Annuity Quotes

people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them

Forty-six point two billion dollars, I thought, my heart attacking my rib cage and my mouth sandpaper-dry. Tobias Hawthorne was worth forty-six point two billion dollars, and he left his grandsons a million dollars, combined. A hundred thousand total to his daughters. Another half million to his servants, an annuity for Nan... The math in this equation did not add up. It couldn't add up. One by one, the other occupants of the room of the room turned to stare at me. 'The remainder of my estate,' Mr. Ortega read, 'including all properties, monetary assets, and worldly possessions not otherwise specified, I leave to Avery Kylie Grambs.

Her German language made my arteries harden- I've no annuity for the play we blew. I chartered an aluminum canoe, I had her six times in the English Garden.

People who buy annuities, it turns out, live longer than people who don’t, and not because the people who buy annuities are healthier to start with. The evidence suggests that an annuity’s steady payout provides a little extra incentive to keep chugging along.

Our kids aren’t an annuity for our retirement, social system, or medical frailty.

The Anglo-Spanish penal system either struck visitors as refreshingly civilized or as stingingly rapacious. Sentences could be commuted or pardoned for large cash payments, or for the transfer of assets such as stock or annuities. Absent this, prison corporations happily extended moderate-interest sentence-mortgages to a sponsor, or even to parolees themselves. Visitors could buy different levels of access to the prison via a transparent list of escalating fees, which in the Congregate would have been called bribes. Some nations just did prisons better than others.

Do you know what made me fall in love with you?" George asked suddenly. Anne shook her head, puzzles that he should ask her this now. "I heard you laugh down the hall, just before I got to Spanish class that first day. I couldn't see you, I just heard this fabulous laugh, like a whole octave, top to bottom, and I had to hear it again." She put her fork down gently and came around the table to stand by his chair. His hands went around her hips and she pulled his head to her belly, cradling it against her body. "Let's live forever, old man," she said, smoothing the silver hair away from his face and bending to kiss him. He grinned up at her. "Okay," he said amiably, "but only because it'll really piss off that insurance guy you bought the annuities from." And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.

Solving problems and settling issues is good lawmaking, but it’s not lucrative. It is gridlock, confusion, and rehashing fights that create streams of income—like an annuity—for the Permanent Political Class.

By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!" The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted on his master's head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good illustration of his character, I thought.

The first people to get the new money are the counterfeiters, which they use to buy various goods and services. The second receivers of the new money are the retailers who sell those goods to the counterfeiters. And on and on the new money ripples out through the system, going from one pocket or till to another. As it does so, there is an immediate redistribution effect. For first the counterfeiters, then the retailers, etc. have new money and monetary income they use to bid up goods and services, increasing their demand and raising the prices of the goods that they purchase. But as prices of goods begin to rise in response to the higher quantity of money, those who haven't yet received the new money find the prices of the goods they buy have gone up, while their own selling prices or incomes have not risen. In short, the early receivers of the new money in this market chain of events gain at the expense of those who receive the money toward the end of the chain, and still worse losers are the people (e.g., those on fixed incomes such as annuities, interest, or pensions) who never receive the new money at all.

The Memoirs became the most celebrated unfinished, unpublished, unread book in history. But Chateaubriand was still broke. So Madame Récamier came up with a new scheme, and this one worked - or sort of worked. A stock company was formed, and people bought shares in the manuscript. Word futures, I guess you could call them, in the same way that people from Wall Street gamble on the price of soybeans and corn. In effect, Chateaubriand mortgaged his autobiography to finance his old age. They gave him a nice chunk of money up front, which allowed him to pay off his creditors, and a guaranteed annuity for the rest of his life. It was a brilliant arrangement. The only problem was that Chateaubriand kept on living.

The ten pounds annuity left to him by his father when he died in 1800 was given to him with the pious hope, expressed in old Henry Broderick's own words, that 'the sum would keep him out of the mischief that had brought him into the world'. The hope had not been fulfilled, however, for Ned Broderick, disregarding his father's wishes, had become the parent of no less than four illegitimate children, all by different mothers.

