Annuities...Investment, Insurance or Scam

Are annuities the key to creating wealth and financial security, or are they just another scheme?

Get ready as we dive into the world of annuities and uncover the truth behind this controversial financial product.

In this episode, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of annuities and the potential pitfalls to watch out for when considering this financial product.

We’ll talk about the need for entrepreneurs to create success beyond wealth and how annuities can provide a steady stream of income. I’ll delve into the different types of annuities, their issues, and the importance of understanding the fees and complex structures associated with them. And, I’ll share real-life examples and cautionary tales to help you make informed decisions.

Whether you're striving to safeguard your financial future or seeking clarity on whether annuities align with your investment goals, don't miss this episode. Tune in to gain valuable insights and safeguard yourself against potential scams or costly missteps.

IN TODAY’S EPISODE, I DISCUSS: 

• The different types of annuities and their pitfalls
• The need for success beyond wealth and how annuities can play a role
• The importance of understanding fees and complex structures

RECOMMENDED EPISODES FOR YOU 

If you liked this episode, you'll love these ones:

• Q&A Why Taking a 401K Loan Can Destroy Your Wealth
• Making Sense of Life Insurance - What to Avoid!
• Using Target Date Index Funds to Build Wealth
• My Favorite Investing Accounts (And How to Maximize Your Returns)

