Annuity Alliance wants to wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving as we hope you will spend this holiday with loved ones sharing stories, memories, and much more as 2022 has provided many challenges to everyone. It’s definitely been a year where we should be thankful for all of the good times and how we’ve persevered through the turbulent ones.

Let’s take a minute to reflect on 2022 and why consumers are happy that they chose annuities as their pivotal piece of guaranteed lifetime income in their retirement planning.

• Protecting Existing Gains: Older individuals who have done well in the equity markets are looking for ways to lock in the gains they have generated. Moving money from pure equity products into fixed annuities protects their principal, including the gains. With fixed indexed annuities, you also have the opportunity to earn interest based on the market’s upside. Fixed annuities have no investment risk. They guarantee that the money in your annuity is safe from the financial market's ups and downs.
• Leveraging Tax Deferral: An intrinsic value of annuity products is the tax-deferred build-up of accumulated interest and product gains. As legislative talks continue, income tax rates are expected to increase at the federal, state, and local level. A desire to utilize tax deferral to help minimize your tax burden can be a valuable part of a holistic plan.
• Managing Risk: Fixed annuities are insurance products, not investments. As such, they can protect you from a variety of risks: market risk, inflation risk, deflation risk, sequence of returns risk and long-term care risk. Most importantly, they can mitigate longevity risk — the potential to outlive one’s savings — by creating a reliable income stream for life.
• Creating a Personal Pension: In 1980, 60 percent of private sector workers relied on income from an employer pension; by contrast, only 4 percent could count on a private employer pension in 2020. With the uncertainty of traditional forms of retirement income, you’ll need a way to close any income gap in your retirement plan — and annuities can do just that.
• Avoiding Hidden Fees: Because fixed annuities are insurance products, consumers benefit from a retirement vehicle that has been built to address the associated costs of ownership upfront. Unless you make early withdrawals, terminate your contract, or choose to pay for an optional rider delivering specific benefits, you will not be charged fees.
• Capitalizing on Innovation: Today’s products are not your grandfather’s annuities. Innovations can help provide more reliable accumulation, bigger income payouts and other features like long-term care benefits. When combined with benefits like tax deferral, defined liquidity and payout guarantees, fixed annuities can address a variety of retirement needs.

Annuity Alliance is thankful for all of the consumers who have leveraged our educational website and our services to assist in the purchase of annuities. We hope you have a very Happy Thanksgiving!