You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?” said Mr. Jarndyce. “By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!” replied the other. “He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn’t take ten thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment, a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most astonishing birds that ever lived!

The insurance companies that create annuities often make them seem like investments,” he wrote in a recent explainer about annuities. “But really they’re more like insurance.” Lieber went on: “Like insurance to stave off financial disaster, an annuity is something you purchase to guarantee that you won’t run out of money if you live a long time.” In fact, thinking of annuities as insurance makes them a lot more sensible than thinking of them as investments—because as investments they are not good at all. But that’s not their goal—their goal is to insure you against the risk of outliving your money.

By 1877, there were virtually no more American buffalo to hunt—a development hastened by the authorities who encouraged settlers to eradicate the beasts, knowing that, in the words of an army officer, “every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” U.S. policy toward the tribes shifted from containment to forced assimilation, and officials increasingly tried to turn the Osage into churchgoing, English-speaking, fully clothed tillers of the soil. The government owed the tribe annuity payments for the sale of its Kansas land but refused to distribute them until able-bodied men like Ne-kah-e-se-y took up farming. And even then the government insisted on making the payments in the form of clothing and food rations.

The Terrible People People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it, And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it. I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it. But no, they insist on being stealthy About the pleasures of being wealthy, And the possession of a handsome annuity Makes them think that to say how hard it is to make both ends meet is their bounden duity. You cannot conceive of an occasion Which will find them without some suitable evasion. Yes indeed, with arguments they are very fecund; Their first point is that money isn't everything, and that they have no money anyhow is their second. Some people's money is merited, And other people's is inherited, But wherever it comes from, They talk about it as if it were something you got pink gums from. Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing, But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny -- Have you ever tried to buy them without money?

Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not very attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured, is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also dawn.

There had been a time when she admired the way that David became a doctor. When he had told his father of his intention, General Melrose had immediately cut off his annuity, preferring to use the money to rear pheasants. Shooting men and animals were the occupations of a gentleman, tending their wounds the business of middle-class quacks. That was the General’s view, and he was able to enjoy more shooting as a consequence of holding it. General Melrose did not find it difficult to treat his son coldly. The first time he had taken an interest in him was when David left Eton, and his father asked him what he wanted to do. David stammered, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,’ not daring to admit that he wanted to compose music. It had not escaped the General’s attention that his son fooled about on the piano, and he rightly judged that a career in the army would put a curb on this effeminate impulse. ‘Better join the army,’ he said, offering his son a cigar with awkward camaraderie.

Well, buying an annuity means you give the insurance company a lump sum—say, $500,000 at age 60—and in return you get a guaranteed monthly payout (for example, $2,400 each month) for the rest of your life, however long that happens to be. Like all insurance, annuities aren’t free—insurance companies have to make money to stay in business!—but if your goal is to maximize the life experiences you can buy with the money you’ve earned, they’re a very sensible solution. That’s partly because, even after the insurance company’s fees, your monthly payouts amount to more than you would probably be willing to pay yourself if you wanted to make sure you didn’t outlive your money. For example, one popular rule of thumb for retirement spending is the “4 percent rule,” whereby you withdraw 4 percent from your savings each year of retirement. Well, with annuities, your annual payouts will probably amount to more than 4 percent of what you put into the annuity—and, unlike the 4 percent withdrawals, those payouts are guaranteed to continue for the rest of your life.

The illusions of childhood had vanished, so also had the ideas he brought with him from the provinces; he had returned thither with an intelligence developed, with loftier ambitions, and saw things as they were at home in the old manor house. His father and mother, his two brothers and two sisters, with an aged aunt, whose whole fortune consisted in annuities, lived on the little estate of Rastignac. The whole property brought in about three thousand francs; and though the amount varied with the season (as must always be the case in a vine-growing district), they were obliged to spare an unvarying twelve hundred francs out of their income for him. He saw how constantly the poverty, which they had generously hidden from him, weighed upon them; he could not help comparing the sisters, who had seemed so beautiful to his boyish eyes, with women in Paris, who had realized the beauty of his dreams. The uncertain future of the whole family depended upon him. It did not escape his eyes that not a crumb was wasted in the house, nor that the wine they drank was made from the second pressing; a multitude of small things, which it is useless to speak of in detail here, made him burn to distinguish himself, and his ambition to succeed increased tenfold.

