Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome everybody, to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast, episode number 233. My name is Brian Anderson, founder and creator of AnnuityStraightTalk.com.
[00:00:10] got a lot of good information out there for you guys. I claim I happen to think that it's the best retirement planning website on the Internet because we have more than just annuities. We have a lot of case studies and advice. Every topic you could think of comes when it comes to retirement. We want to do an inheritance, you want to do Medicare, you want to do Social Security, charity, all that stuff.
[00:00:30] That's what we do. And I have been playing a lot this summer and enjoying my life, decided not to stress so much. About to get an episode out every single week. I've had a lot of visitors. A couple clients came. It was a lot of fun. Family, friends, been floating the rivers, been riding my horse in the mountains, fishing, all the stuff that you're supposed to do when you live in Montana. That's the reason why we live here. So we. My apologies for not being as consistent, but I want to make sure it's all really good.
[00:00:58] Please, like subscribe or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube.
[00:01:03] To schedule a call, you can look at the top right corner of any page on annuitiestraighttalk.com. get on my calendar if there's something you want to talk about, a burning question you have. Get answers, no pressure. We do sell annuities, but that is not our goal. With every single person. A few appointments this week where I said, nope, that is absolutely not what you need to do. I think you're better off doing this or that. A lot of times you want to want us to talk about a sales pitch or something somebody's really working hard to get you to go for. If you want to know the truth of it, you want to understand what it really means, then that's what you get a hold of us for. So, as you guys may notice, this year we've been kind of focusing, focusing heavily on technology upgrades.
[00:01:44] That's another thing that's taken quite a bit of time. So it's not like I've just been screwing around in the mountains and on the rivers exclusively. They've been working on some other stuff. Okay, I want to make this the best annuity resource available.
[00:01:56] We just took another big step forward. For any investment to be viable, it needs to have a straight comparison to similar alternatives. Fixed annuities or mygas are always competitive on the safe money side and come with other plenty of other benefits as well. So now what you can do is you can shop the rates. On my website, we've plugged into a database that updates the list as often as products change. And we also have fixed index annuities. I'll get to that in a little while. So now I'm not saying that nobody else has this because there are a lot of places that do. Ours is a little bit different and I'm going to explain why I wanted to keep it really simple. It doesn't have to be a whole full blown product explanation. We could do that, but for simplicity purposes we're going to go with just this. Okay, but now you can shop for all that stuff. Right on annuity. Straight talk for fixed mygas or fixed index annuities. So, so now the major benefit of this is I always tell people that we have full disclosure.
[00:02:54] It's something I pride myself in. I talk about everything, all the details so that we can cover the tough stuff. Now we don't have to have a hard conversation a few years down the road. Now it's there for everybody to see. Okay, so this product list contains even the products I can't sell. So it's an important to understand why that is. It was easier for us to include all of them than it was to exclude a handful of that are not available for me to sell. But again, you're going to be able to see it here so you don't have to get it from someone else. Like, oh, that's not. That guy's not telling you. We're telling you everything. And what that means when there's maybe a different product that looks better. And whether it is or not, that's, that's the question. And that's what you need advice for. Okay, now there are brokerage products that can be sold by investment advisors. They don't pay a commission, but a management fee could likely be charged. I'm going to give you guys an example of the search tool in a bit and right at the top of the list is a perfect example. Okay, so they're not going to pay a commission, but the guy's maybe going to wrap it into your overall portfolio management.
[00:03:58] Or they're going to say either is a 50 basis points fee or 75 or 35. I don't know what they do, but that's one of the issues. So the net rate is not any higher than what you get if you paid commission or if like heaven forbid, somebody like me makes a commission.
[00:04:13] Okay, if there's not a fee charge they might require some sort of other investment management. There are some guys I do, I've heard of that will say, oh, we'll sell these to you and we won't make any money and we'll just give it to you. Right?
[00:04:26] But then they're going to say, yeah, but you got to have X size portfolio and we want that portfolio under management. So it's going to cost you. You know, it's kind of like a loyalty test, I guess. All right. And again, when I do the example of that, it's a great, there's a great, great example. It's right at the top of the list. Okay? So yeah, I'll give it to you for free, but I want to manage your investment portfolio. So means it's not exactly free because there's an additional requirement to get it. Okay. Now in a lot of cases, you're further ahead if you don't pay a management fee and just let someone like me, some scummy commission salesman make a little bit of money. Mygas don't pay a ton. It's not like I'm getting rich doing it, but, you know, it compensates me adequately for providing service. Doing that. You can ask three or four clients this week that reached out to me for RMD's withdrawal requests, beneficiary changes and those types of things. We're here to do that for you. Okay, now you're going to see both of them, so you need to ask questions to see where the difference comes in. Okay? Now if other things like free withdrawals are important, you can further filter your list. But you need to make an appointment and that's what we can talk about. If you say, hey, I'm really interested in this time period and range of rates. I kind of want this right here, then we can go and say, all right, within with small differences, here's the more appropriate product if you want a bigger withdrawal available, shorter surrender term, different components of the contract, things like that. So.
