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[edit] Bias

I'm a financial planner. I prefer to not use annuities because my clients have to hold them a very long time to break even after tax over mutual funds. Regardless, all of the pros and the cons of these should be enumerated. I find that annuities are useful in a couple of circumstances. 1. The client will not otherwise invest in the market without the guarantees of the annuity, and thus the client will wind up with more after tax than using other guaranteed investments like government bonds and FDIC insured cash vehicles. 2. The client needs income guaranteed for life, and both fixed and variable annuities can do that, with variable annuities maximizing the possibility of earning more. 3. Defer taxes, but this applies to almost no-one, and most people don't put money in annuities to defer taxes because in mutual funds most gains are taxed at long term capital gains rates. (When I hear people knee-jerk response "why use something that's tax deferred in a retirement account?" I am completely disgusted by their ignorance, because people usually buy annuities for the guarantees and oh by the way if you use them outside a retirement account, your taxes are deferred, but you're probably worse off.)

These sound like arguments for annuities, and I suppose they are, but I can usually educate my clients enough to not want them. But some people won't care about costs, and aren't these articles supposed to educate everybody?

I charge for advice based on a percentage of assets under management. I make more money over the long run if my clients make more money over the long run, that's why I don't like annuities. If I charged on an hourly basis, the client would be paying much more. If people don't want to pay for professional advice, they can work with a no-help company like Fidelity or Vanguard. Aaronchall 21:03, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] No load annuities

Here's the reason there's not much discussion of no-load annuities: there's virtually no reason to use them except to defer taxes. Here's the sole situation where it's useful: the client only wants money in non-tax favored investments (like real estate, commodities, and bonds), is in a high income bracket (like 35%) and will eventually be in a low income bracket (which few planners expect for someone in a high income bracket.) The main reasons people use annuities are for the guarantees. No load annuities have very few guarantees, if at all. This may change in the future, but it's currently the case now. So quit complaining. Aaronchall 21:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC) I left another possibility out. Say the money is in a guaranteed product, and the client decides the guarantees aren't important, and doesn't want any help, but wants to continue deferring taxes. A 1035 exchange can move the money into a lower cost annuity or no-load annuity without incurring current tax liability. Aaronchall 21:24, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cautions

I do not feel the cautions are biased. For any investments, an encyclopdic article should point out the pros and cons in a clear fashion. I still think it is best to address issues right at the section where they occur, versus having a separate "cautions" section. One possibility would be to work the materials into the main text, so they do not appear out of place. -MegaHasher 16:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Cautions may or may not be biased. The only caution I would offer someone as a financial planner is to only use them if you absolutely need the guarantees, because you pay for the guarantees. You don't pay for tax deferral, that's granted free of charge by Uncle Sam. Cautions regarding sales commissions are irrelevant to the client. The client should only be concerned about the internal expenses, the surrender charges, the investment options, and the guarantees. The sales compensation varies and is determined by the market, and isn't much different from the other investment options the salesman may present. An annuity salesman with a large brokerage firm makes much less percentage-wise than an annuity sold by an independent salesman, but the internal expenses may be identical. Another caution might be that the taxation of annuities is at the higher income rates, instead of the capital gains rates of stocks and stock mutual funds. But highlighting cautions in yellow is a bias towards caution. Some people need variable annuities with guarantees to keep them from buying when the market goes up out of greed, and then selling when the market goes down in a panic, and I'd feel very bad if I steered someone away from annuities and into the market who doesn't have the internal strength to not panic and sell low. Aaronchall 21:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Companies

Very soon this section will evolve into a long list of names. I do not feel there are good criteria to decide why some names should be kept while deleting some others. My take is to delete all of the names. MegaHasher 02:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Motivation of the State

We need a section explaining why States allow these legal mechanisms to exist. Perhaps old men understand it. I would guess to promote savings.Holon67 (talk) 20:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism Update

This section needs to be updated to reflect the rapidly changing market of Living Benefit annuities. I too am an asset-under-management advisor, and have hated most annuities for my entire career. However, living benefits have changed my tune (IF you can find a low cost product!), and it fits the client (i.e. they refuse to invest in stocks/funds without a guarantee). Geoffvf (talk) 19:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)