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. Okay. Welcome.
Speaker 1 00:00:46 We went to annuity straight talk the podcast. My name is Brian Anderson and I am here with my esteemed colleague, uh, show Corum, G of top planning and Kirkland, Washington. Hello, Brian, happy to be here at fours, a coffee in downtown Spokane. Unfortunately the Gonzaga Bulldogs did not pull off the national championship, but Oh, I'm sure they'll pack the team next year and have another run at it. Absolutely. So what do you want to talk about today is show, I guess we recently talked about some of the reasons why people don't buy annuities and we're going to start this off. Maybe I thought it'd be a good idea if we kind of both share our background and how we got into the annuity business. And it reminded me of a newsletter. I wrote several weeks back where I told everyone because a lot of people ask me, they say, well, how did you learn all this stuff?
Speaker 1 00:01:33 So I wrote the letter, how I learned about annuities, that details my entry into the business and how I was introduced to them early in my career. Yeah. I think that's a great place to start. We're looking at a post from January 14th of this year on your website, annuity straight talk.com. Let's just take a whirl and kind of walk down this article and see where it takes us. Right? And so when I thought about this, obviously politics is a contentious issue and my wife and I sit on two different sides of the aisle. I'll let you guess where I fall on that, but she doesn't like confrontation. So we don't talk about it a whole lot. She calls me a conspiracy theorist because I typically challenged the status quo in just about every area of my life. And when I explained to her that that's really the nature of who I am and that's how my career has gone.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 I told her that it had nothing to do with me being a conspiracy theorist based on the last few years of politics or economics, it's really has been the evolution of my thought process to become who I am today. And it brought me back to how I learned about annuities because of where I started in the business. And you come from kind of a different area than I do. I started out in insurance. And you started out in the investment side of things. Yes, I was at UCLA, not quite sure having gone through the program in economics and business and administration, it wasn't a double major, but it was sort of a split major at UCLA. And I was one of those super seniors, right. I just didn't know at the end of the program where I wanted to land, I saw a listing at a job career board at UCLA and it said the firms no longer around, but it was bear Stearns.
Speaker 1 00:03:10 Oh yeah. And so at that time they actually had an opening. So I went there and learned all about the stock market and working with clients with stocks, bonds. Then I ended up migrating over to what we call the buy side, the investment management space. So it's almost like what I want to clarify is we both have a both approach. We believe that there is a merit for insurance solutions. There is a merit for investment solutions, depending on a client's specific situation. But I came at it from one side and work to the center. You came at it from another side and similarly worked to the center. And I think that's important for people to understand, because a lot of these
Speaker 2 00:03:51 Information and a lot of the opinions out there come from people that believe it's all or nothing on one side
Speaker 1 00:03:56 Or the other. And that has been proven academically to not be the case. So it takes elements, especially in retirement elements of insurance protection
Speaker 2 00:04:06 And elements of growth that may require
Speaker 1 00:04:08 Risk. I think that two things that we always have to think about when we're working with an advisor, number one would be our bias, you know, and our biases shaped by our version of truth. We experience things and it forms opinions, right? So that's how we start developing cognitive biases. There's another aspect that shapes our thinking, which is our business model, right? So I feel like those two things, when you start talking with advisors, I hear this a lot. Someone will say, you know what, I've spoken with five different advisors and they gave me five different ideas. And it's probably because each person at the end of the day is subjective. And they're saying, this is what I think, but it's their own biases and maybe their compensation models that might be leaning towards a certain approach versus another. And I think
Speaker 2 00:04:59 Everybody's guilty of that to some extent, that's why I've taken the time
Speaker 1 00:05:02 To really outline my evolution of thought and talk about where I
Speaker 2 00:05:08 Came from so that I can offer as much
Speaker 1 00:05:10 Objective proof to the plans, the ideas that I create so that people can actually take ownership of that. And again, really the idea is to empower the individual to make confident decision. So let's get back to here in your, how I learned about annuities post, we talk a little bit about how you were in college, but you were talking with your uncle and you start realizing he's very successful. Right? And we had growing up as kids. I like to say we weren't rich. We weren't poor. My parents did a wonderful job of teaching us, you know, the right way to handle the world. We had everything we needed and I love my parents to death. And I think there were excellent providers, but we were not wealthy. We didn't have a lot. And part of the reason, cause my dad a school administrator and we had six kids in my family. Right. But my dad's little sister married, a guy who was kind of one of my favorite family members because he was a very successful guy in business, did a lot of real estate. He was a petroleum distributor for a major oil company, any own gas stations and rental properties and all sorts of stuff, but he was really successful. And I thought, okay, well, I don't really
Speaker 2 00:06:21 Want a little more out of life. Maybe I'll ask uncle Gary,
Speaker 1 00:06:25 Hey, how do I do what you do? I want to do that. And he was also a real quiet guy, kind of a private guy, a very, very hard worker. And he didn't really answer my question. And I thought he probably just not interested. Right. But it was interesting in college. I studied
Speaker 2 00:06:42 Finance and do it a little bit in economics
Speaker 1 00:06:44 As well. And I got my finance degree, but that was right after the.com bubble burst. And so
Speaker 2 00:06:50 When that was all fallen apart, I was doing my final investments classes. I didn't feel like using my degree because I couldn't, I wasn't a very risk on type person.
