False advertising?

[nash031]

Every morning on my way to work, I listen to Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio. Every morning, at 7:15, I hear a commercial from some financial website/book/brochure advertising how their investment vehicle "beats the pants off your 401K or IRA," or "outperforms any 401K or IRA," or "the super-rich have been using it," or "...tax benefits of your IRA and 401K. Sounds good, right? WRONG! ... TAX DISASTER!!... Imagine a tops tax rate of 94% like in the 1940s." (Nevermind that 99.9% of us would never pay that tax rate anyway, even in the extremely unlikely even that it did happen... oh by the way, ROTH.)

I understand it's all financial noise and I smile when I hear it, but just this morning I was wondering how they got away with that type of advertising. First of all, these programs (which I assume are life insurance annuities) do not beat the pants off of many 401Ks and IRAs, except probably in years like 2008 and 2009. Second, while not "false advertising" per se, it strikes me as particularly disingenuous to say that the ultra-rich are using these annuities and thus we should too because, well, everyone's situation is different and for Average Joe to use such an annuity likely means he'll reduce his standard of living in retirement.

I thought about how to call them on their "beats the pants..." claim, but then they started talking about Johnny Manziel and I quietly went back to bemusement at the Browns' QB situation.

 

[zinger1457]

I keep hearing this one clown on the radio on Saturday mornings. It's actually a 30 minute advertisement but if you listen to the intro they try and sell the program as a retirement financial education program. For the entire 30 minutes he tells you about this great can't miss product that he has for you that offers high/guaranteed returns. It's obvious a variable annuity product he's trying to sell but he never comes out and calls it that by name. And yes, I actually listened to the entire show once. The sad part is it's been on the radio for a long time so he must be getting a lot of people buying into it.