[00:05:50] But it's enough for most people to say, okay, well it's three years, it's five years, it's seven years. Here's the rate. That's kind of apples to apples at the very beginning. So now you got a link in the newsletter and it's right on the top page of the website as well. So now I'm going to go to. Let me, let me share my screen. How about that? And I will show you where to find it. It's super simple. Okay? So anybody who's watching the video, it's like in the top bar, there's several drop downs and one of them is annuity rates. So you got FIA rates and MYGA rates. We're gonna go to mygas right now. Okay. Okay. So right now you've got, you can select by premium, you can select by the state, you can choose by companies and surrender term automatically checked is annuity straight talks, recommended companies. There's a lot of companies I don't recommend doing business with. You can go check those out if you want to uncheck that box. You get a whole bunch of different things.
[00:06:45] Do whatever you want with your money. But I'm only going to put my name behind the things that I can confidently say, hey, this is going to be good and we're going to have zero issues going forward. Great customer service, you know, financial solvency, all that stuff. Not saying others won't, but I'm not supposed to do that. But still, I don't want to go chase stuff just because hey, there's a higher rate. There's just too many questions with that. Okay, so best five year CE rate go to bankrate.com, a whole bunch of them have 4.35. Okay. For a five year CD. And a lot of people like shorter CDs. This is actually kind of the top of the rate. They go down as you get shorter. I know people a little grumbly about that because the last few years that, you know, one and two year rates were higher than the four and five year rates.
[00:07:30] Anybody that bought a five year product back then's happy because they're better off than those that like bought 16 months and then redid it once maybe and then the second time they went to redo it.
[00:07:40] Oh no, it's only 3.7. That's too bad. Told you. Lock it in for longer. Okay, now we're going to go to the list on the website, we got migrates and so all I'm going to do here is I'm going to select surrender term. Five year boom. That's how fast it is. This is really cool. It is. Of all the ones I've used before, it is the fastest. Okay, so speaking of this, Lincoln Financial, Lincoln Select $500,000 minimum premium for five years is 5.7%.
[00:08:14] I had a hard time finding that product so we had to dig into it. Okay, that is an Edward Jones only product.
[00:08:20] That's a perfect example of a brokerage product. Now 5.7%.
[00:08:25] I doubt you can go there and one off, buy an annuity and get a net 5.7% for five years.
[00:08:30] I don't know the ins and outs of it, right.
[00:08:33] They're gonna charge you a fee on it or it's gonna be available to customers who are already paying those gigantic management fees that Edward Jones charges. So would you rather do that and list Midland national, the Oak Care Advantage, that is their brokerage product as well.
[00:08:51] So you can see Midland's a good example. So let's do this.
[00:08:57] Companies, my recommended Midland National. Okay, so here's The Oak Advantage Care 5 is their brokerage product which is going to go into a managed portfolio. Fees or requirements of a larger account are going to be involved. And you've got that at five years at 5.65. But the Guarantee Pro 5, the one that I sell where I get a commission, you know, they'll pay me about 2% or something like that.
[00:09:20] Yeah. What a criminal I am.
[00:09:22] 5.45.
[00:09:24] So is the Oak Advantage if you're paying less than 2.2%?
[00:09:28] I, I just think that the 545 net of fees, no fees, is probably a better deal. That's up to you. Okay.
[00:09:36] Pretty simple. So now with the, if it's non qualified money, the MYGA will give you tax deferral so you don't have to pay taxes. That's going to further enhance the rate over CDs. Okay.
[00:09:49] And in other comparable time periods you've got fixed annuities are paying as much as 1 1/2 to 2% more than CDs are. Now I know there's certain times where CDs, real short term money, it's good. I recommend them in some cases for parts of portfolios and all those things. Right.
[00:10:09] And it can be convenient. Go to the bank, do it, you can do it online, all that stuff. But I got a pretty slick purchase process for annuities. It's all automated, fully encrypted, 100 safe and you don't even have to get out of your pajamas. Hey, don't have to figure anything out. You just got to answer the questions I give you. Okay?
