Please Listen to Running Bum
Watch out for high fees, and return of capital masked as part of the annual return rate.
How about a Target Retirement Fund from a low cost company like Vanguard or Fidelity? You could just invest and forget. Or even a simple mix of a total stock market, total international, and total bond fund should take very little of your time to manage and can be done anywhere you have internet access. Rebalance once a year or even less often.
It only took me about 20 years to learn what he is telling you in just one post.
The short version of my story: back in the '90's I was so busy teaching, doing all the extra-curriculars teachers are asked to do, child-rearing, and then planning a move to Ohio with my husband, that I had little time to figure out that a variable annuity was not serving my future interests. However, I did want to shelter income in a 403B, and VA's were all that were available through my school district.
After we moved, and I had time to learn more, I wanted to move that 403b money into investments with lower fees. Nope, couldn't do that, unless I wanted to pay 7% in surrender charges. So, trying to make the best of the situation, I spent the next 7 years managing the sub accounts to make as much profit as possible. But never could figure out why those fees were higher than what I would have been charged at places like Fidelity or Vanguard. Through Scott Burns and various investment writers, the high cost of insurance products became obvious. When my 7 years were up, I was able to roll that $ over into IRAs that have performed much better.
Now, my sister-in-law is in a VA of the type the OP describes. After poring through the half-pound book provided by that insurance company, she and I can see that she's paying about 2% a year just to keep her $ there, PLUS an additional average of about 1.5% on each of her sub accounts. She's making very little $ on this venture; plus, when she signed up, the insurance agent said nothing about a 7% surrender charge. (She didn't ask.) When I asked her about it, we again dug through that half-pound book: yup, there it was. It would cost her 7% to change her mind and get out of this product.
It would have been nice if I could have "gotten to her" before she made this decision..........but she was in the middle of family crises my husband and I were trying to help her with. Her financial challenges had been on the sidelines when she trusted an insurance agent with her fears about her future. I wish I could have saved her the high cost of that VA.
