Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome everybody to the Annuity Straight Talk podcast, episode number 175. My name is Brian Anderson, founder and creator of AnnuityStraightTalk.com here to share current events today that might have an effect on retirement planning.
[00:00:19] But if we keep the long perspective in mind, you shouldn't have to worry about it. And if you're planned correctly, it doesn't matter. We'll talk about that as well.
[00:00:28] Please, like subscribe or comment on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube. Share it with your friends. Get it out to anybody else you think would benefit from this information. A lot of good feedback. A lot of these episodes are based in part or in whole on someone else's comments.
[00:00:47] I'm going to share my screen and we are going to talk about why annuities are slow, calculated decisions and the stock market only gets you in a hurry. If you want to make an appointment with me, top right corner of any page on annuitiestraighttalk.com schedule a call.
[00:01:05] If you're looking at the video right now, you can see it. I'll get up right here, right now. It says schedule a call. It's right there. It's not that hard. Now, I'm going to say one thing before I get started. If you make an appointment, show up, I will call you.
[00:01:18] I've had a lot of people ghost me on those things right now, and I'm getting really tired of it. Put your name in, your real name. I'm not going to use it, sell it or anything. I want to know what to call you and address you. Time zone time. There's a place to put notes. What do you want to talk about? I had somebody put gibberish in there, literally gibberish. And I readjust my schedule based on who I'm supposed to call and when that person doesn't show up. Makes me mad. And it only hurts the people who really do want advice and do respect my time. So that's all I'm going to say. If you don't put a full name in there or you can't intelligently express what you might want to talk about, I'm not going to call you. But please don't take this the wrong way. I'm here to help everyone, regardless of circumstance or situation. So we've had a wild couple of weeks in the stock market tariff pushed by the new president and all that stuff, right? Crazy, crazy things going on. I don't care whether you're for it or against it, what side of the political aisle you Sit on right now, it's altering financial plans for a lot of reasons. And just like any other major news events, the novices all of a sudden become experts in economics. And there's no shortage of opinions on either side of the argument. Most of them are complete bs. They're just tugging at your emotions and keeping us divided. So keep on point and that's what we're going to do. Don't care where you sit on the issue. You have to admit these are nothing more than good lessons that need to happen from time to time. You put your faith in someone else and let go of control of your financial future, you're going to be subject to the whims of this media drama. Now, all of you, everybody that like that is in the demographic to listen to this podcast remembers the pain from the tech bubble in 2001. Exuberance led to crisis and the financial crisis of 2008. Easy money, cheap loans, crash. I've never talked to a person that can't look back at those things and think, oh, that was ridiculous. Those were market events that took years to recover from. 2010 was the the tail end of what has been called the lost decade because the s and P500 was lower at the end of 2010 than it started at in 2001. I have a graphic somewhere on the website where it's a hundred thousand dollars invested at the end of 2001 in the S&P 500 was worth 80,000 at the end of 2010. Now every time that happens, people that I talk to think, oh my goodness, I, I'm never going to be that careless. And then it seems as though, however, that a year or two goes by and it's easy to forget that pain. I know people that have got out in the tech bubble and never got back in and decided, hey, and I'll go to something else I've said a lot of times. Everybody I've met, the vast majority, overwhelming majority of people, 95% of the reason you have what you have is because you saved the money you made. What makes it harder for consumers is the fact that a significant majority of investment professionals have been in the business of investment management for less than 10 years. I know there's a stat from a year or two ago where it was something like 70 or 80% of guys that are fidelity, Schwab, TD, Ameritrade, Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones, guys that are saying, oh, the market always goes up because they don't have that lesson from the past. If you want some of my own Credentials. I was taking investment classes in college. Yeah, I'm a young kid. I'm only 46. Only been doing this for 22 years. But the dot com bubble in 2001 when I was taking investment classes is what almost kept me out of this business. It was the insurance path, the safe path realized. And that's what created these foundational strategies that make your retirement even better, is the reason I got into this business to begin with. All that to say, it doesn't mean that you don't have a good investment guy. It doesn't mean that he doesn't have perspective. There are a lot of really good people out there, really thoughtful, considerate technical analysts, fiduciaries.
[00:05:36] But be careful of whose advice you follow and consider their perspective along with everyone else. An investment manager, Ken Fisher's the example. Like, I probably. I wonder if I like Ken Fisher. I don't know. I don't dislike him. He doesn't like. He likes to have people invested because if you're invested, he gets to charge you a fee and he makes money. It's not a bad thing. But realize that's his motivation.
