We want you to make an informed decision when you consider the purchase of an annuity. Annuities are an excellent tool to help you plan for your financial security. Annuities offer a variety of benefits including tax-deferred growth, ability to avoid probate, and lifetime income.

Tax-deferred growth allows your money to grow faster because you earn interest on dollars that would otherwise be paid as taxes. Your principal earns interest, the interest compounds within the contract, and the money you would have paid in taxes earns interest.

Annuities offer the ability to name a beneficiary, which may minimize the expense, delays, and publicity that comes with probate. Your named beneficiary may receive death proceeds as either a lump sum or monthly income.

Many companies provide you with a guaranteed income stream with the purchase of a tax-deferred annuity. You have the ability to choose from several different income options, including life or a specific period. With non-qualified plans, a portion of each income payment represents a return of premium that is not taxable, reducing your tax liabilities.

Louise, a self-employed healthcare consultant, explains how getting out of the stock market and into indexed annuities has brought her closer to her retirement goals.

This short, informative video will give you the need-to-know basics.

We each have our own ideas about how we want to live in retirement, and how much money we’ll need. For many approaching retirement, this stage of their life will last for decades, and you cannot count on a predictable stock market or economy over all of that time.

So, what’s someone planning for retirement to do? Diversify your portfolio to balance risk and growth. That includes protecting some of your money from the steep downsides of a volatile stock market. Of course, you can find risk protection in CDs, savings accounts, and the like. But, at current interest rates, your money won’t have much chance to grow.

That’s why many planning for retirement are choosing Indexed annuities. With all basic fixed indexed annuity products, your principal can never decline, but it can grow with a rising index. And because they are insurance products, indexed annuities can offer a guaranteed income for your lifetime. Imagine not having to worry about outliving your money!

Many retirees say that Indexed Annuities give them the peace of mind that they lost, along with much of their nest eggs, during the volatile markets of 2008 and 2009. That alone makes them worth a look.