My heart yields dividends unseen; thou art my soul's annuity.

By the time Aubrey returned to the newsroom, her index finger was puffy and still splinter-filled. Instead of the hour she promised Malcolm, she’d been gone two, having left the house on Harper Street on a hunt for Alana Powell. Aubrey located the realtor at her home inspection on Halifax Drive. There she turned over the annuity, along with an unremarkable explanation about its discovery. Coming down the newsroom’s main corridor, Aubrey saw Malcolm in his office; he looked busy, not particularly engaged in looking for her. Levi was nowhere in sight. Good. Maybe he’d talked his way out of deputizing her as his sidekick on the Missy Flannigan case. Aubrey shuddered at the prospect and headed for her cubicle.

Government inflation-protected securities (in the United States, these are Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, or TIPS) A low-cost total U.S. domestic equity (stock) index fund, either a mutual fund or an exchange-traded fund (ETF—i.e., a sort of mutual fund that can be traded like stocks on an exchange) A low-cost total international equity index fund, either a mutual fund or an ETF Single-premium income annuities Low-cost term life insurance

Exhibit 6.2 Cost of $1,000 in Monthly Lifetime Annuity Income, Starting at Age 65 Year Male Female 2004 $157,432 $167,818 2005 $157,255 $167,817 2006 $151,700 $161,363 2007 $151,524 $160,966 2008 $147,953 $155,843 2009 $156,500 $165,502 2010 $170,116 $178,410 2011 $174,828 $182,952 2012 $187,008 $195,216 2013 $183,728 $191,571 Average $163,804 $172,746 Source: CANNEX Financial Exchanges for non-COLA-adjusted qualified annuity income with a 10-year guarantee for California.

We should remember why those programs were started: before the arrival of Medicare and Social Security, the private sector left most elderly bereft of support, the market for annuities essentially didn’t exist, and the elderly couldn’t get health insurance. Even today, the private sector doesn’t provide the kind of security that Social Security provides—including protection against market volatility and inflation. And the transactions costs of the Social Security Administration are markedly lower than those in the private sector. In addition, many of the people who receive government benefits without paying for them are our young, obviously unable to pay, say, for their own education. But spending on them is an investment in the country’s future. An

How many troops do we embark?' inquired Philip. 'Two hundred and forty-five rank and file, and six officers. Poor fellows! There are but few of them will ever return; nay, more than one-half will not see another birthday. It is a dreadful climate. I have landed three hundred men at that horrid hole, and in six months, even before I had sailed, there were not one hundred left alive.' 'It is almost murder to send them there,' observed Philip. 'Pshaw! They must die somewhere, and if they die a little sooner, what matter? Life is a commodity to be bought and sold like any other. We send out so much manufactured goods and so much money to barter for Indian commodities. We also send out so much life, and it gives a good return to the Company.' 'But not to the poor soldiers, I am afraid.' 'No; the Company buy it cheap and sell it dear,' replied the captain, who walked forward. True, thought Philip, they do purchase human life cheap, and make a rare profit of it, for without these poor fellows how could they hold their possessions in spite of native and foreign enemies? For what a paltry and cheap annuity do these men sell their lives? For what a miserable pittance do they dare all the horrors of a most deadly climate, without a chance, a hope of return to their native land, where they might happily repair their exhausted energies, and take a new lease of life!