Speaker 1 00:06:58 And I didn't feel like I could recommend that route to people early in my career. The worst story I heard was a guy who had $2 million in his 401k worked for a telecom company. And after the.com bubble burst, it was down to $80,000 and it would never come back because the has just disappeared. Right? And so when I graduate,
Speaker 2 00:07:19 My uncle came back to me and said, Hey, you want to know how I do what I do. Perhaps you should meet my financial advisor.
Speaker 1 00:07:25 And his name was Andy.
Speaker 2 00:07:26 And he was an insurance based planning
Speaker 1 00:07:28 Guy. And so I went in for the interview and kind of learned, basically Andy talked to me and said, you can
Speaker 2 00:07:35 And get started with this. If you learned to provide value to other people,
Speaker 1 00:07:38 Then you'll become an invaluable as well. And I recommend you jump in with this company. Right. And the idea being that if I learned the elements of building a plan, building the protections into it, working hard, saving money, then I'd help other kids my age do that. And then in 20,
Speaker 2 00:07:55 30 years, we'd be like Andy and my uncle
Speaker 1 00:07:58 We'd be the very well-off financial advisor with all the, you know, high end business clients. Right. And so that's kind of
Speaker 2 00:08:05 Where I started and I enjoyed that over what the market would offer because it was insurance-based planning. So it was all very safe. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:08:12 Guaranteed methodical stuff. Can I clarify, you were at school, you were leaning already to financial services, but you were starting to develop a concern over the way the market was acting. Oh one Oh two. Then you talk with your uncle. What I noticed was, and it's in your article was that you asked him, how am I going to be successful? You kind of gave you kind of an overall idea. He didn't answer your question specifically. He remembered your conversation, came back to you at a later time and said, you know, you asked me about this. Let me answer the question. Let me introduce you to Andy. And it really solidified that you were already concerned about the way the market was performing here was a way to potentially become financially well-off yourself by solving people's problems, using more of an insurance approach is absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:09:02 So in short I learned, yes, there is another way to do this. And that's, by the way, what I was wondering was when I was looking at the investment world and I still work with investments today, the investments can go up. Investments can go down. How do you have that? More of a steady Eddy approach. And that's where I feel like to the degree it worked for the client, they can pick, you know, the individual can select a or B or a and B. No, absolutely. And I think what's interesting is there's I think since I've always taken a contrary approach to this stuff and been safety first, there's always going to be people who disagree with that. And so I feel like I'm on the contrary inside of options and opportunities. And that doesn't bother me one bit. It doesn't matter to me if Ken Fisher agrees with my philosophy, but I try to provide all the objective proof, like you said, so you can have informed decisions, right?
