Jerry Golden on Retirement

How History can Help with Your Retirement Plan Decisions

September 24, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: HECM, interest rates, Jerry Golden, QLAC, retirement

In my articles about how to build a better retirement plan, I often point out that homeowners who include home equity as an asset in their retirement plan can meet more of their retirement objectives.

The number of retirees who take advantage of a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage or HECM, however, has never equaled retirement experts’ expectations. It’s not the design or pricing of the product, but rather, in my view, the limitations on how performance of HECM is presented, and the challenges of integrating HECM as part of a broader retirement plan.

For a Richer Retirement, Follow These Five Golden Rules

July 23, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: IRA4Income, Jerry Golden, Liquidity, QLAC, retirement income, Retirement Planning

These Golden Rules of Retirement Planning, developed by a financial pro with many years of experience, can help you build a plan that delivers increased income and liquid savings while also reducing risk.

I’ve worked in the financial services business for my entire career, during which I’ve received two patents and brought product innovations to market.

Over the past two decades, most of my focus has been on retirement — first products and then planning. With this product background and with the virtual elimination of retiree pensions, I strongly believe you should start the retirement planning process knowing how much income (and liquid savings) your retirement savings can produce.

A Guide to Personalizing Your Retirement Plan for Maximum Impact

July 23, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Income annuities, IRA4Income, Jerry Golden, lifetime income, liquid savings, QLAC, retirement income

This strategy challenges conventional retirement rules of thumb by combining traditional savings, home equity and annuities to provide higher income and liquid savings and help cover long-term care costs.

Retirement planning has to change. We’re living longer. Social Security is under pressure. Long-term care is costly and getting even more expensive.

Think of your retirement savings as not only your 401(k), IRA and other qualified savings, but also the value of your home. And forget about rules of thumb. Think instead about refinements that make your plan your own.

What’s your base plan?

In my previous two articles — Your Home + Your IRA = Your Long-Term Care Solution and What if You Could Increase Your Retirement Income by 50% to 70%? — I described IRA4Income, which delivers more income to meet budgeted expenses along with liquid savings to enable, for example, the coverage of typical long-term care costs.

We explained how to achieve these results by using financial products that are “off the shelf”:

An IRA account invested 50/50 in fixed income and stock investments
Lifetime income annuities with income starting immediately (single premium immediate annuity, or SPIA) or in the future (qualified longevity annuity contract, or QLAC)
A home equity conversion mortgage (HECM) that generates income and liquidity

Those pieces aren’t exotic, but with our approach, called IRA4Income, we provide an individual with a “base plan” built around an allocation among and between asset classes, put in place with economic assumptions, such as:

Rates of return on investments
Personal planning choices, such as the percentage of increase in income
Current interest rates based on a survey of annuity and HECM contracts

To measure the value of this planning model, we compared our results to two ends of the retirement spectrum:

A single premium income annuity (SPIA) that would provide all guaranteed income but no liquid savings
Investment-only plans with no guaranteed annuity income

Both of those and IRA4Income are based on a consistent set of assumptions.

While quite different in design but with consistent assumptions, the IRA4Income plans provide high starting income, they continue for life, and they have liquid savings late in retirement when the money will most likely be needed to cover long-term care.

Why do you personalize?

As the results below show, a base IRA4Income plan provides attractive results in the two areas we’re working to improve: starting income and liquid savings at age 90.

Sources of Income

Liquid Savings

Once you have a base plan that delivers the income and liquid savings, an adviser can help you modify it to better meet your personal objectives. The answer, unlike certain planning methods, is not simply to spend less.

Below, I provide examples of plan modifications, again with an emphasis on starting income and liquid savings.

How do you personalize?

You can adjust income. A relatively simple way to adjust your starting and ongoing income is to revise the inflation protection assumption. Set out below is an example at different ages of what a change in the percentage increase can provide.

Retirement plan results with income increases

You can manage risk. In refining your plan, do you assume lower or higher assumed rates of return? If you aim for the high starting income you may want to use the base plan assumption of 8%, or a lower rate if you want to take less risk. The differences are shown here.

You can manage your legacy. Annuities are an important tool to create lifetime income in a plan. One feature of these lifetime annuities can be a payout to your beneficiary. You may want to provide beneficiary protection on early passing, as evidenced in the following table.

No beneficiary protection vs beneficiary protection

You can minimize taxes. Retirees who use just one source of savings to fund their retirement — their IRA or 401(k) — will pay taxes when distributions are made. Drawdowns from a HECM line of credit are not taxable and provide some tax benefit.

If taxes are a major consideration, you might consider using a portion of personal (after-tax) savings and reduce taxable portion, as seen here.

IRA savings and home vs IRA, personal savings and home

Now, create your options

The benefits of IRA4Income include increased income and more liquid savings. This combination of your IRA and your home can increase your income from your IRA-based planning by 50% to 75%.

While that increase sounds great, you have the ability to easily stress-test those results and anticipate long-term care or other events that can be planned for.

