annuities


How to Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide by Jane Bryant Quinn

This is a book you can write after a lifetime of forming connections, reading deeply, and gaining the wisdom to integrate it all. I cannot think of a single thing I’d change in this book if I were writing it. It combines clear writing with up-to-date accurate information. I’ve read entire books on subjects she covered in a chapter and feel like she nailed it concisely. Annuities? Life Insurance? Becoming a landlord? When to start […]

JBQuinn

Retirement Income Generators

I’ve been reading a bunch of books on income in retirement. See the last two entries for more in depth discussions of annuities. I enjoyed and would recommend “Money for Life: Turn Your IRA and 401(k) Into a Lifetime Retirement Paycheck” by Steve Vernon, FSA. I don’t actually know what the initials FSA stand for, but he mentions in the book that his background is as an actuary, so that gives me a guess as […]


How to NOT Get Ripped Off When Buying an Annuity

As I wrote yesterday, there is precious little good to say about variable annuities. If you want to leave a legacy for your heirs there are better ways to do it. If you want to have income in retirement there are less expensive ways to do it. However, the urge to hold on to your wad of retirement cash, preferably leaving it to your heirs, is super intense in humans. Many people simply want what […]


Why Annuities are So Terrible (and why you might need a specific kind anyway.)

In the (somewhat mythical) “Good Old Days” you would retire from your corporate or union job with a pension. Combined with a check from social security and some of your own savings, you’d be comfortable in retirement. The biggest problem was that you might have a fixed income that didn’t keep up with inflation. But you didn’t worry about running out of money: pensions are for life. Remember the inflation of the Carter Years? I […]