Finke: Why Annuities (and Free Steak Dinners) Deserve a Second Chance
December 7, 2018 by Janet Levaux
There’s been some revealing chatter on Twitter this week about Ron Lieber’s recent column in the New York Times, “We Went to a Steak Dinner Annuity Pitch. The Salesman Wasn’t Pleased.”
In the piece, Lieber describes a controversial chart shared at the meal, featuring an equity indexed annuity performing almost 8.3% better than the S&P 500 from 1998 to 2016. As Lieber points out, when reinvested dividends are included in the index, stocks do nearly 34% better than the annuity.
This prompted the columnist to highlight the need for investors to do their homework before going to such an event, read the fine print, ask questions and get a second (and even a third) opinion before buying such products.
Michael Finke, chief academic officer for The American College of Financial Services, thinks this valuable perspective just tells part of a more complex story.
Click HERE to read the full story via ThinkAdvisor.
