Retirement Calculator: Not All Calculators Are the Same

Hi there, Stan The Annuity Man back in the annuity lab. People were clamoring for the lab coat again, and I got a lot of evil emails saying, put the goggles on Stan. So, the goggles are on, and my eyes are safe. But today, we're going to talk about something really important. Not all annuity calculators are the same.

Everybody's pushing their calculators. I got the best calculator on the planet. Number one, they're not wearing a lab coat and they're not wearing eye goggles like me and The Annuity Man shirt underneath, of course. But I want to talk to you about how to use them, how to get a lot of information and get to the finish line, or the process of deciding on a product or a strategy or what you're trying to do. I mean, that's important. And the retirement calculators are great, and we live in an online world where everything's do it yourself and you don't need any advice. "I can do it all myself. Stan, I don't need you." That might be true. But to make a really, really good decision, you do need an expert. You still go to the doctor, don't you? You're not doing your own dental work, are you? You still go to the dermatologist, especially if you live in Florida. You're not cutting off your own moles, are you? Boy, that was gross, but you know what I'm saying? And that's not some veiled sales pitch. So, let's dive in.

The PILL

Let's talk about how you use retirement and annuity calculators. When you're looking at annuities, they primarily solve for four things. I created something called the PILL. P stands for principal protection. I stands for income for life. L stands for legacy, and the other L stands for long-term care/confinement care. But let's break it down to the P and the I, which are Principal protection and Income for life.

The 2 Questions

We always ask people two questions when they're talking about annuities. Number one, we'll ask your age because we want to know who we're talking to. If you're thirty-something, we'll hang up the phone and tell you to buy mutual funds and call me in 20 years. But we're going to ask you two questions. What do you want the money to contractually do, and when do you want those contractual guarantees to start? From those two answers, we can determine A, if you need an annuity, because if you say to us, "I need market growth. This guy pitched me this annuity for market growth." We will tell you, "Don't be the Rube at the table. Don't be the sucker because annuities aren't market growth products. They're transfer risk contracts." I know that's not how they're sold in a lot of cases, but that's what they are. So, what do you want the money to contractually do, and when do you want those contractual guarantees to start?

In the P and the I, I never want to lose a penny, and I want interest to be peeled off every month. I want to buy a CD. I want to buy a Fixed-Rate Annuity. Or if you say I need income and I need it to start in a year, then we're narrowing down to the product that we know will provide the highest contractual guarantee for your specific situation. It's really that simple.

Let's Have a Conversation

When you go to my site at The Annuity Man, and you're noodling around, running Immediate Annuity quotes, and you're running Deferred Income Annuity quotes, and you're running Qualified Longevity Annuity Quotes, and you're looking at the live MYGA to the fixed rates. That's great, but you don't know what you don't know, right? At some point in time, you're running all these numbers. "Well, that looks good, but I don't know what that means." That's when you need to schedule time with us, and we will go through the quotes you ran. Then we might have some suggestions on how you might want to tweak those quotes to solve for your specific situation contractually and maybe do it in a better fashion, because I've been doing this a while. I'm America's Annuity Agent; I have clients in all 50 states.

We want you to go there and use it to understand the numbers that are in play with your date of birth, your life expectancy, if you're on a single life, joint life, etc. For the really complex quotes, getting back to you don't know what you don't know, you need to talk to us because we need to ask you questions about your specific situation, your life, your goals, your spouse, your kids, where you live, what you're doing, what your lifestyle is, what you're going to do in retirement so that we can understand the right structure to be put in place to achieve those goals that you have in mind. If you have pie-in-the-sky goals that can't be contractually achieved, we'll also tell you that.

There's a lot of selling out there. I always tell people that if you call 10 agents, nine of them will probably tell you or let's be nice. Six of them will probably tell you exactly what you want to hear. Four of them are going to tell you the truth. I'm hoping that's the ratio anyway. I wish it was 10 out of 10 would tell you the truth. But many people are just trying to sell anything, and that's fine, but that's not how annuities should be approached. Annuities are contracts; they're transfer risk contracts, and you need to be very specific about what you're trying to achieve.

In addition to all these calculators, and even the ones on my site at The Annuity Man, I encourage you to get more information. We can provide you with that. I have six owner's manuals on all annuity types the you can download for free. They're easy reads. They're 50 to 60 pages long, with good and bad limitations and benefits. You can read those. I have an Annuity podcast called Fun With Annuities that I put out every other week. You'll love that as well. It's very informative. We do other educational content daily, Monday through Friday. We've been doing it for years with no end in sight. The bottom line is I want to educate you.

I consider myself the top educator of annuities in the country, and I'm the top agent because I'm educating people and not just selling. I want you to understand what you will buy before you buy it. And if that means sending you a specimen policy or an application you can review before filling it out, that's fine, too. You're going to make that decision to buy an annuity or not buy an annuity on your terms and on your timeframe, and I'm going to respect that decision. So, with that, I'll see you on the following Stan The Annuity Man blog.

Never forget to live in reality, not the dream, with annuities and contractual guarantees! You can use our calculators, get all six of my books for free, and most importantly book a call with me so we can discuss what works best for your specific situation.