5 New Attempts at Annuity Humor
July 18, 2018 by Allison Bell
It’s hot out there.
Your prospects want to nap on a towel on the beach. You want to nap on a towel on the beach.
The 129-year-old life insurance company that issues most the annuities you sell probably wants to disguise itself as a venture capital-backed fintech startup… then go sneak away and nap on a towel on the beach.
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Meanwhile, the consumers all around you are hurtling toward retirement age like a beach hornet to your soda.
The setup is: They expect to retire at age 67 and spend the rest of their life backpacking around Thailand.
The punchline is: They’re on track to retire with about $10,000 in assets, with about $5,000 kept in the form of coins in coin jars that they are too cheap to take to the Coinstar machine at the supermarket.
For most consumers who are not talking to financial professionals, the true, deep hit to their retirement assets came not from the Great Recession, but from the devastating time in 2016… when compliance questions pushed banks to take the “free” coin counting machines out of their lobbies.
Officials in Washington are obsessing about which financial professionals should act as fiduciaries, and how, when, for many consumers, the big retirement asset planning question is whether the best source of spare change is the cushions in the sofa, or the cushions in the big comfy chair.
And the Grim Reaper is messing with them and will probably let most of them live well into their 90s.
Here are five more, new annuity-related “jokes” — or, in other words, horror dumplings.
1. Magic
Question. How are retirement expenses like hungry demons?
Answer: You sit there, then, poof! They make every penny disappear.
2. Sloth
Question: What’s the best way to get the retirement planning ball rolling?
Answer: Open your eyes and look at the ball.
3. Investments
Question: Why shouldn’t I just put money in mutual funds?
Answer: You need a retirement nest egg. Do you really want to sit around holding the egg?
4. Knock knock
A. Knock knock.
B. Who’s there?
A. 2045.
B. 2045 who?
A. Better think about me soon. Or you’ll end up without a door.
5. Light bulb
Question: How many sales standards policymakers does it take to put in a light bulb?
Answer: Four. One to get a step stool. One to stand on the step stool and put in the light bulb. One to go out to the storage closet to get a light bulb. And one to observe that the building is falling down, and that maybe the priority should be doing something other than replacing a light bulb.