Speaker 1 00:09:57 And by the way, you were just talking a little bit about safety. First, there are two different schools of thought in financial planning. One of them is safety first, which is more of the insurance-based approach. The other one is probability based. And that's why, for example, one of the big things that you'll see in certain financial plans that are more heavy in the investment component is something called Monte Carlo simulations, right? So there are two different approaches. They both have a long history. When advisors are working with individuals to construct financial plans, the software will incorporate a probability-based approach or a safety first approach. And sometimes I'm in the position of evaluating a software where it does both. So that's why it's important. Clients understand, you know, where is my advisor coming from? Right, right. And, uh, I've not been a big fan of Monte Carlo simulations because one thing we know, if you look at the probability based approach, right, then the one thing you know is you'll get 5,000 dots on a graph.
Speaker 1 00:11:07 Correct. And you're going to be one of those dots and you got time versus money and all that stuff ready to return factor into it. Correct. The one thing, you know, that's interesting about if you really think about it is like, yeah, there's 5,000 dots. There's 5,000 hypothetical outcomes. But what actually happens is not going to be any one of those things. There's going to be some variation is going to be better or worse than what the probability suggests. Right? And so that's where if you look at people that are saving money, as we grow and build wealth, it's fine. But once you're trying to protect it, live off of it and pass it onto the next generation, then that approach needs to change. And that's where you can likely prove mathematically that the safety first approach is better. And not to mention the fact that a lot of people want that security and consistency.
Speaker 1 00:11:51 And it's probably a good time to say that if you are considering the safety first approach, whether you decide to implement it or not, a good place to start is by calling (800) 438-5121, you can go to annuity straight talk. There's a green schedule, a call button. And Jesse, if safety first has a place in your plan, you may ultimately decide you want to do more probability based, but it doesn't hurt to evaluate both approaches to make an informed decision. Absolutely. And you can contact either a show or myself via that system. Cause we've got his name up on the schedule button as well. So just so you know, it's easy to do and we're always here to help. So back to this article you have now graduated, you've talked with Andy, you started your career selling life insurance and setting up IRAs. Yup.
Speaker 2 00:12:53 So I was going out and getting all the other kids my age and San, you need to buy some whole life insurance and you also need to start putting the money aside in an IRA.
Speaker 1 00:13:01 So, which is great. Cause I still have some of those accounts and it's amazing. I've know people that have several hundred thousand in their early forties by just putting three, 400 bucks a month into it. Right. So in that respect it was rewarding, but it was also kind of monotonous to be honest with you, but you don't get a lot of assets under management by doing 200 bucks a month. Right. It takes a long time to build it up, but it's a good starting place.
Speaker 2 00:13:25 You would learn what you need to learn so that you can start handling the,
Speaker 1 00:13:29 But that's where, you know, when annuities came into it, they weren't appropriate for, because obviously
Speaker 2 00:13:34 My sphere of influence was other people that
Speaker 1 00:13:36 Were my age. Correct. And that was one of the big concerns a lot of people had. And a lot of people say it now still is, well, it's different. I'm 42 years old now. But I started when I was 23 and anybody that was 45 or so didn't want to work with a 23 year old because who knew that I had the staying power. Right. There's a seriously high level of attrition in this business. I think it's been 90% dropout rate in the first four years or at least those were the numbers when I started, I don't, I wouldn't assume it's any different now. Right. So it took a while and that's why I was doing some of that simple stuff. But then I learned a lot of the rules that go around it. Yeah. And what I also think it's interesting is that when you were starting, you were working with people your age, you're in your early twenties.
