Retain Your Gains | Read Our Brochure

As recent history has shown us, putting all of your retirement assets in one basket can be a tragic mistake.

With your retirement lifestyle riding on one primary investment vehicle, a sudden downward turn in the market can have devastating consequences.

If you were to experience such a loss to your primary retirement accounts, how could your future be affected? Would you have to:

Continue working, just to earn enough to retire?
Stop dining out, playing golf or gardening because it was no longer affordable?
Aggresively risk the money you have left by trying to recover from losses?
Settle for less of a retirement than you had planned?

Fixed indexed annuities can be structured to provide income not only for your lifetime, but also for the lifetime of your spouse. When discussing annuities with your representative, be sure to ask for more details on this as well as other available income options.

Retirement Preparation
If you are retired or on the verge of retirement, it's important for you to consider how your income and assets could be impacted by potential loss. Though some risk may be necessary to achieve given financial objectives, many retirees choose to diversify their money into multiple strategies so that no single investment can jeopardize their retirement lifestyle. There are many "Green Money" alternatives to consider in lieu of risky investments (or "Red Money" accounts) when deciding where to put your money. Finding the appropriate combination for your particular circumstances can be a daunting challenge. How much "Red Money" (risk) versus "Green Money" (protection) should you be considering?

The Rule of 100 is a very simple guideline to help you assess the appropriate level of risk you should be assuming with your retirement assets.

Simply subtract your age from 100.

The remaining figure represents the percentage that you could generally afford to have at risk in products that allow for loss of your hard earned assets. Example: A 70 year-old male would have no more than 30% of his money at risk (100-70=30). Hence, in this example, 30% "Red Money" (risk) and 70% "Green Money" (protection).

Protected "Green Money" Accounts
This type of product is one in which your principal is protected from loss as long as you follow the guidelines and do not break the rules of the contract. Examples of "Green Money" (protected) products include:

Certificates of Deposit (CDs)
Money Market Accounts
Savings Accounts
Savings Bonds
Fixed Annuities
Fixed Index Annuities

All of these products provide protection of principal. That's the good news. The bad news is that with the exception of a Fixed Indexed Annuity, the rates of return (interest rates) are generally low.

Competitive Returns
Fixed Indexed Annuities (FIAs) can provide potentially higher rates of return than other traditional fixed interest products because their interest rates are tied in part to the performance of a stock market based index, such as S&P 500 or the Dow Jones, to name a few. FIAs allow you to not only participate in the positive movements of a stock market index, but they also allow full protection of principal. Additionally, FIAs offer one other huge benefit to other financial products-once interest is credited to the policy, it can never be taken away, regardless of how the index does in the future.

To further make this point, let's use a hypothetical example: let's say that you earned 7% in the first year, 6% in the second year and 9% in the third year, but that the market had a major downward move in the fourth year. With an FIA, you would keep all of your earnings of the first 3 years and earn 0% (but not go backwards) in the fourth year.

This TicTacToe illustrates that it might be possible to have both protection and upside potential in one product-an FIA.

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