To understand what that means in commonsense terms, consider a person who plans to live off the income from $1 million invested in T-bills. Suppose he retires in a given year and converts his investments into an inflation-protected annuity with a return of 4% to 5%. He will receive an annual income of $40,000 to $50,000. But now suppose he retires a few years later, when the return on the annuity has dropped to 0.5%. His annual income will now be only $5,000. Yes, the $1 million principal amount was fully insured and protected, but you can see that he cannot possibly live on the amount he will now receive. T-bills preserve principal at all times, but the income received on them can vary enormously as return on the annuity goes up or down. Had the retiree bought instead a long-maturity U.S. Treasury bond with his $1 million, his spendable income would be secure for the life of the bond, even though the price of that bond would fluctuate substantially from day to day. The same holds true for annuities: Although their market value varies from day to day, the income from an annuity is secure throughout the retiree’s life.

The old of time resembles the annuity of the power of infinity.

the annuity.  I also told

Another hidden danger with ‘switch and get rich’ is that older pensions might have guaranteed bonuses or annuity rate guarantees hidden away in the small print. Many of these will date from the 1980s and 1990s when interest rates were higher and stock-market performance was much better than it is today and will be for at least the next five to ten years. Most savers probably don’t know about these guarantees and may be lured into switching from older, better funds and thus losing valuable benefits.

People who are retiring now are finding that annuity rates have been squashed by QE, and that they will get a smaller pension than they expected. Retirees who get locked into a weak annuity will find that the Bank’s money printing leaves them out of pocket for the rest of their lives.134

Your annuity can be guaranteed (it pays out for an agreed number of years even if you pop your clogs) or not guaranteed (if you go to a better place, the annuity provider keeps all your money).

So, while it’s clearly in the interests of your pension provider and financial adviser to get hold of your money as soon as they can, it’s probably in your interest to buy your annuity as late as possible or

at least to wait until your failing health qualifies you for an enhanced annuity.

But if you’d waited before buying an annuity and suddenly go to that great spaceship in the sky before handing over your cash, then your family or friends or your dog will get your money - rather them than some greedy

one of Roth’s grandkids, a guy who’s one of those business whiz kids who had his eye on an MBA before he even started his undergraduate degree, mentioned what he described as the ‘weird annuity’ his grandfather received.

Established by David Snavely, Sound Investment Services has been a cornerstone in the financial industry for over three decades. Snavely, in his free time, dedicates himself to lecturing and sharing his wealth of financial knowledge with the community. This commitment to education and empowerment paved the way for Puget Sound Annuities, a firm crafted to tailor financial plans to each client’s unique needs.

Looking to secure a stable retirement? More people in retirement are now using Equity Index Annuities as a viable solution to protect their retirement accounts. David Snavely, one of most respected financial experts in the country and founder of Sound Investment Services, presents the case for EIAs, along with the reasons why these financial products belong in your retirement strategy.

Puget Sound Annuities leader, David Snavely leads the financial planning firm which was brought about through the company he founded 36 years ago—Sound Investment Services. He focuses on retirement income planning and assists clients as they create customized plans to meet their future goals. Mr. Snavely’s company provides an array of services as well as financial products. These include retirement and estate planning, insurance, and investments. In his spare time, he can be found enjoying the outdoors.

David Snavely is an accomplished professional with more than 40 years of experience. He is renowned for his caliber, honesty, and unwavering dedication to the financial security of his clients. In addition to being the Safe Money Radio Host for Seattle’s KTTH 770 AM station, he also operates Sound Investment Services in Des Moines. He imparts his knowledge and understanding of financial issues to a large audience. In addition, he founded Puget Sound Annuities, which provides personal financial planning to suit the requirements of every customer.

There are three reasons why a cash flow in the future is worth less than a similar cash flow today. People prefer consuming today to consuming in the future. Inflation decreases the purchasing power of cash over time. A dollar in the future will buy less than a dollar would today. A promised cash flow in the future may not be delivered. There is risk in waiting. The process by which future cash flows are adjusted to reflect these factors is called discounting, and the magnitude of these factors is reflected in the discount rate. The discount rate can be viewed as a composite of the expected real return (reflecting consumption preferences), expected inflation (to capture the purchasing power of the cash flow), and a premium for uncertainty associated with the cash flow. The process of discounting converts future cash flows into cash flows in today's terms. There are five types of cash flows—simple cash flows, annuities, growing annuities, perpetuities, and growing perpetuities. A simple cash flow is a single cash flow in a specified future period. Discounting a cash flow converts it into today's dollars (or present value) and enables the user to compare cash flows at different points in time. The present value of a cash flow is calculated thus:

David Snavely is a highly respected investment advisor with over 40 years of experience in retirement planning and financial strategy. David specializes in helping clients secure their financial futures through personalized investment solutions, including Equity Index Annuities.

