Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome, everybody, to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast.
Episode number 207, rolling through December. Coming up to the end of the year, please like subscribe or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube to schedule a call with me and help answer your retirement questions. That's the top right corner of any page on annuitiestraighttalk.com button that says schedule a call gets you to my calendar. Name, time, zone, time that you want to talk. Couple of notes. I will call you. Yes, I will call you. I will call you. I will call you. I will call you.
That's what your phone number's for. But I'm not going to bug you anyhow.
Again, Brian Anderson, founder and creator of annuitystraighttalk.com going to revisit a past episode that a lot of people liked.
Sometimes it seems as though we maybe spend too much time talking about the technical aspects of it. I try to slow it down a little bit, break it up, and hopefully that works for more people because again, just trying to help out. So here's the newsletter. You guys can go read. It says it takes four minutes to read. That sounds about right. And then I'm gonna blab about it for a while. But it's been a great year. And again, can't say enough about the relationships I have with everybody. The, you know, professional relationships, friendships, all that stuff. But as it comes to a close in 2025, if you really look back at it, everything seems to be okay right now. You know, there's questions about the economy and the Fed and all that stuff. But when hasn't that been an issue? I think it always will be.
Politics is involved, and there's always gonna be somebody trying to get an angle, telling you, you know, depends on where you get your news. They're always gonna say something's wrong. Somebody will.
Stock market's in good shape. Interest rates are solid right now. Really good deals. You can get what you want right now. If you stayed exposed to risk, then you did just fine.
Anybody that took some off the table and wanted to protect some assets, they're doing great, too.
That's way we like to see it. Like most other years, there was volatility. Go back to March, April. People were talking about it a little different, but it was very temporary because it rallied back fast to finish the year. It went down close to 20%, recovered that plus added 10% to where it started.
So, yeah, I mean, that's. Things are happening the way they're supposed to. Usually works out but you got to decide what type of ride you want to take.
Now, in the past, this is one thing I dislike. You see a lot of agents that'll try to convince people the market's going to crash. Oh, the market's overblown right now. I mean, it's never been higher.
Is it going to lose its money? Yes, there are going to be drawbacks. It's going to happen. But I've never tried to convince people that they got to get all their money out of it. Some people will choose to and just don't like the volatility, and that's perfectly fine. Anybody who listened to someone like that against their better judgment might have missed out on some nice gains over the past 10 years. If you were okay leaving at least some of it in the market, you guys should notice that I've never said anything like that. I always encourage people to leave room for market growth. That's one of the biggest inflation indicators that you can get, or the way to keep up with inflation if you can do anything about it.
Because instead of pitting the stock market against annuities, I show you how they can work together in a portfolio. And this is about retirement. The game changes in retirement.
Say it a thousand times. It's different than when you're socking money away.
The goal is to have some safety and some predictability without giving up too much growth potential. Maybe not at all. It might even grow more because of is not about what the annuity does, or it's not just what about what the annuity does. It's what it helps you avoid.
It's the volatility and the stress. Okay, so when the market was a wreck earlier this year, I heard from a client who bought an income annuity from me a couple years ago.
It was a big commitment for him. We took some time to put it together, got him the best deal in the market. Nobody can argue that.
He told me that, like back then said this is the first time in his life that he felt no stress when his market assets lost value because his lifestyle is not going to change at all. The annuity made sure it didn't affect him so he didn't have to make any major decisions to change allocations or add any stress. What you know, and you might move things around anyway, but you're not doing it out of desperation. You're doing it strategically. When you make changes out of desperation, it increases the likelihood of making a mistake, screwing things up.
So he had the annuity. So you just ride it out and wait so that's what he did.
Never worried about it. And here you go. Whatever he left in the markets right back up and made some more money. So little stories like that confirm what I'm doing now. A few weeks ago, he doubled down again and sent me another message about how satisfied he is right now.
That's kind of underscore something I don't talk about a lot because I talk too much about the technicalities of it. There is the peace of mind aspect of it in his words, in the quotes there. So I want to thank you again for working with us 18 months ago. We've been receiving the $4,600 income from our SPIA single premium immediate annuity since June 2024. That's 18 months for a total of 82,000 in income. And our all in was 750,000. They got years to go, right?
Nice thumbs up, smiley face.
Thanks, buddy. Continuing. It makes me and my wife feel secure and confident. And now that I've been retired since August 1, there has been a serenity I didn't think I would experience. Not working and missing those fat payroll checks and commissions each month, end quote. I didn't say it, he did.
And that's kind of one one of those things. And you know, 18 months in, when you start taking the income, when you start getting money out of it, when there's volatility in the market, all those things are when you feel the value of that security.
Every check he gets, that's going to be more and more valuable. Okay?
