retirement income Archives - Page 22 of 24 - Jerry Golden on Retirement

Consider These Facts When Your Advisor Dismisses a QLAC

January 13, 2016 By Jerry Golden in Annuity 3 Comments Tags: Annuities, Guaranteed Income, retirement income

As the relatively new resource for retirement income — called the “Qualifying Longevity Annuity Contract,” or “QLAC” — becomes more well-known, financial advisors are trying to determine whether to recommend QLACs to their clients. The result so far has been confusion about what a QLAC is designed to do and how it can be used to enhance a retiree’s confidence in late-retirement finances.

The point of a QLAC is simple. It provides an additional source of guaranteed lifetime income to retirees’ portfolios that enhances their ability to invest for growth while providing peace of mind from gaining a source of income that will last as long as they live. More

Is an Annuity Right for You?

November 12, 2013 By Jerry Golden in Interesting Articles Tags: Annuities, retirement income

In the November 2013 issue of the AARP Bulletin, Jane Bryant Quinn’s article “Is an Annuity Right for You?” focuses on a choice among fixed, variable and indexed immediate annuities. She rightly suggests that immediate annuities represent another important source of lifetime income beyond Social Security and any pension (remember those) an investor might have.

Having priced, designed and even patented some annuity designs, I applaud the article and the AARP objective of educating members about these under-represented financial products. A quote from a paper from the Pension Research Council: “An enduring empirical puzzle in the economics literature is why individuals so rarely purchase annuities to insure against length-of-life uncertainty, despite the substantial value that annuities have been shown to provide in standard life cycle models.” – is the problem that AARP is addressing.

“Creating a Retirement Vision” MarketWatch, July 19, 2013

July 23, 2013 By Jerry Golden in Interesting Articles Tags: Income checks, retirement income, retirement plans

I was asked by Bob Powell, the author of the above titled article, to give him my thoughts on creating a retirement vision for the article he was writing. He asked me not to focus on the “easy” financial part. Here’s what I said:

I don’t agree that getting the money part right is easy. While individuals may think they have a plan, it may not be the right plan. For example, we recently interviewed a soon-to-retire individual who did not have a plan that secures her income. It was clear that she’s afraid to “spend her principal” on the trip she’s been dreaming of; instead, she needs a Plan for Retirement Income in which she’s living off secure income checks.

What to Do When You Get That Notice from Your Variable Annuity Company

July 18, 2013 By Jerry Golden in Interesting Articles Tags: Annuities, Fixed annuities, Golden Retirement, NY Times article, registered investment adviser, retirement advisors, retirement income, Variable Annuities

In a July 13 NY Times article http://nyti.ms/12y0qAd by Paul Sullivan about notices that some holders of variable annuities have been receiving in the mail from their insurance companies that are trying to get out of some of the overly generous living benefit guarantees, he noted that these letters “may look like routine notices from an insurance company(but) might be the difference between receiving the payment they expect and one that is significantly lower”.

The article also states that as a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), I advise clients to consider over time adding fixed annuities to your retirement savings to accomplish that same goal – having guaranteed lifetime income in retirement. I’m quoted as saying, “Our analytics suggest these [fixed annuities purchased over time] are very attractive vehicles versus variable annuities with living benefit guarantees. They’re very transparent and very low cost, and the math works.” More

Why Traditional Retirement Is Not Necessarily Dead

February 28, 2013 By Jerry Golden in Interesting Articles Tags: retirement income, savings, Savings2Income, tax planning

According to the Feb. 4 CBS Money Watch article titled “Why Traditional Retirement Is Dead“, traditional retirement plans are irrelevant. Writer Steve Vernon said that unfortunately people are no longer able to retire in their sixties due to lack of income from debt, decreases in Social Security benefits and medical bills.

Sure, “traditional” retirement is “dead”, but only in the sense that “each generation creates its own definition of security”, as a colleague of mine once said. Getting the gold watch at the company lunch, and then retiring to a warmer climate to play golf or whatever, with the security of lifetime benefits from the company pension plan and Social Security, along with personal retirement savings that hopefully fill in the rest may no longer be the norm. While today’s and tomorrow’s retirees may have more lifestyle choices, they also have to do a better job of “to and through” retirement planning.

The article lists medical expenses as one of the main costs during retirement, and that approximately 50 percent of retirees said they stopped working due to medical issues or disabilities. Vernon noted that a 65-year-old couple would need $240,000 in the bank to pay for health expenses during retirement, according to a report from Fidelity Investments.

While health expenses are one of the main expenses retirees have to worry about when entering retirement, the key to a successful retirement is to do the best job possible in generating the largest amount of dependable, spendable income from all of your retirement savings. While you don’t control markets you do control a number of factors, such as (i) making smart Social Security claiming decisions; (ii) lowering fees and deferring taxes on all of your personal savings; and (iii) purchasing guaranteed income. The “purchasing guaranteed income” is the important part, and done properly could in some ways replicate the “traditional” employer pension plan’s income for life as your own “personal pension plan.”

That’s why we have developed a retirement planning method called Savings2Income (S2I) – to provide a clear path to retirement security for those saving for retirement, soon to retire, and recently retired. S2I incorporates Rollover IRA savings, personal retirement savings held outside an IRA or 401(k) plan and Social Security into an integrated solution to provide results in total similar to what a “traditional” plan typically provided.

As Mark Twain is reported to have cabled from London after his obit was published, “The reports of my death greatly exaggerated.” The same could be said for “traditional retirement”.