David Alan Snavely stands out with great distinction in the dynamic and diverse financial landscape of Seattle. As both the founder and leader behind Sound Investment Services in Des Moines, Snavely extends his influence beyond Puget Sound Annuities.

They could forget about college. Maybe they didn't want college anyway. Maybe they didn't want degrees and titles and weekend workdays. They could live lives unburdened by transcripts, certificates, licenses, applications, dissertations, diversifications, stocks and bonds and dividends, insurance and annuities and 401(k)s, fashion trends, pantyhose, stuffy suit coats, bow ties, boring parties where the humans squandered irreplaceable minutes on suffocating small talk and no one partook in Dionysian pursuits and everyone went home early feeling empty inside despite the excesses of the cheese tray.

David Snavely is a Washington native who was born in Seattle. He was raised in the Redmond area. 36 years ago, Mr. Snavely founded Sound Investment Services in Des Moines, Washington. Every Saturday afternoon, he is a Safe Money Radio Host for Seattle station KTTH 770 AM. Through Sound Investment Services, he founded Puget Sound Annuities, a firm which recognizes each client’s individual needs and applies its experience to help them define their best financial plan.

David Snavely commitment to educating and empowering clients led to the establishment of Puget Sound Annuities, a firm that tailors financial plans to the unique needs of each client.

Wade Pfau, Ph. D., CFA, is a Professor of Retirement Income in the Ph.D. program at the American College. He holds a doctorate in Economics from Princeton University and is very well respected in the discipline of retirement income. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Personal Finance and has published many articles in

Author and financial expert David Snavely uses his blog, How To Annuities, to impart his wealth of information about annuity investing. Over his career, he has held positions at a number of prestigious companies, such as Cadaret Grant & Co. Inc., International Assets Advisory LLC, and TCFG Wealth Management LLC. Notwithstanding obstacles, Snavely never wavers in his commitment to his customers and the larger community, garnering multiple accolades for his exceptional work in the business.

The few good annuities are bought, not sold; if an annuity produces fat commissions for the seller, chances are it will produce meager results for the buyer. Consider only those you can buy directly from providers with rock-bottom costs like Ameritas, TIAA-CREF, and Vanguard.

Do you know what made me fall in love with you?" George asked suddenly. Anne shook her head, puzzled that he should ask her this now. "I heard you laugh down the hall, just before I got to Spanish class that first day. I couldn't see you, I just heard this fabulous laugh, like a whole octave, top to bottom, and I had to hear it again." She put her fork down gently and came around the table to stand by his chair. His hands went around her hips and she pulled his head to her belly, cradling it against her body. "Let's live forever, old man," she said, smoothing the silver hair away from his face and bending to kiss him. He grinned up at her. "Okay," he said amiably, "but only because it'll really piss off that insurance guy you bought the annuities from." And she laughed, a full octave, descending from high C like chimes.

savings and time deposits, savings-and-loan-association accounts, life insurance, annuities, and real-estate mortgages or equity ownership.

I'm in the business of helping families understand money, 401(k)’s, Annuities, and Life Insurance.

