Annuities have surged in popularity with seniors and baby boomers recently.  As many companies are eliminating pensions for their employees, many people have turned to annuities as a “build your own pension” for personal savings.  Many annuities offer a unique combination of income for life plus protection from market risk.  Retirees are using this strategy [...]

As complicated as saving for retirement is, many often revert back to the golden 4% rule or sticking to the “I need 80% of my current income per year during retirement.”  Although these are viable options, every retiree needs to take into consideration their own unique goals.  Here are four simple steps to help one [...]

At Annuity Think Tank, we would like to commend columnist Scott Burns.  Scott has been an outspoken critic of annuities over the years.  He is often introducing good debate and discussion over the place of annuities in a client’s retirement and safe-money portfolio.  And while we don’t always agree with Scott opinion, he has never [...]

USA Today’s Rodney Brooks had a good article on some of the numerous missteps and miscalculations retirees AND advisors face when planning for income needs in retirement years.  Click here for the whole article, but here’s a list of the Top 7 Mistakes:   Are you really going to spend less when you retire? Do [...]

Retirement Planning is a difficult balancing act of allocating your money in a responsible way and making proper decisions.  A recent article offered by Investopedia gave an easy to read, common sense approach to the mistakes one should avoid when planning for retirement.  After the financial crisis of 2008 wreaked havoc on so many retirement [...]

Based on a recent survey of servicemembers and their families, honesty and trustworthiness are the two most important factors for consumers when choosing a financial advisor.  While I understand that this isn’t necessarily earth-shattering news, it does reinforce that honesty and trust are attributes that every successful advisor must convey.  The survey, which was commissioned [...]

In an effort to increase productivity and save on operational costs, New York-based MetLife has cut 2,500 financial advisors from its workforce.  That’s almost one-third of the total amount of MetLife advisors as of 2012.  The company also eliminated 25 agencies, leaving only 60 in the U.S.  MetLife’s variable annuity sales have been down considerably [...]

Retirement advice is sought after.  It’s a topic that you can’t help but get into when you around like minded folks and the subject pops up.  What should I do? What do you do?  What do you think?  I look at it like cooking, you may not know the finer points of how to do [...]

LIMRA, an industry research group, announced the latest sales numbers for the First Quarter of 2013.  Annuity companies wrote over $51.7 Billion in annuity sales.  However, that is down 6% over 2012.  Variable Annuities were off 4% at $35.5 billion.  However, the largest decline was with Fixed Annuities down 11% to $16.2 Billion.  This marks [...]

Stan the Annuity Man has recently expanded his educational articles to Annuity123.com.  Stan is known for his candor and consumer first stances in the annuity industry.  Stan will be taking a Q & A approach with tough questions from consumers anything related to annuities or retirement income.   Today’s baby boomers and soon-to-be retirees are [...]