Understanding Annuities
Everything you need to know about how annuities work so you can know whether or not one might make sense for you and your unique financial situation.
Some annuities promise...
Principal Protection
No drawdown risk. A 0% floor. A 100% guarantee of your contribution.
Upside Potential
Ability to still participate in the market's upside without the downside risk.
Additional Benefits
Guaranteed lifetime income, long-term care help, enhanced death benefits.
It can all sound a little too good to be true...
I Used to Hate Annuities
Insurance salesmen want you to love them.
Investment salesmen want you to hate them.
Everyone has a conflict of interest. Who is right?
After losing several investment clients to an "annuity salesmen"—after a decade of actively avoiding annuities myself—I finally decided to buckle down and thoroughly research the best options out there ...so I could better show others what they were missing!
Several months of dedicated research later, I finally understand which ones make sense and which ones don't. It shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't take a Certified Financial Planning™ professional months to sort out all the conflicting data.
You can make it through this course in less than a couple of hours and know more than 90% of the salespeople out there about annuities and when they make sense!
What You'll Learn in This Course
The stock and bond portfolio leaves you exposed to significant downside risks. To best eliminate and minimize those risks, you have to understand them. By the end of this module, you will be very familiar with the risks to which so many are unknowingly exposed.
Annuities can be complicated. But they are definitely within your grasp to comprehend. You just need an environment where there is no sales pressure, where someone breaks it all down for you starting with the basics. That's what we do in this module: we'll explore the history of annuities (all the way back to the ancient Egyptians) to a basic overview of what you can expect from modern annuities.
We will explore the four overarching types of annuities. They all can be used for different types of financial planning considerations. You should know which might make sense for your unique scenario and why. We will consider and compare how they are at generating an income, principal protection, flexibility, options/features, growth potential, and whether or not they have fees.
With your understanding of the basics and then building on each different type of annuity, you will be able to understand how the modern fixed index annuity is able to do what it claims it can do. Many come with a guarantee of principal protection—as in 0% downside risk—while still offering exposure to the market, potentially allowing for sometimes significant upside potential. It's one of those that sounds too good to be true. It is certainly worth the time and consideration of anybody serious about long-term savings.
It's rarely all just sunshine and rainbows (...unless someone is hiding something from you). As with most good things, especially in the world of finance, there are often risks to consider. There is also a lot of misleading information out there about annuities. We'll help you weed through it all because there absolutely are some legitimate risks/concerns. We will review it all with you so you can make an informed decision.
In this final module, we will explore several financial planning considerations to help you evaluate the impact an annuity might have on certain financial situations. We'll study how certain annuities stack up to bonds (hint: once you see the data, they can be a no-brainer alternative for some) and how they might affect your overarching portfolio during various market stress test scenarios.
We will walk together through some different hypothetical annuity illustrations so you can know what you are looking at and looking for should you decide one might make sense for you and begin your search for the absolute best. After making your way through this entire course, you will certainly have all the tools and understanding you need to make an informed decision about whether or not one makes sense for you, and if so, which one!
Why Should You Trust Me?
I believe you should question everything, especially when it comes to your money. Everyone has a dog in the fight, including me.
It was my own questioning that ultimately led to me writing Stop Investing Like They Tell You. I wanted to trust other experts. I sometimes did for periods of time before finally buckling down, doing my own research, and realizing there were better ways...
I would not expect or ask anything less from you. Question me. Challenge me. Hey, maybe I am missing something! Without that spirit, you never will be able to find someone you can truly trust. They have to earn it. I have to earn it.
This is my story: how I got here, with you...
What Are You Waiting For?
At least for now, despite boasting hours of thoughtfully prepared content, this course is entirely free.
Don't put off—as so many do—getting the answers to these very important financial planning questions.
Gain Access Today
After clicking the "Get Free Access Now" button below, you will be directed to Circle.so where this course is housed. Once you create a password there, you'll be in! I'll see you inside!
FAQ
Our Understanding Annuities course is currently 100% free. We reserve the right to change that in the future, but for now, that feels like the right thing to do.
No.
I hate sales. There will be no sales pressure whatsoever. We will not call you. We will not sell your information.
At the end of the course, we will certainly provide you with details for next steps if you are interested in having someone from Spicer Capital help you further. But that is all and there is never any pressure on you to go that route.
After concluding my primary research on annuities, I realized that many of our existing clients could benefit from some of this information. Remember, I had been building my client base for almost 15 years at this point and actively avoiding annuities (due to my ignorance) for most of that time, so there were more than a few that could benefit.
We met, one on one, and I spent hours with each explaining the same things over and over again—providing the same detailed explanations of how and why everything worked and then answering the same questions.
Finally, I realized how much more efficient it would be to just put all that same information into a course format like this. At first, it was just going to be for my clients. Then, we figured, why not offer it to prospects as well? It naturally followed that there is no reason to not just offer it to the world. The work has already been done. It already exists. In fact, there is a bit of a community forming in there and with anything like that, the more the merrier.
Of course, at some point, we may decide to charge for the course. But for now, whether you are a Spicer Capital client or not, we sincerely hope the information in this course helps (we know it will if you actually make your way through it).
Understanding Annuities is designed for everyday Americans trying to understand one of the more complex financial planning instruments you have available to you. You do not need a background in finance or anything for that matter. In this course, we start from the very beginning (in ancient Egypt in fact...!) and build on that foundational understanding to explain all the annuity options you have at your fingertips today.
This course is for those trying to wade through all the conflicting information that is out there, an undertaking which took me—a practicing Certified Financial Planning™ professional—months to accomplish. We break all that research down for you in an easy-to-understand format.
This course is also for those seeking an unbiased third-party perspective. If you have an insurance salesperson trying to push an annuity on you, or if you have an investment advisor trying to persuade you the other way (so that you keep all your money invested with them instead), it can be hard to know whether their opinions are motivated by your best interests or theirs and their own personal biases.
The truth is, an annuity can make sense in some situations, while in others, it may make no sense at all! We teach you to evaluate and know when one might be an appropriate fit for you and your unique situation.
We currently have the Understanding Annuities course built through a software called Circle.so. You will be able to access the course videos, text, downloads, and community through your desktop browser or through the Circle mobile app.
My name is Stephen Spicer. I am Certified Financial Planner™, an Accredited Estate Planner, an Chartered Long-Term Care specialist, and a Chartered Life Underwriter.
I am the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Spicer Capital, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor. My 2021 book, Stop Investing Like They Tell You, became a #1 WSJ bestseller.
I have been married to my high-school sweetheart, Jessica, for 15 years. We have four amazing children!
I think that about sums me up.
But honestly, there are plenty of highly qualified "experts" in the world who (in my humble opinion) are just plain wrong. In fact, that more I realized that, the more I felt compelled to write my book—in it, I call out many of those so-called experts.
That is to say that I do not expect my credentials alone to persuade you that I know what I'm talking about... I try, wherever possible, to lean on research, data, facts, and logic to draw my conclusions, and when a sufficient amount of any of those is not present, I openly admit what I do not know. I try my best to present you with all this information—the research, data, facts, and logic—so you do not just have take my word for things, but rather can come to your own informed conclusions.
I wish you all the best in your search for understanding. I sincerely hope we can help. Take care!