Speaker 1 00:14:18 And when you think about what are people looking for at that stage, maybe they're starting families. Maybe they're just starting to get savings. So that's why something maybe like whole life insurance cost of insurance is potentially pretty low. It's a nice runway at some point later on though, you meet someone who has a bigger financial capital situation, right? Yeah. Go ahead. And, and, and that's where they're saying, we want to protect this financial capital. So that's where you understood. Wait a minute. This is where a new cities start figuring in because we already have this financial capital that we may want to protect and not subject to market risk. Yeah. Well, what was interesting is I was in the business for a few months and a family friend called me and said, Hey, you worked for an insurance company. Right? I said, yeah, well, my mom's second husband just passed away. And I think she had $150,000. She doesn't want to buy a CD, but she's heard that maybe annuities would work. Do you sell annuities? And now I only heard of
Speaker 2 00:15:21 Them. I knew the older guys in my office had sold
Speaker 1 00:15:24 Them. And when I asked the general agent, he said, Oh no, no, no, no, no. Those are for the older guys. You don't deal with those. So you can't do those right now. Right. But it was still my client. So I brought in one of the older agents to say, Hey, can you help me with this? So a few days later we sit down and he had it all figured out. We put her into a seven year fixed annuity paying five and a half percent at the time. And it was quick. It was easy. She got what she needed business was done. Right. But there was no information
Speaker 2 00:15:49 On annuities. And I say this all the time, I had to go to the library to start,
Speaker 1 00:15:53 But I got a couple thousand bucks for a commission out of that split with the other agent. I thought, wow, I was living off of $2,000 a semester in college. Right. And I thought, this is interesting. And if there's no information
Speaker 2 00:16:04 Unavailable out there, where am I to learn more of this stuff? So the next time one of those opportunities comes,
Speaker 1 00:16:09 I can handle it because that's the point of getting started. Others help you get going. And at some point you're off on your own. Right. And so, which is interesting because now I'm back 18 years into it thinking I need to start doing joint work and get guys like a joke involved. Right. Well, why do you think that you talk with Andy? He says, this is the path you're doing life insurance and IRA's, and you're told, don't really look at annuities. Don't you think that many advisors out there right now, kind of going back to biases and business models, annuities may be relegated to that corner. Right? Well, and it was also that I was 23, 24 years old. And people that you were in your sphere of influence just didn't have the financial capital. They didn't have the capital to do it. And it wasn't necessarily appropriate either.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 So we had right around 50 years old as the kind of the earliest, really that annuity should be considered. And then it depends on risk tolerance and whatnot. But to be honest, I didn't have a whole lot of contacts in the 50 year old plus category. And now most of my clients are mid sixties or so you can't use an annuity though at a younger age, if someone is risk averse. Oh, absolutely. There's a, there's a way to do it. I'm not saying you can't, but it's not worthwhile for us to go out and advertise the Rudy's to 35 year olds. Just to clarify though, that there is a place, if somebody feels like I want to have a backstop and I want to go up the mountain, the accumulation phase more slowly and steadily. Yes. I personally will begin buying. I have a couple now, but I'm not going to buy any more until I'm probably about 50 years old.
Speaker 1 00:17:44 So, but interesting. I think with that sale, as I became very intrigued. And so I started consuming as much information as I could get. Right. And I realized there really was people were at a loss to find solutions because, and again, I was really trying to figure it out as well. So when people say, well, I want to know what you know, all right, what's going to take 18 years to get there, but I can show you what to avoid and probably compress that process a fair bit for you. Right? One of the designations that I have is this certified nuity specialist through the Institute of business and finance, the material that comes is a big fat compendium. It's at six different manuals and it takes hours of study. They break it up into three different exams, but it's quite lengthy and you have to know different types of annuities, the ins and outs.
Speaker 1 00:18:38 So if you want it to become an expert in annuities and truly understand the whole breadth and depth of them, it takes time. It does. Yes. And I won't say, I guess I can't say I know everything because I don't, but I've always been pretty good at, you know, if you give me a contract, I can discern what the purpose is and whether it's appropriate. Right. It's interesting. There's some basic fundamentals that there's a value in each contract and the value needs to match your goals. Right? I mean, it's as simple as that and on the base of it, every insurance company is kind of working with the same things. So there can't be one that's so much better than the other, if they don't have that same interest rates. Right. So it's interesting to see it. But if something looks really, really good in one area, it's going to have to come off of some other area, like a high income payment.
Speaker 1 00:19:25 For instance, you're not going to see a big residual value. The money's not there to do it. The company is putting value on one benefit of the contract. And you have to make sure that the value in that contract goes to your benefit. I always liken it to when you have a car manufacturer, they have a chassis and they can say, okay, is this going to be a performance car? Or is this maybe going to be more of a fuel efficient car? For example, I drove over from Western Washington to Spokane in my Prius. It's very fuel efficient, but somebody could be driving a Porsche and just go a lot faster than me, but I value the fuel efficiency. So that's the design I wanted. And it's very similar with annuities. What do you want this contract to do? And in order for that insurance company to design it in such a way that it delivers certain attributes, they will have to give up other attributes because it's all off of the same.
