities, we can also look at the fees and some are going to be different than others,
Speaker 1 00:22:34 Right? If you look at like market volatility, the income annuity certainly solves the problem market volatility, but it doesn't do anything for inflation because you've got a fixed payment. Correct? Correct. So then if you, and depending on the product that gives you the highest pout, you might also be paying a fee for that as well. So you're locked into that payment. And a lot of people are really concerned about inflation. And a lot of people say to me now, well, Hey, if you can get four or 5% on an index annuity, is that going to keep up with inflation? Well, it sure will keep up with inflation. If you look at a market correction, right? And also the ability to reposition those funds at the end of a surrender schedule. Now, if you're in an income payment scenario and you're paying a fee plus taking money out at the end of the surrender term, you could surrender that contract, but 5% income plus 1% fee is going to have less money remaining than just the 5% withdrawal and by a fair bit as well.
Speaker 1 00:23:28 So having more flexibility with a larger remainder will give you the potential to possibly reposition your money in a higher rate environment as well. And a lot of people would like the opportunity to do that because if you buy an annuity now, and the 10-year treasuries sitting at 1.7 and in 10 years, the 10 year treasury is four and a half. Boy, I think a lot of people would be excited to get an annuity in a treasury environment like that. And the options will be dramatically better. But if you have the flexibility to reposition the money, you could be able to take advantage of that. And it goes
Speaker 2 00:24:03 To where we don't know where yields are going to be. Are they going to be up or down? Right. Right. So you, I think you've also touched on this is that you have to do what you play, the cards you're dealt, but importantly, you want to have flexibility,
Speaker 1 00:24:19 Right? Do you play those cards? Absolutely. Well, because that gives you control over your money. I've heard a lot of people say that when I've got the retirement planning webinar that talks about traditional asset management, systematic withdrawals, bucket planning, that kind of thing, stocks and bonds compare that to using an income annuity and then compare both of those to using a deferred annuity where you've got no fees and you can just take withdrawals. A lot of people have called me and I say, well, what do you like about that? And they said, I liked the idea of having more control. Okay. Then it's worth looking at, but I'm not going to beat up anyone who says, I don't want to think about it because I do have clients I'll sell an income contract. If we can determine that's the best solution. Right. But I've got a lot of people that are happy and they don't have to think about it. Their check shows up every single month and they can play with their grandkids. They can take a walk on the golf course. They can, they don't have to think about it. They don't have to worry about it. Right. It also,
Speaker 2 00:25:14 It goes back to what you were talking about earlier on in this piece about the people where you first got into this industry, as you were working on the boats and the people that would enjoy going on those. Oh, that's right. When I was a fishing guide. Yeah. When you were a fishing guide. And so they felt like, I don't want to worry about this,
Speaker 1 00:25:32 Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, those guys, it was interesting. And that was a good part of my training because I spent a lot of years in glacier park in Montana or in Bristol Bay, in Alaska, rowing the boat, Rowan guys down the river. And you know, a lot of people can afford a day of fishing in glacier park. But if you go to those fancy places in Alaska, just the logistics of providing first-class experience includes planes and jet boats and all sorts of stuff. Everything in Alaska is way more expensive. So people look at the price tag of going into one of those fancy lodges and they say, Holy cow, I mean, you do have to have some money to do it, right? So all the guys that are there successful enough and you ask them questions. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of those guys in some of those became the best friends I have to this day.
Speaker 1 00:26:18 And people always ask me, why do you always have older friends? Because I got really good at talking to 60 year old guys, a fishing boat all day long, uh, hundreds of days doing it. So that was interesting to me. But those guys gave me a lot of advice on how to pursue a career, not necessarily related to annuities or anything like that, but it was all about now I used to ask a lot of them, Hey, you're really successful. What would you do with you or me? I'm getting a finance. And they all looked at me saying, I won't take back what I have. And I'm glad I got where I did, but boy, if I could do it all over again, I think you've got a pretty good plan, but that was them. They weren't rowing the boat. I was rowing the boat.
Speaker 1 00:26:57 So of course they liked it cause they were just there fishing. Well, a few were interested in having either Brian or me row your boat as a way to put it, figure out whether a new cities are right for you. Give us a call at (800) 438-5121 that's (800) 438-5121. You can go to a nudity straight talk, hit the schedule, a call button and reach out to us. If you'd like to search our network of qualified advisors that share our philosophy, we'd be happy to hook you up with someone in your area as well. It's not a problem for us because again, the goal is to help you make good decisions. I want to thank everyone for joining us, uh, show, thank you. We will see you next time.
Speaker 0 00:27:38 Have a great day. Everyone you've been listening to annuity straight time. The preceding information is for informational and educational purposes only and does not represent tax legal or investment advice. The views expressed by guests in this program are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or no information presented today should be acted upon without meeting with the licensed position. It is important that you read all insurance contract disclosures carefully before making a purchase decision guarantees of base on the financial strength and claims paying ability of an insurance company. A showcase Rongji is an investment advisor, representative of insight, folios aid, and sec registered investment advisor. The firm only transacts business in States where it is noticed, filed, or is excluded or exempted from notice filing requirements. Any fee-based financial planning and investment advisory services are offered through his association with insight folios, top wedding LLC is not a registered investment advisor and is not another name under which insight folios provide services. Insurance products and services only are offered through top lending LLC inside folios Inc. And top blending LLC are not affiliated companies.
