My husband has a pension coming to him. I don’t. I have some 403b/IRA money in place, but I’m concerned that I’ll outlive it. So I’ve spent some time studying annuities, talking to people about a variable annuity that I “can’t outlive.”
I get two kinds of advice:
A. They’re great. You should put all your money in one. This, of course, if from the “financial advisor” who sells annuities.
B. They’re awful. No sane person would touch them. This is a lot of people, including MarketWatch commentator Paul Farrell, who recently bashed annuities. If you read his article, you would run from annuities.
So I read the comments about his article (all 83 of them). Maybe they’re not so bad. I also talked to an advisor from Fidelity (they don’t really sell annuities, and he stated they’re on salary, so they don’t have any financial incentive to sell them.
So now I’m really confused. Have any of you bought a variable annuity? Did you think the fees were too high?  Do you have any suggestions for me?
Tags: , fidelity, Paul Farrell, variable annuities
Entries (RSS)