Speaker 1 00:20:19 Ultimately they start with the same chassis. So focus on certain features. Correct? Correct. So it's, I don't know. I mean, I think it's pretty interesting if you learn the fundamental ways of working with them, then finding answers is pretty simple. In my opinion, it's just, I guess you have to know what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to. Right? So now here in your timeline, you now have understood annuities and then you seeing really more the fixed annuities, which are right. I would call them also the fixed interest annuities. These are your plain. What you see is what you get either. It's going to be a declared rate for the first year and it's going to change every year thereafter, or we're going to guarantee the rate throughout the entire term. Something like what we might see the bank version of it is a CD, which is guaranteed by the FDC.
Speaker 1 00:21:10 This is clearly a different type of vehicle from the insurance company, but it's similar in terms of that interest rate, right? I think it's common to look at annuities and say, Oh, that's so complicated, but put your money in. You get this fixed rate guaranteed. It used to be that the rates would be adjustable and they only two thousands. Nobody wanted to buy the multi-year guarantee, which is a guarantee that the rate stays the same throughout the term, right? Because rates have been falling since 1989 and everybody's had this assumption that rates were going. So if they took the adjustable rate, their rate would go up when rates rise, but the opposite happened and those adjustable rates came down subject to a guaranteed minimum. But I think in my mind, my opinion, the multi-year guarantees really became popular around 2009, 2010 is when people started saying, all right, let's lock this in.
Speaker 1 00:22:02 And just to underscore, when we're talking about annuities, the guarantees are based on the claims paying ability of underlying insurance company earlier. I was just mentioning that we think about it like a bank CD. It's just an easy way to thinking about it. But clearly bank CDs are guaranteed by the FTC insurance. Annuities are not right. And we can go into that certainly enough to be concerned about because the insurance companies are very well capitalized, but we, and we could do a separate show specifically. We on that where we can show people how to look at where the safety is part two of your art that you want to move on to the next one, the evolution, because what I was noticing was that what's interesting is when you got started in this business, you were sort of seeing the way the world is starting to fall apart in say the early part of the turn of the century, right?
Speaker 1 00:22:52 Yep. And then you're ready to come out into the marketplace. Oh, seven Oh eight Oh nine. A lot of these products are changing at that time as well. And so now you've been firmly in business now for 18 years. And I know, I see a lot of older annuity contracts from say first part of the first decade. And those designs are no longer around today. Like for example, there was something called within the fixed index annuity realm. There was something called a two tiered annuity and one side got one thing the other side got another and it's complex. But the idea is that those two tiered annuities insofar, as I know, are no longer today's design. So these insurance companies keep improving the design and making them more consumer friendly in my opinion. Right. And so you've really seen that evolution as you got out of school and were starting up your own business.
Speaker 1 00:23:43 Absolutely. Absolutely. And then, you know, so when I started, I thought, Hey, these fixed annuities are great and I didn't sell a ton of them, but I sell a couple a year find the right people. And it was kind of fun. It was easy, right? As hard as it is to say a 7% guarantee though, nobody wanted to buy it because even after the.com bubble burst in the early two thousands people still, I want it to be in the market cause it's that, why would you take a 7% guarantee? But we looking back now where you might get a 3% guarantee, he is like, wow, dang it. I really missed that. I have people that have bought those annuities 17, 18 years ago. They still have them because the guaranteed minimum on the contract is four to four and a half percent. So they'll never get less than that.
Speaker 1 00:24:26 Their money is completely liquid. I thought I was going to resell annuities, but the rates weren't and they had something better in a contract with the company. So they've kept them. I have never replaced annuity. I previously sold, which is huge. That's great. Yeah. So, but what, like when I talk about my evolution of thought, what came out in 2005 or six was the variable annuities with the guaranteed lifetime income riders. Right. And I remember this is the contrarian in me. I looked at it and said, okay, most people kind of know how they work, but we're not going to spend too much time on that. But essentially the variable annuity with an income guarantee, the variable account will go up and down with the stock market, of course. But that guarantee means that the base that is used to calculate income will increase each year on a guaranteed basis.
