Why People HATE Stan The Annuity Man®

Today’s topic is a great one. Why do people hate Stan the Annuity Man? He's so intense. Here's the bottom line. We’ll talk about this at length, but at the end of the day, I'm so intense because I want to make sure that you make a good, informed, and factual decision if you're considering annuities.

All right, first, let's talk about who I am and how I grew up because I'm a normal dude. I'm a normal guy. I've been doing the financial services business since college, but I grew up in North Carolina. Both of my parents were college basketball coaches, which is kind of a weird thing to grow up with because there's no soft landing spot when your mom's telling you didn't play well. I put myself through college playing basketball. I was one of those guys that could shoot a basketball because that's what my dad made me do all my life. I shot 92% from the free-throw line. For people that play basketball, they're like, wow, that's a lot. Well, if your parents are college basketball coaches, that happens.

Now, from there, I went into the financial services business. I was with Dean Whitter, Morgan Stanley, Payne Weber, and UBS. I've done that for a long, long time. I've been married for over 30 years to my lovely wife and I have two grown daughters. I'm just a normal guy. When I flip that switch to become Stan the Annuity Man, that's when it's game on. The reason a lot of people dislike The Stan The Annuity Man character is because I'm a straight shooter. We're talking about contractual guarantees.

When I landed on the annuity side, the long story is how we got there, but when I decided to become Stan the Annuity Man, I started looking at how things were sold. It was appalling. I wanted to be known as the anti-venom, contrarian, factual person. When I started doing this a decade ago, a lot of people would follow my message, talking about contractual guarantees, how to properly use annuities as transfer risk products, and ensuring that the allocation and proportion were in place. What I found is that that message wasn't being told. I don’t blame carriers, and we represent all carriers. I look at annuities as commodity products. There's not one that's better than the other. Quotes change like a gallon of milk every seven to ten days; we have to quote all carriers.

I always say there's never an urgency to buy an annuity of any type, regardless of what anyone tells you; the urgency is for you to understand what you’re buying.

I think this topic is so good because I get a ton of emails from advisors and agents who don’t like my message because it kind of blows up their pie-in-the-sky sales pitch. Also, some clients don’t tell them the truth about what they either own or bought or are pitched. I got a call the other day, and a guy said, "I'm being pitched this product, and this is what the agent said it's going to do." I just went line by line by line and factually told him what that meant and the truth. He was mad because he didn't want it to be that. He wanted the sales pitch. A lot of people get mad because I'm brutally factual.

I'm not going to sales pitch you. I'm not going to pressure you high. I'm not going to chase you. I'm not going to call you randomly. I want you to have enough information, whether through my podcast, Fun with Annuities, my YouTube channel, or the books I've written on annuities. Why did I do all of that? It's not some ego thing because it's not. It's to educate the public on annuities because I didn't think that, and I still don't think the annuity industry is doing a good job. I'll give you an example of that. I was on a podcast the other day, and someone talked about annuities. Well, what's so special about annuities? The first thing is that's a bad question because there are many types of annuities. In Latin, it’s my knowledge that the word annual means either annual payment or lifetime payment or payment. That's where the word annuity comes from. That's the unique benefit proposition of annuity. It's amazing that with 10,000 baby boomers hitting the retirement age of 65 every day, some of them retired, some of them are not. Some of them are thinking about retirement. It should be automatic that some annuity types provide a lifetime income stream.

You already own social security, that's the best inflation annuity on the planet. You can't hate annuities and continue to get your social security payments. That's called being an annuity hypocrite, but that's why people hate Stan The Annuity Man because I'm pointing out the obvious. Sometimes when people point out the obvious, it's abrasive; it’s not what people want to hear. Truth hurts sometimes. An annuity truth hurts a lot, especially when you're filtering in all of the messages coming out at you from the bad chicken dinner seminars, the ads on the Saturday morning radio shows, or the Saturday morning radio show about one size fits all type annuities. A lot is coming at you.

I think that another reason people are a little put off by me is I always say, I'm never going to be your friend, but I'm going to be the best advisor you've ever had. I'm not going to talk about all the nonsense stuff. I'm going to talk about you. I'm going to talk about what you're trying to solve. I'm going to talk about contractual guarantees, and I'm going to talk about how we can transfer risk to help you and your family and how annuities might benefit you and benefit your portfolio or be a good addition to your portfolio if it's properly allocated and in proportion.

I'm okay with agents and advisors hating me. I'm okay with the annuity industry hating me because I have a different style. It's my competitive nature. To be competitive, I had to survive in the division one world of college basketball and tennis. There's a competition, but the competition with me is not toward other agents and advisors. The competition with me is the message. The competition with me is to ensure that people have all the information factually so they can make an informed decision on their terms and timeframe. I always say there's never an urgency to buy an annuity of any type, regardless of what anyone tells you; the urgency is for you to understand what you’re buying. I mean, that's it.

I'm just intense. I want it to be factual, and I get mad when I hear sales pitches, and people make decisions on their money because it's your retirement money. I'm not a golfer, but in the golfer, they call mulligans the do-overs like you're on the tee, and you hit the ball, and it goes in the water, and you say, I'm going to take a mulligan on that. I'm going to put one on the tee, and I'm going to hit the ball again. There are no mulligans in retirement in the making of decisions on your retirement money. That's really what I'm hoping to provide to you is so you don't wish you had a mulligan because you can't get a mulligan when you want to change your mind on retirement; you’ve got to make a decision. It's got to be informed, and it's got to be factual.

What I don't want you to do is buy something that you think was what it was, the sales pitch. Then you find out the contractual realities of the pitch.

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.