What Tools Does Your Financial Advisor Have In His or Her Toolbox?

I want to wish all of my readers a very Happy New Year! The theme of the last eight blogs, beginning with the November 9^th post, Using Fixed Income Annuities to Build Your Income Portfolio Ladder, through last week's post, The Thrive® Income Distribution System – A Revolutionary Retirement Income Planning System, was creating and optimizing retirement income with fixed income annuities. To summarize, the strategic implementation of single premium immediate ("SPIA's") and deferred income ("DIA's") annuities by trained and experienced professionals as part of a comprehensive retirement income plan can be a powerful solution for generating guaranteed (subject to individual insurers' claims-paying ability), inflation-protected, and tax-efficient income that, when combined with other sources of income, e.g., Social Security, is designed to match a client's projected retirement income needs.

If you're within ten years of retiring or if you retired within the last ten years, you may be wondering why your financial advisor hasn't talked to you about any of the strategies discussed in the last eight blogs. Rest assured, you're not alone. A 2009 Fidelity study found that 83% of investors between the ages of 55 and 70 who are working with a fee-based adviser believe it's more important for them to generate guaranteed (subject to individual insurers' claims paying ability) income for retirement than to deliver above-average returns.