Speaker 1 00:25:18 Right? And so what you get is you get a guaranteed growth rate on the income that only counts. If you trigger income. One day, what I calculated is that you could take the fixed annuity, get a guaranteed rate, not pay fees. And then when you wanted to take income, you could convert that fee, fixed annuity into a lifetime income stream and actually get more than what the variable annuity is. We're guaranteeing. Now try being a 25 years with all these guys that have 30 years of experience and are all fired up about variable annuities, try to be the kid that comes in and tells them, I think there's a better way. They didn't like it. And then he listened to me and neither of us in our practice today work with variable annuities because you need a securities license to work with those. Right. But when we look at them, those designs and we look at the fixed annuities, we can see that for certain clients, this particular design from the fixed annuity may be more appropriate, right? It's not to say that that's the way you approach income in every scenario. But one thing that's important to people these days would be the certified financial planner designation or the fiduciary standard, which if someone adheres to the standard means they have to do what's in your bag. Okay. And so people want that. And I have, we'll probably do a show on this
Speaker 2 00:26:47 As well. I've taken issue with a lot of people that say they are fiduciaries, but don't seem to truly be looking out for someone's best interests.
Speaker 1 00:26:54 And I believe if
Speaker 2 00:26:55 You're truly going to be a fiduciary, then you have to look at all possible options. And so when I talk about a solution, that's got more flexibility, more security, lower fees. You may not want to take that approach, but a fiduciary should show that to you because it's got a lot of potential in it. And a lot of people have found it.
Speaker 1 00:27:13 That's a better way to approach things. I completely agree. Not only do you need to show alternatives, but within the product, you can show alternatives. So let me clarify that you can show alternate ways of approaching a problem in terms of strategy. And then when it comes to execution, there could be alternate approaches in that. So if you decided, for example, on a fixed annuity for a portion of your retirement savings, that is a strategy, but let's see what are the alternatives for that strategy in and of itself. But if we've decided on the fixed annuity, can we see two or three different alternatives? And for example, one of my clients who I'm working with, I have said, we do both. She's got investments. We also are looking at a portion of her retirement savings using a fixed annuity. And I said, for this type of surrender schedule, this period of time here is what I'm suggesting, but here are also three or four other companies, right? That are in that space. Here's the database that shows everybody that's out there, right? Because you and I, as practitioners, we know what's out there and we can compress timeframes for are the individuals that we serve by saying, let's educate you and let's show you everything that's out there. And that way you can now make an informed decision, right?
Speaker 2 00:28:42 And like a quick example of that would be something to say, okay, if you're trying to maximize guaranteed income from a specific
Speaker 1 00:28:49 Asset, there is for
Speaker 2 00:28:51 Your situation. And it's different for everyone. There is one contract that will pay higher than any other country,
Speaker 1 00:28:56 Correct. And depending on who you are, what state, yes.
Speaker 2 00:28:59 You live in what your age is, how long you want to defer it, whether it's a single or joint life contract, all these different variables. There is an objective answer to that to saying this contract.
Speaker 1 00:29:09 Now it might be from a B plus company, and you might say, no, I got to have an a rated company. I understand that. And typically in most cases, I refuse to sell a B plus company. So then if
Speaker 2 00:29:21 You say, well, that's gotta be an a plus company or better,
Speaker 1 00:29:24 You're going to get a different answer, right. Or there might be someone
Speaker 2 00:29:27 Not in the state of Washington, of course, or
Speaker 1 00:29:30 In some cases, California, where they say,
Speaker 2 00:29:32 Well, I'll take a little bit less. If I can add a long-term care benefit,
Speaker 1 00:29:37 Right. Or an extra death benefit or all this. And then you look and say, well, what if I don't take the guarantee anyway? And I want to just protect the money and have free discretionary access to the funds at any given time. So that right there in any income situation presents a person with four to five different options that you really should look at to determine what is exactly the best option for you. That is the best way of working with individuals. And I think this is a good time to say that if you like that approach where opportunities are laid out in front of you, and again, you feel this is something that merits consideration, go to the website, annuity strike, talk.com and schedule a call button Tom. And there's a phone number two, right? (800) 438-5121. So now we're into part two of your article, and you're starting to realize now the different benefits of the fixed annuities, the indexed annuities, the variable annuities, and this is really driving your evolution, right? That is correct. And so, and I think it's just a matter of, again, trying to work as a fiduciary would and presenting options to everyone. And that's, it goes back to why people don't buy annuities. A lot of people don't know what questions to ask or that you
Speaker 2 00:31:02 Or I can look at something and say, okay, here's the best
Speaker 1 00:31:05 Option, but how do they know that we're telling them the truth? Right? And so in doing that, we've got to explain the differences in contracts and the different options of achieving a specific goal. So that every time we add a layer to that explanation, it gives the individual much more confidence that they truly are getting the best solution. I wanted to also bring home a point about, you know, we started off talking about biases, business models, people that are in the investment space may not feel, Oh, I really want to work with annuities. You started off in this business, really more focused on life insurance. And even within the insurance realm, there are people that look for life insurance. And then there are people who do annuities and you'll even find that there's sort of a, there's like a wall between investments and insurance. And once you get into the insurance world, there's sometimes another wall between those two, even though they're very well there.