Six critical questions to ask your Guy 1. How are you paid? Fee-only advisers receive no compensation from the sale of investment products. All others do. You can’t count on an adviser who gets a significant portion of their pay in sales commissions. Period. Leave if they are not fee-only. 2. Do you have any conflicts of interest that influence the advice you provide? Financial advisers who are registered representatives get paid to sell insurance or annuity products promoted by their brokers. Ask how they choose the investments they recommend. Ask them directly how they are paid. 3. Will my assets be housed with an independent custodian—that is, a bank that is not selling the investment products? “Yes” is the only acceptable answer here.

raids on white settlements, participating in the defeat of Arthur St. Clair’s force in 1791, and marrying a daughter of Little Turtle. As the tide turned, Wells decided to join the other side. He became an interpreter and scout for General Anthony Wayne. At Fort Wayne he worked as an Indian agent, distributing annuity payments and promoting civilizing programs. Wells teamed with Little Turtle to ensure that both men did very well by the Americans. Wells attempted a balancing act between his attachment to white civilization and his hope that the Miamis could unite under Little Turtle and retain their land. He had known Harrison since Wayne’s campaign, but as Harrison’s treaties touched ever closer to the Miami heartland, Wells

For Native Americans, the era of military resistance was over. Many retreated westward. Eventually the government forced nearly all of them across the Mississippi. For those few who remained, the bleak future belonged not to warriors but to leaders such as Richardville who could adjust to white ways, live under the annuity payment system, and assent to the ever-shrinking Indian “reservation” lands. Perhaps cruelest of all was the fate of the Miamis, most of whom, even after the deaths of Little Turtle and William Wells, were determined to remain neutral in the conflict between the long knives and the redcoats. There was no middle ground. Not only were many Miami villages destroyed, but in 1818, at the Treaty of St. Mary’s or New Purchase Treaty, the Miamis gave up most of their tribal lands, covering the central third of Indiana.

Here’s the key takeaway—it is perfectly rational for subscription businesses to spend all their profits on growth, as long as their bucket doesn’t leak. Remember, as long as you are growing your ARR faster than your recurring expenses, you can step on the gas. As Ben Thompson of Stratechery notes, “You’re not so much selling a product as you are creating annuities with a lifetime value that far exceeds whatever you paid to acquire them.

There is no point in building. There is no more real estate, no more life annuities. There are no more concessions in perpetuity in any cultural cemeteries. Isn’t it better that way? When a meteorite breaks up in space, it is the dazzling trace of its end which stands out. With a celestial body in orbit, it is the ellipse that is the most precious. No ancestors, no heritage, no heirs, no capital. For centuries we have had to accumulate. It is equally obvious that we have to squander everything in a single generation. The future belongs to those who have accumulated everything, then unburdened themselves of it in a single lifetime. You have to move quickly. Ten years to soak up a culture, twenty years to expel it, spew it out ( this part always takes longer). Nothing is interesting unless it passes through the entire cycle of the symbolic murder of culture.

Acquiring a deep understanding of the target customer should not be short-changed — by anyone writing sales copy, at any time, for any purpose. As I was writing this edition of this book, I was writing copy for a long-time client, the Guthy-Renker Corporation, for their hugely successful Proactiv® brand of acne products. There are three different people to talk to about this — the teen sufferer, the teen's mom, and playing the odds, the adult female sufferer. This had me reading past and current issues of nearly a hundred magazines, including all the teen and preteen magazines, all the mom magazines, and all the women's magazines, having copious online research done for me, doing “conversational research” directly with people in all three groups, and even hiring a dozen freelance readers — teens, parents of teens, and young women — to critique my copy. Also, as I was writing this edition of this book, I began work on copy aimed at highly successful, professional financial and investment advisors, financial planners, and top-performing life insurance and annuities agents, which required a similar investment of time and energy in crawling inside their psyche, tribal language, daily experiences. Freelance writers worth their salt know they must do this sort of thing, and do. The danger for the business owner writing copy for himself and for his own business is ingrained assumption — encouraging shortcutting or altogether neglecting this step. The only sure way to keep your own accumulated but untested opinions and beliefs about your customers from sabotaging your sales letters is to start anew, from scratch, and to engage in getting to know the customers just as if you were arriving to write for them for the first time, with no foreknowledge.

The other type of annuity is called a deferred annuity. This simply means you give the insurance company money either in one lump sum or over a period of years, and instead of receiving

The reason for that is: nearly every expert I interviewed for this book agreed that variable annuities should be avoided.