[00:06:00] So I've always believed, and everybody that's listened to this long enough has heard me say that both sides of a portfolio are important. I got good friends and contacts, people I respect that are professional traders. Even a couple guys who have been on Wall street made their money doing it. The better they are at investments and doing it, the more they support what I'm doing here. And if you're just the average guy who saved a bunch of money for retirement and a bunch means whatever you could, that could be 2000, could be 2 million. 2000 is a little light, but whatever. Just because you saved a lot of money doesn't mean you're good at investments. Just because you have it in a 401k doesn't mean you're good at investments. Some of the, like the investment guys I know right now have a really tough time managing expectations for people who took a hit in the past few weeks. It was a big shock to people. We couldn't have seen this coming. I think I'll get to that later. We'll see if I follow this. So I talked to one of those guys recently and I remembered it was not just because of this last couple of weeks, but every time, because in the last few years there's been seven stocks, the big seven, that like surged in value. People want to hang on to it, want to consolidate into it. He's trying to keep them out of it. Everybody's pushing to trade something in, trade something out. I want to get on this trend. I want to get out of that trend. Nobody wants to get out at the right time. It's always the wrong time. But they seem to always be doing something in a hurry. It's got to be done now. Now think about that and ask yourself, have you thought about that in terms of your 401k or your investment portfolio? Or talk to your investment manager about that. Have you ever felt in a hurry to do something? Why? Because fortunes can change quickly in the stock market, very quickly. But none of what I'm doing here works that way. So I talk about establishing goals. I talk about getting on the same page with your spouse. We don't talk about products until we find a way for you to get through all those details. And then we. If we get into a product, we're going to cover those details in great deal until and before you make a commitment. I've had some clients think about using annuity for several years just to parse through all the stuff. And these are people who came out of a 401k or an IRA or their savings plan in pre retirement where they're always pushed to do stuff. And that's why everybody's so hesitant. Now. I cater to people who are hesitant. Let's really think about this. So it's a methodical process. I have hundreds of newsletters and videos that talk about it. So that's why you make an appointment with me and then we begin the conversation to think about what you guys have to go through, what you need in order. But it's diligence, it's methodical, it's slow when it's done. And you know why it is done? In the recent weeks, when guys I know were maxed out from people calling and freaking out, oh, my goodness. I received only a few messages from clients. It was a great time to be an annuity guy because I knew everything's fine. I got one just today. Hey, I saw the account balance, but can. How is the. Are you sure this is secure? The guy's got a myga. Of course it's secure. It's the last thing to go. Everybody thanked me for the security provided by the annuity so that current events didn't affect them negatively. That's the point of doing it, because this is not the last time it's going to happen. And one of my favorites was the first one I got. And I just got a text randomly last Monday morning. Hey, good morning. This is the first time in 50 years I haven't really freaked out over a big market decline. Thanks. Went back and forth, text him like, yeah, that's why we did what we did. And you're good, right? This guy has been with me for a couple of years and he's got a spia single premium immediate annuity to cover his retirement income gap. Started giving him monthly income sometime last year. Now he's got plenty of money and didn't really need one. But it's still unsettling to see a large decline in the market. And you guys would all agree if you've been there back in 2023, before he started this, we spent several months talking about it. He came in, these guys said, I need to buy an annuity. I saved him a bunch of money and got him the same income stream. That's why we did the deal. But we talk about the benefits of it. And it was. That was where the husband and the wife come in, where he kind of wanted to roll with it. I think I'll be fine, but I'm listening to my wife. My wife wants the security. I realized there might be a time when I'm not around and then when we could demonstrate that the security she wanted provided the growth that he desired, then it matched up. That's why you got to do it together. He doesn't have to cut back on spending. He's comfortably within his spending limits on a guaranteed basis.
[00:10:45] And just because the market lost 20%, he doesn't have to readjust re worry about it. He's retired. What do you want to worry about in retirement? Worry about what you're having for dinner, where are you going on your next trip, or whether your new golf clubs are good enough. I don't know. Whatever you like to do. There are a lot of other people I've talked to in the same situation with either guaranteed income or just a pile of safe money they don't have to worry about. So two reasons to buy annuities income stream or just protect chunk of money. Everyone I've talked to in the past few years, without exception has said, ah, this can't keep going. This can't keep going. But not everyone did anything about it or made sure that the retirement was guaranteed before they chased the returns of the market. Now the worst thing that happened to me is before the biggest part of the market meltdown, I had a couple of clients who were about to lock in a nice yield with their index annuities. The market had already shed more than 10% of its value. But these guys were still on the upside for the year by 6 or 8%, whatever it was. That all changed last two days, the big drops in the market. A couple 10 days ago, another 10% came off the market. They went down to 0% return instead of locking in a nice yield. That's not what any of us wanted. I hope for better. For them, the alternative would have been to see gains disappear and the account actually lose money. And you need to remember, if you don't realize this and think about it, all market gains are on paper and don't really belong to you until you sell the stocks.
[00:12:15] How is that any different than a mark than an index collapsing before an index? Annuity credits? I'm not sure if there's a big difference there, but a lot of things, a lot of the money you might be lamenting right now was never yours to begin with.
[00:12:30] So you didn't lose money, you just lost what you could have had. And it's not yours until you sell it. So keep it in perspective. The stock market has more value than it did two years ago, and depending on the daily swings, it may have more than just one year ago. I'm going to talk about that more next week. It's. It's a really good lesson from something I said almost exactly two years ago. But a lot of you guys might be worried about losing money that never really existed in any way. So don't let that get you into a hurry. In a hurry, spend time. Now's a good reminder to look at ways to avoid that happening again so you can guarantee a retirement outcome. And this stuff doesn't ever really hurt you. I've never met a single person of retirement age who wouldn't benefit from having an annuity whether they want one. Not everybody gets one, but those who do will recognize the value eventually. And that's what's happening to me right now. A lot of people that I sold them to are really saying, hey, thank goodness you were right. Yeah, I got it. Okay, not the last time it's going to happen.
[00:13:31] And then everybody wants to worry about whether it's going to keep up with things going forward, the rebound and all this stuff. But we're in uncharted territory. We have been since early 2022. I'll get into that more next time, but I want again, thank you guys for joining me. Remind you to like subscribe or comment on any of your favorite podcast platforms or on YouTube. Share it with your friends. Anybody who needs a little bit of perspective. Right top right corner on of any page on annuitystraighttalk.com those guys in the video, it's right there, top right corner. Put your name in time, zone time, email, couple notes of what you want to talk about. Generally specific. If it's not a coherent message, I'm not even going to call you. But I will call you if you can do it right and respect my time because I put a lot into this. So thank you for joining me. This has been episode 175. I will be back next week. Good lesson on the market. Something I talked about two years ago, episode 176. It's going to be great. You guys have a great weekend and I will see you next week. Okay, bye.
