Annuity Income That's Guaranteed

Many consumers today are looking for yield. Unfortunately, with U.S. Treasury, bank CD and money market rates at near all time lows, consumers are considering taking on additional risk in order to receive yields higher than 1%. The difficulty is that some consumers are not comfortable investing in stocks, which in 2008-2009 experienced losses of up to 50%. Even today, many of those stocks may still have not yet fully recovered. Add in uncertainty and concerns with the economy, inflation and political elections, many consumers simply don’t know what to do. Fixed Indexed Annuities are insurance products that allow you to receive credited interest that is linked, in part, to the performance of market indexes. You are not directly invested in a market or an index, and the value of your annuity won’t decrease as long as you don’t withdraw your money in excess of any penalty free withdrawal amount available in the contract. Fixed Indexed Annuities offer retirees a unique opportunity to protect their principal from market declines, receive competitive interest rates and a choice of features, such as lifetime income payments. This may seem too good to be true but annuities have been offered to consumers since the 1980’s and last year over $30 billion of fixed index annuities were purchased.