Annuity Performance Comparison

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Hi there, Stan the Annuity Man, America's annuity agent, licensed in all 50 states.

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Today's topic is annuity performance comparison. That's a heavy statement. I'm going to break that

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one down in a myriad of ways that will interest you and that you need to know because you don't

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want to get caught in the rabbit hole of trying to compare annuities like you try to compare mutual

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funds or you try to compare ETFs. Okay. So, we're going to talk about annuity performance

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comparison and actually redefine performance when it comes to annuities after this.

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Alright, so, first of all, let's talk about performance. For me, performance

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is the contractual guarantees. So, when we do an annuity performance comparison at the Annuity Man,

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it's really a contractual guarantees comparison. So what you're doing, so let's just say you're

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running a single premium immediate annuity quote, a deferred income annuity quote,

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a qualified longevity annuity quote, or you're running an income rider lifetime income quote,

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or you're looking at multi-year guarantee annuities, the CD annuity,

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and you're looking at those. Comparing those from a performance standpoint is about contractual

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guarantees. So you're running the quote with your specific situation, and you're looking at

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the highest contractual guarantees at that time. Annuity quotes are like a gallon of milk. They

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expire every 7 to 10 days unless you lock them in going forward with an application. But remember,

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for lifetime income, the performance comparison, the contractual comparison, is the payout, not the

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hypothetical, theoretical, projected, back-tested, none of that nonsense. We don't do any of that.

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You should not do any of that. No agent should convince you to do any of that. It's all about the

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number. It's a contract between you and the life insurance company that's issuing the annuity. So,

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with single premium immediate annuities as an example, is it going to be your life or joint

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life with your spouse? When's the income going to start? How much money is it? IRA, non-IRA, Roth

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IRA, and then run the quote on my site, which you can do 24/7, 365. We're quoting all carriers. So,

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the performance comparison: who has the highest contractual guarantee and the highest rating?

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That's it. That's for all of our lifetime income products. There's four: single premium immediate

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annuities, SPIAs; deferred income annuities, DIAs; qualified longevity annuity contracts,

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QLACs; and then Income Riders. Now, income riders are attached to index annuities,

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but we ignore the index annuity. We only look at the contractual guarantee income riders. So, with

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all of those, you're comparing the contractual guarantees. That is the performance. Now,

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with multi-year guarantee annuities, you go to my site, you can pull up the MYGAs,

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put in your state, put in the duration you're looking at, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

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and you'll see all of the carriers pop up. And to the right, you'll see it's listed in order of the

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highest yield on down. And that's the performance comparison, the contractual guarantees of that

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MYGA. MYGAs are the annuity industry version of the CD: principal-protected, no moving parts,

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no market attachment, no annual fees, guaranteed interest rate that compounds in a non-IRA account.

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It compounds tax-deferred, and at the end of the term, you can get all your money back,

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including the interest earned, or you can transfer it to another MYGA or another annuity type,

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non-taxable event. To me and to you, performance means contractual guarantees.

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Now, there's this cottage industry that's kind of popped up here recently of, I guess,

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computer geeky dudes that show up at my office and show me their software. It's amazingly stupid

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that they're literally comparing index options and past performance and potential future performance.

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It's the biggest bunch of nonsense ever. The last group that came to my office and showed me that,

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I'm like, you guys are incredibly smart because you've wasted a vast portion of your life putting

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this together. Now, I'm sure that some agents use it to sell index annuities and RILAs and all that

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stuff, but it just makes no sense to me because annuities should never be purchased for market

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growth. Annuities should never be purchased for non-guaranteed scenarios, hypotheticals,

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theoreticals, unicorns chasing the butterflies. So any type of performance numbers are a joke. I

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want you to think back because I can talk about this. I was previously securities licensed:

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Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, PaineWebber, UBS. I remember that they used to do like, okay,

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what was the best mutual fund last year? What was the best money manager last year? Looking

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backwards, and it just never seemed to work out because they never were good going forward.

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That didn't translate into anything. And it's the same with annuities. If you're looking at

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back-tested numbers and trying to compare those, that's nonsense. We're talking about the future.

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So when it comes to annuity performance, it needs to be annuity contractual guarantees.

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And understanding that annuities are commodity products. There's not one that's better than

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the other. And you also have to understand with lifetime income that carriers will be bidding

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on your age range because life expectancy drives the train. Life expectancy is the major pricing

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mechanism, not interest rates. Don't call me up and say, "I'm waiting on interest rates

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to buy the lifetime income." That's not smart, okay? That's not being informed. In your mind,

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needs to be contractual guarantees. Performance, in your mind, for stocks, ETFs, mutual funds,

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that's fine. Go do it. Go do whatever analysis you want to do over there. But that analysis that

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you're familiar with on the market side of the ledger does not translate in my world. It does

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not translate in the Contractual Guarantees Only world that you should be living in and that I

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live in when it comes to annuity contracts. You can't have your cake and eat it too. There's not

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some too good to be true product. An upfront bonus is candy for the stupid. So don't fall

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into that. An upfront bonus is nothing more than a contractual guarantee that we factor

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in when we're looking at income rider quotes. We don't care about how much in percentage.

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Who cares? It's the number that matters. That's the performance. It's the number that matters.

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So what I would encourage you to do is go to my site, run those quotes on your own. It's

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very easy. It's very intuitive. If you get mad at the number for lifetime income being low,

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that means you're young. So, get mad at yourself for being young. The older you are,

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the higher the payment, just like with the other annuity you own, Social Security. It's really that

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simple. Interest rates play a very minor role in the pricing. But performance in the annuity

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world means contractual guarantees. Performance in the non-annuity world is relevant. Do me a favor.

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Hit the subscribe button, put the comments in, and all that stuff. But above my head

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is a link to another video that explains how the process works with the Annuity Man. If

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you make a decision that you want to, you've shopped around, you want to lock something in,

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you want to use us as the facilitator for you to put money at a carrier to lock in a

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guarantee. It explains that in full. My name is Stan the Annuity Man. See you next time.