So when I think about these things, I go back and I think about how different our process is. I've talked about this case a few times, kind of in passing in different topics, but everyone was trying to sell them a glwb.
They pay a higher commission, but they didn't check the entire market.
Now, if that was the best thing for him, I would have said, and I do this to a lot of people, hey, you know what? This guy did right by you. He gave you a really good recommendation. That's exactly what I would say, go for it. You have my blessing. I don't need to get the business from everyone. I want to make sure the business is in good shape and that everybody that comes to me gets good advice.
But I just checked the spias to know for sure. I said, when do you want income? He said, well, in about six, six or eight months. Okay, well that's in a spia. You got to take it within a year. I checked, the spia was a lot cheaper or Say it another way, he could get a lot more money out of it than he would the glwb. So sometimes it goes the other way. But we check both sides in every case, and not just because it was a large sale. We do it with everyone. Couple of the guys that work with me, I say, hey, listen, tell them that the B plus company exists and pays a little bit more. Don't avoid it because someone else is not going to mention it's B. And just tell them it's a better income stream. So we're in a full disclosure of this. And if everybody's showing like there's some guys out there literally that will emphatically state that one way is the best way, period, and it's not true.
You gotta look. And the reason I started looking is because I'm involved in competitive situations. I know you guys are searching the Internet. You have the opportunity to go talk to anyone. Why would you do business with me if I can't give you the best thing? Okay, he got the best deal available.
More and more satisfied as time goes by. He did everything but say it helps him sleep better at night. Peace and serenity. That sounds pretty good for sleeping. I don't know. So I ran a podcast with that title two years ago, and it got a good response from people talked about the security aspect, not simply just the technical details of it. And we can do that. And I've done it a bunch. I did that a lot this year. At the time, there was a couple that was evaluating annuities, and the wife said, I just want to be able to sleep at night. So when I got that that was a good idea. I was like, that's a good title. Let me talk about how they help you sleep at night.
So I talked about all the different ways that annuities provide safety. Throughout this year, I took a different approach, using the same information. The point is the same, but use a different tack or take a different angle at it. And I talked about the point of it all, which is making more money.
If you can add protection to your portfolio without limiting growth or even growing more because of it, would that help you sleep at night? I like more money. So as we move forward, I will continue to do things the same way because I truly want you to get the best deal, whether it's doing business with me or not. I do not want the stock market to collapse. And I'm not ever going to try to scare you into thinking it will, because if I'm wrong, I look like an idiot. I Don't like to look like an idiot.
It is true. In the past, I always said, and sometimes I feel guilty when the economy is in really bad shape and unemployment's up and the market's down and all that stuff. Business is usually really good for me because that's kind of like slapping people awake. Oh, go protect some money.
That's usually when you should be buying stock. So you need to be buying annuities now when you get really good deals. But whatever, your timing is most important anyhow.
So it's true that when the economy's bad, like business is pretty good for me. But I greatly prefer the last three years when everything's been good, the market's been good and rates have been good. And I want the market to stay strong because we'll have strong interest rates. It'll be the best of both worlds. When you're ready to protect, you won't have to worry about it. A lot of people come to me and interest rates was another one where it was like, oh, the Fed's cutting rates. There's guys in the business. While the Fed, I think the Fed cut rates again today.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Well, I'm recording this, who cares?
Since Fed started cutting rates, treasuries and bond yields have gone up. But yeah, if the stock market's good, everything's good.
Now the point is much better to play offense and retirement defense. So that's what I'm always going to show you how to do. And as rates change and move and the market changes and moves, then different annuity strategies will give you the benefit. Sometimes it's short term, right now it's long term. Depending on what your goals are, you know, you might have a short term goal where a shorter term annuity like a Myga or something will help. And that's fine. That's why everybody's different.
Okay? Market volatility will always come and go with some down periods lasting longer than others. Annuities help you sleep at night so you can ride the volatility. Volatility and get more profitability because of it. If you have a safe pool of money to use or some guaranteed lifetime income, then you're not forced to adjust investments to protect your lifestyle if that growth will give you more benefits in the long run. So when you're ready to stop worrying about it, then get on my calendar, I'll show you how annuities make things better. And I'm not going to tell you to get out of the market entirely. You can if you want, but the point is not comparing to that. Most people can just swap their bonds for an annuity, get way more income, way more liquidity, all those things. No reason to not at least check it out again. Top right corner of any page on annuitiestraighttalk.com if you're looking at the screen, the video, there it is. It says schedule a call. Pretty easy to do. Thank you guys for joining Sleep at Night Annuities Part 2, an episode number 207. My name is Brian Anderson. We're going to do one more before Christmas next week. Then we might have to see you guys in the new year. But for right now, the show goes on. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you guys soon. Okay, bye.
