You Won The Game! Why Are You Still Playing?: Shootin' It Straight with Stan®

Congratulations! You Won!

Today's topic's a good one. If you've won the game, then why are you still playing? I was on a call the other day, and yes, you can schedule a call with me at theannuityman.com. You can also run quotes on our proprietary calculators and get my books and watch videos and all that stuff. But these nice people had scheduled a call with Stan the Annuity Man® for 30 minutes, we were talking, and they were entrepreneurs and they'd done well, they'd made some money, and they were confused because the advisor that they've been using said, "Well, you need to do a 60% equity, 40% bond split. You need to always have some exposure." Just all the nonsense. "Well, the 4% rule, you just never have to buy an annuity. You just peel off the 4%." That's garbage. And then they say, "Well, then he ran a Monte Carlo simulation." A Monte Carlo simulation is some software stuff that's been around forever. That's projection.

The bottom line with these nice people, as I was looking at their numbers, the wife was saying, "Well, I really don't like risk." And the guy was saying, "I really don't either. I'm kind of at the finish line." And I said, "You've already won the game. Why are you still playing?" And literally, I thought I'd lost him on the phone because I could hear nothing. Finally, they said, "You're right, Stan the Annuity Man, America's annuity agent®. Why are we still playing?" I told them this because they gave me their income needs, they gave me their beneficiaries, and all that stuff, I said this, "If you would just get 3% on the money that you have, wouldn't that be sufficient to live the life you want to live? To live the life that you've worked so hard to achieve? Just get 3% and never touch the principal.” And they're like, "Yeah, why wouldn't we do that?" Well, you could do that with a combination of Multi-Year Guarantee Annuities and CDs or Treasuries or something like that.

Bonds

You don't even have to buy bonds, because bonds are volatile. This year in 2022, it's been a little bit of an up and down on bonds. Bonds can go down in value if interest rates go up. But the bottom line is we were saying, "Why are you trying to squeeze another 200 basis points," in English that means 2%, "out of equities." I understand the historical data. But there's a lot of people out there, and you might be one of them, going, "I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to follow the markets. I don't want to have volatility. I've worked my butt off to have the opportunity to accumulate this money and go live my life."

Annuitizing

So, the question I have for you is, can you do that by just peeling off the interest? I'm not talking about annuitizing. I'm not talking about turning on a lifetime income stream. Yes, you can do that. Some people have to do that because they don't have enough money to just peel off the interest. They have to convert it to a lifetime income stream. But there's a lot of you out there that don't have to do that. You don't have to follow the 60% in equities, and 40% in bonds. Remember you already own two annuities. One is Social Security, it's the best inflation annuity on the planet. It's a lifetime income stream. The other annuity is what I call a forced annuity. If you have an IRA at age 72, the IRS is going to tap you on the shoulder and go, "Hello? We want our money." And you're going to have to take money out until there's no money. But it's going to be for your lifetime in most cases. So, that's two-income streams you're going to have.

Lifetime Income Stream

Then let's look at the other amounts of money, can you peel off the interest without touching the principal and live your life? Here's the thing. Let's go back over what the title is. If you've won the game, then why are you still playing the game? For the people that don't have enough money out there to just peel off the interest and live life, period. Let's look at a lifetime income stream product. Let's look at an Immediate Annuity or Deferred Income Annuity. Let's figure out what that income floor is that you need to hit your bank account every single month, and let's put that in place contractually so that as long as you're breathing, you're going to get paid that. If you're married, as long as one of you is breathing. We can structure it so that 100% of any unused money goes to the list of beneficiaries, and the evil annuity company doesn't keep a penny, even though they're on the hook to pay.

I love it when people say, "Well, I've never bought an annuity because when you die, the annuity company keeps the money." That's one of 40 ways to structure it. You don't have to do that, and most people don't do that. You can, if you want to, if you have the narcissist lifetime income stream, meaning, "It's all about me. I don't care about my beneficiaries. I want the highest payment.” That's life only. But most people don't want to do that. Whether you have enough money to just peel off interest and protect the principal and that's enough to live off. Or you create a lifetime income stream to fill in that income floor gap to combine with an IRA and Social Security income and whatever side hustle things you've got coming in, then why are you playing the game? Why are you continually putting your money at risk? Don't say, "Well, I could buy an Indexed Annuity and get market upside with no downside." You're not that stupid. Please don't be the sucker at the table. Those are CD products. But in my world, Multi-Year Guarantee Annuities typically beat Indexed Annuity returns.

I know I'm going to get all kinds of people sending me studies about Indexed Annuity. For people that are at chapter two of their life, they don't want to track crap. All they want to track is where they're flying to, where the grandkids are, and where they're going out to eat. And that's what you should be looking at. Once again, if you've won the game, why are you still playing? Can you put all your money in annuities? No. No, you can't and you shouldn't, and I won't let you. But a portion of that can protect the principal and you can peel off interest. A portion of that could be put in a lifetime income stream that you could never outlive as long as you're breathing.

Why Are You in the Markets?

Why are you still buying into the fact that you have to be in the markets? Or that you have to have growth. Why? It's one of those things in America that we've just kind of taught people, "Well, you got to be in markets. You got to buy a house. Got to own a car." I mean, all those things. Now, if you enjoy the markets, go for it, but there's a large portion of the 10,000 Baby Boomers that are hitting age 65 every single day that says, "No, no. I'm done. I did the 401K. I tried my best to do the markets and get some growth. I've been through it." I want you to call me and say, "Stan, let's look at the fact that we've won the game and we're not going to play anymore. How do we solve it so that we go live our life?" Most of you watching this right now, you've won the game, or you're going to win the game. So, plan for when you win the game to stop playing the game.

I get these calls all the time with people going, "Well, our advisor…" your advisor says that because they get paid on assets under management. That's why they're saying that. Ask your advisor, when they come with the 60/40 blend or the target date fund or something like that, say, "Hey, do I have enough money to consider myself a winner and I've won the game and I can just live off the money, whether it's principal protection and peel off interest, or structuring a lifetime income stream without taking any risk?" From a fiduciary standpoint, they have to look at it mathematically and go, "You know what I think you have." If they say you haven't, they might be lying.

So, this nice couple, they're from Alabama, they were entrepreneurs, they had sold their business, and they had been hit from all sides from salespeople to financial advisors to fee planners, etc. Everything was convoluted. And it hit me. "Hey, you've won the game. Why are you still playing?" They had enough money where if they just got 3%, and if rates are going to rise, then you can roll it to a higher percentage and you can live even better, and you never touch the principal. How beautiful is that?

It's doable. It's achievable. It's contractual. It's rational. And I'd like to be a part of that conversation. Let's talk about the game. What is the game? The game is to win and winning means lifestyle. And if we can figure out how to give you the lifestyle that you want contractually. Let's find out if you actually have won the game and you don't have to play anymore, and you can go play the game of chapter two of your life. Remember there are no U-Hauls behind hearses. My point is you can't take it with you. Live your life.

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.