Insurance & Annuities
Insurance products sit at the border between investing and protection, and this category explains them without the sales pitch.
The explainers cover annuities first, fixed, variable, and indexed, including the caps, floors, riders, and surrender charges that determine what you actually receive, then turn to life insurance used as an investment, from whole life to universal and indexed universal life.
Longevity risk and the mortality credits that make annuities work round out the set.
Investing With Purpose weighs the genuine uses, guaranteed income and tax deferral, against the fees and complexity that critics rightly flag.
The goal is to judge whether one of these contracts belongs in a plan, on its real economics rather than a glossy illustration.
An annuity is a contract with an insurance company in which you pay a premium, either as a lump sum or over time, and…
A fixed annuity is the simplest type of annuity contract. The insurance company guarantees a set interest rate on your…
Life insurance exists to replace income for the people who depend on you. Some policies also build a savings component…
A variable annuity is a tax-deferred contract in which your premium is invested in market-based sub-accounts, similar…
An indexed annuity, sometimes called a fixed indexed annuity or equity-indexed annuity, credits interest based on the…
Two contract features do more than almost any others to determine whether an annuity is a good deal: the riders that…
Universal life insurance is a flexible-premium form of permanent coverage that separates the policy into an insurance…
Longevity risk is the danger of outliving your money. Mortality credits are the mechanism that lets an insurance pool…