To get started, order an IRA4Income base plan as a great starting point for future refinements like those mentioned above.

What if You Could Increase Your Retirement Income by 50% to 75%? Here’s How

June 18, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: HECM, Income annuities, IRA4Income, Jerry Golden, Retirement Planning

Combining IRA investments, lifetime income annuities and a HECM into a plan we call IRA4Income could significantly increase your retirement income and liquid savings compared to traditional planning.

You’ve worked hard to save for retirement in your 401(k) and now IRA — and succeeded. But wait. Your work isn’t done.

What if You Could Increase Your Retirement Income by 50% to 75%?

If you adopt a plan that combines assets to the best effect, our new IRA study shows average starting income of an IRA4Income plan of 50% to 75% over traditional planning.

New IRA Study by Go2Income Shows How IRA4Income Increases Both Retirement Income and Liquid Savings

June 17, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity

The seeds of IRA4Income were planted when the IRS adopted rules for distributing funds from a rollover IRA. This is incredibly important since the Rollover IRA plus 401(k) and other qualified savings held by retirees represent trillions of dollars in retirement savings

IRS accountants focused on a way for the government to eventually get its tax revenue, while at the same time delivering a reasonable amount of income to the IRA holder. These tax collectors also wanted to create something easy to administer; they weren’t thinking that these IRA funds might be necessary to cover long-term care or other health related costs.

Most of the IRA planning attention since adoption has been on taxes, with the start years for RMDs being pushed back, and rules for converting to a Roth IRA to eliminate taxes at passing.

By working outside that Rollover IRA box, however, Go2Income brings other assets into the equation and actually creates a retirement plan that can protect you for the rest of your life, while in good health and meeting long-term care and health-related expenses. That’s why lifetime income annuities and the value of your home are part of IRA4Income.

Bottom line, don’t favor a particular financial industry. Instead, plan with all retirement asset classes.

Which Asset Classes Does IRA4Income Use?

Our new study, described here, shows that you could plan on an increase in starting income of 50% to 75% over traditional investment-only planning by utilizing:

A balanced investment portfolio invested 50/50 in fixed income and stock investments
Lifetime income annuities with income starting immediately or in the future
A home equity conversion mortgage (HECM) that generates income and liquidity

What’s unique is that the asset classes come from three separate financial businesses, i.e., investment, insurance and mortgages, and the Go2Income planning methodology (a little like AI) has figured out how to put the pieces together for maximum benefit – for all retirement ages and objectives.

Besides the huge increase in income, IRA4Income creates more liquid savings than the Rollover IRA alone. By age 90 liquid savings are nearly triple the IRA balanced portfolio. That increase could help to cover, for example, the long-term care costs that 40% of retirees will incur.

How does IRA4Income work?

We’ve put the assets together into IRA4Income by first combining into two programs (a) IRA2Income – made up of investments and immediate annuities, and (b) HomeEquity2Income – made up of HECM and a QLAC deferred income annuity. (These programs can also be set up on their own to provide targeted benefits, even if retirees don’t seek the maximum win-win of complete integration into your retirement income plan.)

Results of the study are provided for different ages, marital status, IRA savings amounts, value of home and market conditions. The old rule was that you could take $40,000 as starting income from your $1 million IRA. Now you can earn starting income amounts that range from $60,000 to $80,000, depending on the case. Set out below is a set of illustrative results with key assumptions listed below.

Note that the liquid savings under IRA4Income are available to meet significant long term-care and related expenses.

How IRA4Income Study Results Depend on Underlying Assumptions

As with any retirement plan, the study results are based on certain assumptions as to the performance of each asset class. In setting up a personalized plan you can customize the assumptions to your risk tolerance. The most important aspect of IRA4Income is that no one assumption drives the results. The lifetime income annuity is fully guaranteed and is issued by a highly rated insurance company. The HECM interest rates are adjustable within limits, but a large portion of the mortgage interest is paid by the QLAC deferred income annuity. And the IRA investment assumptions reflect an equity return that is lower than long-term market returns; and results are less sensitive to swings in equity returns.

Instead of living with their savings in different silos for stocks/bonds, annuities and the home, retirees can now combine all their assets and create a retirement plan for different circumstances before they arise.

Visit Go2Income to order a Go2Income plan that with IRA4Income inside can meet more of your retirement objectives. A Go2Specialist can answer questions about the plan or refer you to a qualified adviser.

About Jerry

Jerry Golden is a nationally recognized advocate for retirees and for those planning their retirement. As an innovator, Jerry has often had to challenge the accepted wisdom of both product providers and distributors, and drive regulatory change where necessary.

His executive experience includes:

President, Golden Retirement, LLC
President, Income Management Strategies Division of MassMutual
Executive Vice President, AXA Equitable
Founder and President, Golden American Life
President, Monarch Resources, Inc.

Today Jerry’s innovation continues with Go2Income, where advisors and retirees can explore all types of retirement income options. The result is a personal approach that allows consumers to create dependable, spendable retirement income that will last a lifetime.