Keep Pace With Inflation in your Life Annuity
For millions of Americans, a life annuity can provide safety of principal and tax deferral. However, one disadvantage inherent in most life annuities is their inability to keep up with inflation over the long-term. For example, assume that you invest $100,000 into a single premium immediate life annuity. as an example, a current contract from a major annuity company would then pay out $658.59 per month, for a total of $7,903.08 for the year. The problem is if the rate of inflation is 3%, then the purchasing power of these payments will decline from one year to the next. Obviously, $7,903 will not buy in a future year what it can now. Imagine how you feel twenty years from now when the purchasing power of your life annuity is reduced by 47%! One way that life annuity buyers can deal with this problem is to purchase a cost-of-living rider in the contract. This rider is designed to ensure that the income from the annuity stays abreast of the rate of inflation over time. However, these will be a trade off in that less income may be received today. For example, the same immediate life annuity contract with a 3% inflation [...]
Categories: life annuity Tags: cola rider, cost of living, inflation, life annuity, prospectmatch
Split Annuity Taxation
An investment’s return is what most people analyze each year. However, what really counts is how much you hold on to after taxes. After all, that’s what you get to spend. If you’re shopping around for CDs, you may want to look at an alternative idea that will let you keep more of what you earn. Suppose that you are considering a five-year jumbo CD. The certificate’s earnings may push your provisional income over the government’s threshold (provisional income is the income calculated by IRS to determine if and how much of your Social Security income becomes taxable). The result is that more of your Social Security check will become taxable when you add interest from CDs. The solution could be an immediate annuity that will pay you an income for five years (five-year certain). Part of that income will be taxable, while the rest considered a tax-free return of your investment. At the end of five years, the payments stop. To replace the funds you put into the immediate annuity, you would invest in a five-year fixed annuity. Interest earnings on the fixed annuity are tax-deferred, and not counted towards the government’s threshold of taxation of Social Security income. The [...]
Categories: retirement income Tags: annuity tax, annuity taxation, split annuity
