jdw_fire said:
It is you that appears not to want to give fair consideration to both sides. And when someone stands up to you, you lie and call them an annuity sales man. I NEVER "acknowledged that I sell annuities". In fact I DON'T SELL ANNUITIES, which I told you before, but as before you just make up "facts" to suit your mood. Do you have an ego problem or something that makes everyone who has a different idea from you wrong because you always have to be right?
Wow, nice little temper fit there. I seem to remember offering up pieces of the equation you left out, saying that the idea you floated would be very appropriate for some people, and suggesting people get all the information and work it out for themselves. And I never said you sold annuities, I said we had annuity sales people pitching to us here, and the frickin guy who posted right above yours confirms that he does in fact sell annuities.
As far as the rest of your comment, I could say something simple like "#@%& you", but how about "I just dont care much for people who tell half a story, pretend to be open to other ideas and then ignore the rest of the data in order to support their own opinion."
I dont think *i'm* the one with the ego problem.
The only possible reason you didn't see the numbers is because you did not read my posts, because they are there. Yes there was a specific example and the assumptions were not unreasonable. Just because it didn't fulfill all the assumptions you would need doesn't make the ones made unreasonable. If you did read my posts you must have misunderstood them or your ego got in the way again.
I see...your reasoning is so good, the only way I could not be swayed by it is if I didnt read it.
Frankly, there were a lot of private communications regarding your post, with the gist of it being that most of the regulars were giving up on the conversation because you had your mind made up and werent interested in a balanced discussion. Your defensiveness seems to support that.
With that in mind, you frankly didnt get my "A-game".
But heres a taste, let me know if you want more.
- You use small numbers in your calcs, under 100k. Firecalc fails more often with small portfolios than large ones. Plug in some multi million dollar numbers and you get a different result.
- You dont account for taxes. Annuities are usually taxed as ordinary income while investors often get the benefits of capital gains rates
- You brush aside survivorship and inheritance issues on one side of the equation without accommodating them on the other. If I didnt want to leave money (like the case in an annuity), I could consume principal from the investment portfolio at a rate that would exhaust it at some point very late in my life, substantially increasing my spendable income in earlier years when I'm likely to actually appreciate it.
- None of the apples to apples annuity options produce the same amount of income on the annuity side. Its less. In some cases (survivorship and CPI indexing) it can be a LOT less. Your example used small example numbers, so figuring out if the income level produced by an annuity would be satisfactory for someone to live on was not explored. I see few people concerned about having too MUCH income in retirement.
- Your assumption that CPI = inflation, when I pointed out (in my dataless assertions) that such is not the case for a lot of people.
- Your usage of a couple thats 60 years old...short time horizon = larger annuity payouts. Not sure if you noticed, but this is an EARLY retirement board, not AARP.
So in summary, a retirement age inconsistent with the topic of early retirement, small numbers more likely to cause a failure of a non-annuity example, no attention paid to the tax situation, assumption that cpi=inflation, no attention paid to whether the income produced would be satisfactory since its less than one could get with self investment.
A bunch of issues you didnt address.
And you still, for the third time, havent shown an annuity that pays as well as a Wellesley or Target Retirement Income type fund, which is roughly 4% a year paid out and roughly a 4% annual principal adjustment...which is well in excess of the average CPI. And you still have all that money left over at the end!
My example was for a 60yo couple not a 45yo couple so maybe it doesn't work for you. That is no reason to belittle the idea or the presenter. Please remember that I agreed with you that each individual should run the numbers on any and every investment product and weigh the associated risks and attributes. When they find a good balance of risk and return that apply to the term of their expected retirement, they should buy those products.
Show me the "belittling". You're the one that was flapping his gums about my working wife, although I had ER'ed for 3.5 years before marrying her.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