• If you do not need to live off your pension and you want to leave this money to your heirs, you would be better off taking the lump sum and doing a rollover rather than opting for the annuity payment.

Both the ARIA protection and the fixed indexed annuity are equally great solutions! But they are apples and oranges.

The amount that you contribute to the annuity, the length of time before you decide to access your income stream, and your age at the time your income begins are the primary factors that will ultimately contribute to the amount of income you’ll receive.

However, the biggest factor is the product you select. Every annuity contract is different in the amount of contractually guaranteed income it will provide, so it’s important you understand this before you pull the trigger.

One of the simplest ways to strengthen a headline is attachment of a Flag. The Flag is brief, as brief as a single word, stuck on the front of the headline, to reach out and grab the attention of certain specific prospects, by telegraphing that the message is specifically for them. This puts the “who is this for?” ahead of what is being advertised and sold. Here are examples of successful generic headlines with different kinds of flags attached. Headlines Before Attaching Flags Corns Gone in 5 Days or Money Back Guaranteed Weight Loss Up to 15 Pounds First 15 Days — With No Exercise How to Have Eager Prospects Calling and Begging for Next-Day Appointments 28 Days to Healthier Gums Headlines After Adding a Who-Is-This-For? Flag Waiters and Waitresses on Your Feet for Hours: Corns Gone In 5 Days or Money Back Disappointed Dieters: Guaranteed Weight Loss Up to 15 Pounds First 15 Days — with No Exercise Annuity Agents: How to Have Eager Prospects Calling and Begging for Next-Day Appointments Seniors: 28 Days to Healthier Gums Another form of flagging is to focus on the “ill to be cured” or “problem to be solved.” This is usually best done by posing a question, as in these examples: Same Headlines After Adding a Problem Flag Foot Pain? Corns Gone in 5 Days or Money Back Embarrassing Belly Bulge? Guaranteed Weight Loss Up to 15 Pounds First 15 Days — with No Exercise No One to Sell to? How to Have Eager Prospects Calling and Begging for Next-Day Appointments Blood on Your Toothbrush? 28 Days to Healthier Gums

These objections mainly being that, by purchasing an annuity, you have to give your money to an insurance company in exchange for any guarantees.

First, let’s be clear: there are really only two general categories of traditional annuities: immediate annuities and deferred annuities.

Randy Becker Bellevue is a Retirement Planning Professional at Becker Retirement Group who specialize in insurance products, such as fixed annuities and a variety of investment products that will help you build financial strategies.

Why would anyone want to invest in mutual funds through an annuity? Because annuity products have special tax benefits, and the money inside can grow tax-deferred, just like a 401(k) or IRA.

Are there any exceptions to the rule? Only two that experts tell me are worth considering in so far as one needs the tax efficiency. Vanguard and TIAA-CREF both offer extremely low-cost variable annuities with a list of low-cost index funds to choose from. They do not charge commissions, so there are no surrender charges if you want to cash in.

The best solution in our view would be to combine the enactment of a negative income tax with winding down Social Security while living up to present obligations. The way to do that would be: Repeal immediately the payroll tax. Continue to pay all existing beneficiaries under Social Security the amounts that they are entitled to under current law. Give every worker who has already earned coverage a claim to those retirement, disability, and survivors benefits that his tax payments and earnings to date would entitle him to under current law, reduced by the present value of the reduction in his future taxes as a result of the repeal of the payroll tax. The worker could choose to take his benefits in the form of a future annuity or government bonds equal to the present value of the benefits to which he would be entitled. Give every worker who has not yet earned coverage a capital sum (again in the form of bonds) equal to the accumulated value of the taxes that he or his employer has paid on his behalf.

clearly discover the origin of life-rents, annuities, tontines, and government securities; but the further illustration of this subject I shall leave to those who may wish to employ their

Robin, a mother really loves her children only if she loves them enough to let go. I didn't have children as annuities against loneliness in my old age. They were part of my youth—the wonderful thing I had with your father. Now they must have their youth and their children.