Speaker 1 00:32:02 Yeah. There's a, there's a wall for like, from the consumer's perspective, but behind the scenes, the investment industry and insurance industry worked closely together. They're not as divided as do you think they are. I was talking about more of the advisor, cognitive biases, where the advisor says, well, you know, you, you mentioned one advisor who prominently goes around saying, I hate annuities. And people have said, wait a minute, you become his annuity by paying those fees. Right. So right. But there are these cognitive biases. And so, anyways, so that was just the point I was thinking of. Yes. Well, I don't think anybody's being intellectually honest to say they hate annuities, but I think if they say they hate annuities, it's because they don't understand them. That goes back up my meals last year. Well, we don't need to go there. Well, I think we have covered the first two parts of your background, your evolution of thought.
Speaker 1 00:33:01 We also have part three of your article, which was talking about, should we just go there? We've got to think, you know, if you look at, we can look at that real quick, but I want to say that maybe this is a topic of a different podcast, to be honest with you, because then we're talking about how to analyze the numbers really. And it's part of that work, you know, where I go back to say, Oh, highest guaranteed income, then add in your credit rating, then maybe look at long-term care then maybe not have it's really a demonstration as to how to look at those numbers the right way. So I kinda think it's, I mean, should we just do it for next time we get together? Yeah, absolutely. I think it would be a great thing to do together. So probably cause we've got a schedule a day and we'll stick with that.
Speaker 1 00:33:40 So. Okay. Well this has been annuity straight talk once again, if you go to the website, annuity straight talk.com. If you're interested in learning more about how an annuity could fit into your plan, you want basically straight talk that just this may work for me. This may not work for me. Uh, the number to call (800) 438-5121. There's a schedule, a call button. And then what, and one thing I want to point out is that, uh, we understand the difficulties that can be presented by working remotely with people. We are advisors. We do sell product. We want to make sure they're in the right situation. If your request is to, uh, help us qualify a financial advisor in your area, we've got a lot of context around the country as well. So don't be afraid to reach out to us for just a fair assessment on it.
Speaker 1 00:34:27 And you can be honest with us. We'll be honest with you. And you say I'd really like to do business in person. And I live in Indiana. We've got a network of people where we can go do a little bit of research for you and make sure you get the right thing. Because the goal, our goal is to make sure we help you no matter what that means for us. I love it. Well, Brian, why don't we wrap up here and we'll come back next time with part three and part four of your four-part series. All right. Okay. Thank you a show and thank you everyone for tuning in
Speaker 0 00:34:55 Catch you next time. Have a great day. You have been listening to annuity straight talk. The preceding information is for informational and educational purposes only. And does that represent tax legal or investment advice? The views expressed by guests on this program are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of nerdy straight talk. It's no information presented today should be acted upon without meeting with a licensed profession. It is important that you read all insurance contract disclosures carefully before making the purchase decision guarantees are base under financial strain,
Speaker 3 00:35:44 Uh, showcase. Ron G 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 planning, LLC inside folios Inc. And top blending LLC are not affiliated company.
