Ladder Annuities for Potentially More Income

If you’re 70 and living off your income from a Certificate of Deposit (CD) you may find it more advantageous to switch to a laddered annuities for more income. Let’s consider how. A $100,000 5yr-CD paying  5% gives you an annual taxable income of $5,000. At a 25% income tax rate, you’re left with $3,500. Of course you’re also left with your $100,000 too. But if you need more income, and you don’t want to get locked into any current income rate, you may consider investing your $100,000 into a set of annuities. Laddering these (i.e. stagger when begins its income stream) allows you to follow income rates if they go up (or down). Laddered Annuities Option We’ll assume you’re 70; and with your $100,000, you buy 5 annuities each for a single premium of $20,000. The first will be a Single Premium Immediate Annuity (SPIA) for a 5 year payout term. The four others will be Single Premium Deferred Annuities (SPDA) geared to produce a payout after 5, 10, 15, and 20 years respectively. Let’s consider what sort of income you’d generate in this case. Refer to the table. These are hypothetical examples and all fees have been ignored (immediate annuities [...]

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