Annuity Doublers Gives Your Money Back Quicker When You Get Sicker: Shootin’ It Straight With Stan

Welcome to Shootin' It Straight With Stan. I'm your host Stan The Annuity Man, America's annuity agent license in all 50 states. Today's topic is a good one that you need to listen to. If you go to the bad chicken dinner seminar, expensive steak dinner seminar, Italian dinner seminar, whatever, you'll hear about this, and it's going to sound phenomenal. I'm here to rip the scab off and tell you the truth completely. It's kind of a bad visual. The topic is called Annuity Doublers Gives Your Money Back Quicker When You Get Sicker. So, with this annuity, doublers give your money back quicker when you get sicker. Stan, what's an annuity double? What that is with some Income Riders and Income Riders are attachments to a policy like a Variable Annuity or an Indexed Annuity that provide a lifetime income stream.

‌There are separate calculations. If you draw a line down a blank sheet of paper, the left-hand side is the accumulation walkaway amount, which is indexed options, cap spreads participation rates, or Index Annuities and Variable Annuities. It's mutual funds. They call them separate accounts. That's the walkaway amount, but the Income Rider is the other side of the ledger. It's monopoly money. It's a phantom account. It's where you calculate your lifetime income stream.

‌Enhanced Benefits

‌Now, with some Income Riders out there, they have what's called enhanced benefits. It's not long-term care. Long-term care is a health insurance product. Annuities are life insurance products. Income Riders are part of that life insurance chassis. It's not long-term care. So, if anyone says, "Buy this Index Annuity with this long-term care Income Rider doubler," that's misleading. It's not long-term care. It's confinement care. But when they talk about these, these people will talk about agents, the doubler. Suppose you bought the Income Rider 10 years from now; it will pay $10,000 a year. I'm just pulling that number out of the air. You can go to The Annuity Man and run Income Rider quotes all day long, quoting on all carriers. But with the Income Rider doubler, what it says is, if you can't pass two of the five daily functions of life, whatever those are, whatever that annuity company's rules are to qualify for the enhanced payment, they will, in essence, double or a lot of them double the payment sum. Most of them double for a specific period of time. Typically, that's around five years. So, instead of you getting $10,000 a year, you will get $20,000 a year.

‌Upfront Bonus

‌And you might be saying, whoa, that sounds fantastic. Well, maybe, but you're just getting your money back quicker when you get sicker, and the money you're getting back, that doubler, is being subtracted dollar for dollar from that accumulation value. Now, if anyone says, well, the growth on the accumulation value will offset, no, it's not. It's just not. Annuity companies have the big buildings for a reason. Do not believe any of those backtest, nonsense, hypothetical, theoretical unicorns chasing the butterfly numbers. Because it's garbage, okay? So, when you're buying an Income Rider for lifetime income, it might have a provision. And right now, not all Income Riders have it, but some do that; it's a doubler. What I want you to do is not put a lot of weight on that.

‌Guaranteed Issue

‌Don't go, "Well, honey, they're doubling it. We have to get the doubler. Heck, it's free." Nothing's free. Doublers are like upfront bonuses, candy for the stupid. If you think there's a CEO at an annuity company going, "You know what? I think I'm going to give away money today in the form of an upfront bonus." No, it's part of the overall contractual guarantee. It doesn't mean it's bad, doesn't mean it's good. It's part of the overall contractual guarantee. The doubler, you know, if you're smoking a carton of cigarettes with no filters, like the Pall Malls, if you're smoking those every day and drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels, first of all, congrats to you. You're a goal-setter, and good luck in the future. But the reason I bring that up is these doublers are guaranteed issues. You don't have to go through any medical testing. You don't have to go through, you know, any nurse showing up at the house and taking your blood pressure and taking your blood, none of that.

‌If You Have It, Keep It

‌And you say, "Well, that sounds good to me, Stan, because I don't like that stuff anyway, I'll go to the doctor." Okay, great. But understand that if it's not underwritten, it's not as good as an underwritten product. If you need long-term care, go and buy it. We can refer you to the top long-term care expert in the country. And he and his staff can work on a long-term care product for you. If you already have a long-term care product, do not surrender that product for the doubler. Do not allow anyone to tell you, "Well, you don't need the long-term care, sir, because it's going up every year in price; you can just replace it with the doubler." No apples and oranges. Long-term care coverage is fantastic. If you have it, keep it. Because you probably bought it at a time when it was cheap, and you've got a good deal.

‌The Last Resort

‌Don't give it up, and certainly don't give it up for the doubler. You've got to say, "Wait a minute, Stan, then who buys the doubler?" Well, suppose you can't qualify for life insurance, and you can't qualify for long-term care during those underwriting processes, whether it's full underwriting or simplified issue or whatever. In that case, the doubler is your last stop for any type of confinement care or enhanced benefit coverage. But it should be the last resort. It should not be the reason you buy the Income Rider. You should buy the Income Rider for lifetime income, whether it's for your life or joint life. You should never, ever, ever buy a lifetime Income Rider for the doubler because all that means is when you get sicker, you get your money back quicker.

‌When you qualify for the double, let's say, "I don't believe you, Stan, I'm going to get that. I've already got a doubler; I believe the dude that sold it to me." Okay, great. Let's say you got the doubler. Understand that the annuity company will take what you get from that doubler and subtract it from the total. Because, in essence, what you're doing when you qualify to get that doubled amount is that you're proving to the annuity company that you're not going to live long. You're proving to the annuity company that your projected life expectancy is based on your age and not looking at your health. You're proving to them that you're not healthy and that you need your money back quicker because you are sicker. So, if you look at it like that, great. If that's the only coverage you can get, great.

‌Talking to My Team

‌But understand it's not great coverage when it's a guaranteed issue. I know the sales pitch sounds fantastic, and when you talk to my team at The Annuity Man, and you say, "You know, I'm kind of interested in this enhanced benefit doubler thing Stan was talking about." What we'll do is run quotes with all carriers, and if the one, if the Income Rider number, the actual income number, is high and it has a doubler, then great. We will add it on and go with the highest contractual guarantee. But we don't ever look at just that doubler number. We're going to say, okay, we've quoted all carriers. Here's the Income Rider guarantee. And oh, by the way, Mr. Jones, it does have a doubler on it, which it finished first with or without the doubler.

‌That's interesting sometimes, and that will happen. But what I want you to walk away with, as you do your three laps around the neighborhood and your squat thrust and all those planks you do to stay in shape, is to walk away with this. If it sounds good too good to be true, it is every single time. Income doublers means you're getting your money back quicker when you get sicker. Just remember that. Always ask hard questions as my friend, Moshe Milevsky always says. You can catch him on my Fun With Annuities podcast. If you have yet to see that one, make sure to check it out.

‌If someone says, "Yeah, your income will double." Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me ask a question. "Doesn't that mean I'm getting my money back quicker when I get sicker?" Well, yeah. "Doesn't that mean it's subtracting from a total more?" Well, yeah, that's okay if you know how it works, but don't go into it thinking that you're getting this whizbang great deal and you're beating the insurance company. You're not beating the insurance company. And with many of these income doublers, it'll pay, and this isn't for all of them, but for most of them, it'll pay for five years. After those five years, it'll go back to that original, the example I gave, which was $10,000. It's not in perpetuity. There are a couple that might be, but all that means is you're drawing down on the total quicker.

‌My name is Stan The Annuity Man. This was Shootin' It Straight With Stan. Thanks for joining me. I'll see you next time.

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