Annuity

Golden Rules That Produce that Better Retirement

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

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 the pension, I strongly believe you should start the retirement planning process knowing how much income (and liquid savings) your retirement savings can produce.

Once you understand how much income you can generate in retirement, you are ready to make the decisions that will flow from that knowledge, such as whether to downsize, how much you can spend on the grandkids, and how long that vacation can last. At the same time, you can get a good handle on meeting long-term care and large health-related expenses.

I have put together a list of suggestions, modestly labeled The Golden Rules of Retirement Planning. They will help individuals who are nearing or in retirement to build a plan that is not otherwise available in the market. And, in the process deliver plans that increase income and liquid savings while reducing risk.

The Golden Rules of Retirement Planning

Create a Retirement Plan Based on Three Financial Objectives. Build your retirement plan based on the three L’s — Lifetime income, Liquid Savings, and Legacy — while factoring in a fourth: Lowering Risk and Taxes.
Use All Primary Asset Classes in Designing Your Plan. Consider not only investments, but also lifetime annuities and mortgages. Evaluate other asset classes only after your retirement plan meets your financial objectives.
Set Up Your Plan So That It Pays You. Avoid a retirement plan that requires a major share of your income from the withdrawal of funds and liquidation of investments. Look for a plan where most of your income is deposited in your bank account each month.
Avoid Plans Whenever Possible based on Probabilities. Your plan should deliver lifetime income and liquid savings in most markets, for as long as you (and your spouse) live, and regardless of what inflation does.
Refine the Plan to Meet Your Personal Situation — Don’t accept rules of thumb. Refine your plan at the start and at least annually thereafter.

Different from Other Rules

You can search for retirement rules from other sources, and you will find they often address planning shortfalls with suggestions like “live below your means” and “possibly diversify.” Those are not helpful, particularly if you don’t know what income and other savings your plan can produce.

In a recent article, Warren Buffet’s advice regarding investing was, “Invest Only in What You Understand.” I agree that understanding is absolutely critical, but the consumer is at the mercy of the investment advisor or the media in being exposed to other asset classes. We’re trying to change that.

Most importantly, there is usually no mention of most retirees’ biggest asset: their home. Taking advantage of all assets is the key to avoiding most people’s greatest fear after leaving the workforce: Running out of money.

Why Consider the Golden Rules

I developed the Golden Rules out of my analytical background as an investment advisor and actuary, my executive experience in financial services, and as a member of the baby boom generation. During my career, I was able to bring novel products to the market for each life stage: Prime Plan variable life insurance policy, Accumulator variable annuity with Living Benefit Guarantee, Income Manager payout annuity and Retirement Management Account for IRA distribution.

Now, with my team at Go2Income, we have built software that can analyze the literally billions of planning possibilities to develop personalized plans that are easy to understand and implement.

By following the Golden Rules, your plan can produce a 50% to 75% increase in income vs. the 4% rule of thumb, as well as a 250% increase in liquid savings late-in-retirement. These are based on our baseline assumptions, but will withstand adverse changes in these assumptions.

Get Your Plan

With a visit to Go2Income you will see how the Golden Rules are put to use in building your plan. Create your own retirement plan today, and then refine it with the help of a Go2Income advisor.

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.

A QLAC Does So Much More Than Simply Defer Taxes

June 15, 2025 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Annuities, Jerry Golden, QLAC, retirement savings

Here are the multiple ways you can use a QLAC, from managing retirement risks to creating income for specific retirement needs and wants.

Perhaps you’ve heard of QLACs and want to learn more about how you might incorporate one into your plan for retirement income, but you feel like you don’t have quite enough information.

No wonder.

A well-written and thoughtful op-ed in the New York Times about reducing risk in retirement did mention annuities, but to my chagrin, it didn’t bring up the value of QLACs, despite:

Government endorsement of QLACs’ significant retirement benefits
A competitive QLAC marketplace, with top-rated insurance carriers
Flexible planning software that can show you how to integrate a QLAC into your retirement plans
QLAC rates are at an all-time high ─ for a new retiree, an average of 80% better than three years ago

Check out the rates for yourself by visiting our QLAC Calculator.

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