[00:10:25] So taking things one step further, we also, I'm gonna go back to rates. We also got fixed index annuity rates. Okay.
[00:10:34] So we're going to take, let's do a five year surrender term just to.
[00:10:39] And again, every company's got a pile of these products, right?
[00:10:44] And all I did on this list is we've got the surrender term, we've got the fixed rate in the contract.
[00:10:53] So American national is 4.4.
[00:11:00] I'm going to go, let's let's pick, let's go with.
[00:11:03] I'm going to go to one of the companies I know really well. There are some discrepancies in the list too, so that's why you might need to ask questions. But it's not on me, it's just the database we're pulling from.
[00:11:13] So MassMutual Ascend Landmark 5. Okay, this is again a difference between a brokerage product that has a management fee and a commission product that has none. Okay, 100,000 or more fixed rate, 4% and the S&P 500 cap is 8%. I think those guys are going to go up pretty soon because they've always been at the top. And fixed rates should be around 10, 10 and a half or s. P cap should be around 10, 10 and a Half. We have a lot of other indexes available in each of the index annuities, but they're not similar between companies. So the best comparison tool is the fixed rate and the S&P 500 cap. Okay, I can go to Midland. You guys know I like those guys. They, they've got their brokerage products, they've got their non brokerage products as well.
[00:11:58] And we go to like accelerate. 5 is their non brokerage product. 5 year contract, 4.65% fixed rate S&P 500 cap and 9 and a half. Very good. And that's a guaranteed cap rate. That's a really, really nice fixed index annuity 5 year term.
[00:12:17] We like Midland, easy to deal with, great company.
[00:12:21] Okay, so I want to remind everyone of a podcast I released two years ago. A lot of advisors refuse to sell anything but fixed index annuities. That's fine if they want to do it, but it doesn't serve the public very well. The building block of a fixed index annuity is a multi year guaranteed fixed annuity type deal. Okay.
[00:12:43] So you have to understand where it comes from first.
[00:12:46] And there's a lot of people that are just happy with the fixed rate, don't want to mess with it. And there's a lot of people say, hey, I won't lose money, but I can make more. I want to take the shot. But the podcast don't just jump to an indexed annuity because a lot of people first start seeing annuities and all they see is indexed annuities and they don't understand the rest of it. So again, that's just taking it back to the basics and the education level so that you have more options, more product variety available and, and you can truly choose what you like. To do best. Okay, I want to. Let's see one thing. Both product, both. For both product lists, I've things separated by my recommended companies. Now if you want to see more companies, you uncheck the box and you'll see a lot of those private equity led companies, the little companies you may never heard of.
[00:13:33] There's reasons why I don't sell the other companies. I've talked about it a lot. We can talk about it. More and more people keep asking, are you going to talk about private equity and all those things Just again, more and more people are hesitant to, to work with those companies. And I fully support that. It's your money. You do what you think is best with it. If there is a rate that's much higher than the rest of the market, then you should think twice about the amount of risk that the company is taking. It's more important with Mygas because there are larger discrepancies in the rates available.
[00:14:02] Fixed index annuities are pretty similar across the board. You don't need to look at 60 companies.
[00:14:07] I think I've got 20 or so that are recommended.
[00:14:11] That's going to be more than enough to see what they look like and what's available.
[00:14:15] And anyone that's not on the list is lower rated enough that if it's the same, why not just go with a higher rated company? Okay, so that's what's new on annuitiestraytalk.com you don't have to go anywhere else. You can find your Mygas, you can find your fixed index annuities.
[00:14:29] You can ask us questions, no pressure. You can send an email. Doesn't matter. But if you want to make an appointment, that's the top right corner of annuitiestraighttalk.com on any page. It says schedule a call, get on the calendar now. And we will help you figure it out. But here's the products list. We've got calculators to get income quotes. We have a lot of people using those things. And also we've got the app that talk that shows how an annuity affects a portfolio in retirement. So we've got a lot of stuff here and we're at the point where I can definitively say we probably have more than just about everybody else because I told you about the fixed index annuity calculator where I want to say a big shout out and thanks to Case, the programmer who's working on this. He's done a really, really good job with all these things and we're going to be able to maybe tie some of these things together to get them working in conjunction. That'll be fun to talk about. But here we are. Got all the. All the products for you and the advice to go along with it, to tell you if it's the right thing to do or not and how it fits with your portfolio. Thank you guys so much for joining me this week. I appreciate the. The support and I look forward to seeing you next week for episode number 234. Okay, guys, have a great day, and I'll see you soon. Bye.