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Transcript

1:56

All right, so here's a question for you. You're getting hit up right now by insurance agents, financial planners, financial advisors, but they're trying to sell you this promised land called an annuity annuity contract. So it's a big deal, especially in a volatile market where people want to try and protect against their downside, is for people to come up and say. Well, buy an annuity. It's a guaranteed return, it's a guaranteed of protection and all of the good. Stuff, but none of the bad, or is that really truth? All right, well, in this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show, we're going to break it down. I'm going to talk about annuities. I'm going to talk about the different kinds of annuities. I'm going to talk about the pros and cons. Fact of the matter is, I'm not here to sell you an annuity. I'm not here to sell you insurance. I'm not here to sell you investments. We're simply here to sell you on your dreams. So let's do this in an unbiased way. I'm going to be upfront with you. In this episode like I am in every episode. So enjoy this episode of the affluent entrepreneur show. Let's break this down for you. Cheers. This is the affluent entrepreneur show for entrepreneurs that want to operate at a high level and achieve financial liberation. I'm your host, Mel Abraham, and I'll be sharing with you what it takes to create success beyond wealth so you can have a richer, more fulfilling lifestyle. In this show, you'll learn how business and money intersect so you can scale your business, scale your money, and scale your life while creating a deeper impact and living with complete freedom. Because that's what it really means to be an affluent entrepreneur. All right, welcome to this episode of the affluent Entrepreneur show. This one, we're going to break down annuities. We're going to talk about them and say, look, are they truly investment vehicles. Or are they insurance or are they scam? I don't know. Let's get down to it, right? So here's what we know. We're going to talk about annuities in a way that I hopefully break it down so you understand what they are, the specifics of different annuities, the pros. And cons of each, and whether or. Not they fit for you. Here's the bottom line. An annuity is a place where you're going to pay money in, it's going to grow over time, and you're going. To get regular payments out. That's it. It's effectively you're paying something in for some promise of payments over time. And there's some assurances there, depending on the kind of annuity you get. Now, these annuities are most of the. Time sold by insurance companies. They're financial products that are effectively categorized as an insurance contract. Now, unlike most insurance contracts, most insurance contracts, they insure a specific thing, a specific hazard. Call it whether it's a health insurance, whether it's property damage, whether it's car insurance, whether it's anything they're insuring a specific thing, a flood, a fire, those kinds of things. Well, an annuity contract is an insurance contract that doesn't necessarily insure a specific. Hazard, a specific thing. It's a contract that is guaranteeing a. Specific series or lump sum payments over. A specific time with some very specific parameters around it, assurances, limitations and guarantees. Okay? So the idea here is that annuities are one of the if we start to look at just the general pros and cons and I'm going to get to some of the specifics here in a moment we'll break it down, we'll bring some slides up and stuff to break it down. But the general pros of annuities in general is that you can create a steady stream of income. They're something that when you put money. Into the annuity, it's going to guarantee a specific percentage, a specific return for a specific number of years or for life depending on how it is. So a lot of people will find this beneficial because what they want to. Do is decide to say, look, I just want a guaranteed income stream when I retire. This can be done in a lot of different ways. But here's the reality is that there was a time in our history where there was pension plans. In fact, the original pension plan was. I think came in typically was for governments. But the first private pension plan was American Express as I recall. And it was like in the late 18 hundreds. And what a pension plan was, was a promise of lifetime income. So you would spend your time working for an organization, working for a company. And you work for the company and. You dedicate your time to that company. In return, that company was going to create this pension. The pension says when you decide to retire, when you decide to not work for us any longer, we will take care of you and your family by giving you this lifetime income for the. Rest of your life. That's the beautiful thing about a pension. The problem was that people started to live longer. People started to retire earlier or what have you, but they'd live longer. And the math on the pension plans. Wouldn'T work because they got too costly to keep up. So what had ended up happening is that in the 70s they created IRAs, they created 401. And what they did is they said instead of companies doing pension plans, now there's still a few companies that still do pension plans but by and large they're not a lot anymore that do it. So what they did is they took your retirement, your promise of lifetime income and said here it is and they dumped it in your lap. They called it an IRA, they called. It a 401K, they called it whatever it is. But they basically said that you're now responsible for building up your own pension, your lifetime income. So when you leave the workforce. It's not our responsibility, it's yours. And so what has happened is that the challenges, they saddled you with the responsibility, but they didn't saddle you, they didn't give you the education, the skill set and the knowledge to navigate it. And truly build yourself a lifetime income stream. That's one of the reasons we have. This show, is to educate you, to. Support you and to give you what you need to have in place to give you that lifetime income, that income stream for life. So you don't have to worry about yourself going into those later years with not enough income. So what happened is that then the. Insurance companies came in after that and. Said hey, we can replace your pension. It's not called a pension, it's called an annuity. And the way you do the annuity is that you give us a lump sum or you give us a series of payments and then we will guarantee a payment for a certain number of years or the rest of your life. So one of the pros is that you can have some steady income. The second pro is that there's typically a tax deferral on it. In other words, as it's growing, you're not paying taxes on it, it grows tax deferred. Now. When you take money out, there's a tax implication to it when you go from there. Now the third pro is that there is no contribution limits. So an IRA, you could put 6000$507,500 into an IRA, you can put 22,500 into a 401K in the current year. You can put up to 30,000 a 401K if you're over 50. But there's a limitation, you can only go so far with it. But with an annuity there are no limitations. You can contribute as much as you want and as little as you want and you don't have the limitations that are put on you for these other. Types of plans, in most cases, predictable. Returns, there's fixed and fixed and fixed annuities. We'll talk about them that can be attractive over time in the sense that they protect you on the downside. In other words, if the market goes down, you don't participate in it or you don't participate at the same level as everyone else. So there are some things in there. That make it positive. Now, there's plenty of cons also, all right? There's plenty of cons. And so we need to look at the cons in general and then we'll talk about the specifics. And the first one is this the. Fees and expenses on these can be astronomical and they can be buried inside and you don't even know it. So they're going to talk about returns, they're going to talk about the money you put in, they're going to talk about all those things. But you know what? Then there's buried expenses and fees that. Go to the broker that sold it to you, the administration company and all of those things charges that are embedded inside that, erode, the returns that you could get if you invested outside of that. So that's one of the things to consider. The second is that they're completely illiquid. Getting in and out of them. Is. Problematic at best, okay? Early withdrawals, there's surrender charges, there's surrender periods. If you can get out of it, you're locked in for a period of time. So this ties your hands into a. Policy that if you find out that. It'S not so good, then you're stuck. In it, or it gets extremely expensive to get out. Okay? And this is the kind of stuff that a lot of people don't tell you about when they're trying to sell you this. Of course not. They're trying to sell you on it. Okay? The third con is that there's actually limited growth potential. Look, they don't give you all the good and protect you from all the bad without it costing you something. So in many cases, what they'll do is they'll limit the participation in the upside. So what happens is that let's say you will participate in the first 6% or 10% upside, but the market goes up 15%. That other 5% that goes to them. You don't get it right? And sometimes the way these annuities are. Calculated, you actually don't even get it when it goes up because of the. Downside, the way they're calculated. So you got to look at the. Formula and the way that they're done. The fourth thing is that they're complex. When you go and buy an ETF or an index fund, you know what you're buying. You're buying an ETF, an index fund, it's going to go up, it's going to go down, market go up, markets go up. Eight out of ten years. I know what I'm dealing with. But these contracts have a lot of fine print. They have a lot of complexity involved in them, and they have little rules that if you stumble across them, can cost you dearly. So there's some complexity in there that sometimes doesn't get explained to you at a level that you didn't know. I was involved in annuity at one point. That was a horrible annuity, but the. Person that sold to me made a. Ton of money on it. And I had a nine day period. Six years in where I could get out of it. But if I missed those nine days. Six years in, I was stuck. So I had that nine day period on like twelve different calendars to make sure that we were out of it during that time. But I didn't know that going in because it wasn't explained to me. I didn't read the contract. Shame on me. But those are the little nuances that they don't tell you about. The other thing that could happen is. This, is that you can accumulate value. In these things, and depending on the kind of contract it is, in some cases, if you die holding an annuity, the insurance company keeps the remaining funds. If you don't have the right specific writer on there that provides it to go to your beneficiaries, it's gone. It's gone. Okay? And then probably the last thing is that you're tied to an insurance company. And if the insurance company has issues or is unstable, it could put this at risk. So those are the general pros and cons to annuities. What I want to do is actually talk about five different types of annuities that people might throw your way. What are the issues of each of those? And then I want to break down the things to watch out for, the pitfalls to watch out for in general as you start to navigate this. So let's do this, let's go to some slides and let's start talking about the first one, which is called an immediate annuity. Okay? The immediate annuity is one where it provides you income almost immediately. You literally make a deposit, you make. A contribution and immediately it starts generating an income stream. And it's a guaranteed income stream. This is a very simple annuity. You're going to give them a check and they're going to guarantee an income stream for a period of time or for life. Now there are some things here to realize is that one, the fees on this is that they take a substantial amount of fees typically and costs and profits out of the lump sum before. Even calculating the payout. So you're going to put money in. And immediately you're down because you got to pay those expenses and everything and. Then they'll start doing the payout. And it's something you can use if. You need immediate income and have a. Lump sum to invest. But we need to understand that like below the line in this slide, it. Shows that you have no liquidity and. Whatever that income stream is that you bought, that's what you're doing is you're. Buying an income stream almost like a bond. You are susceptible to inflation risk. So if cost of living goes up. You can't increase the money coming out. Of the policy, out of the annuity. If you're getting 5000 a month, you're getting 5000 a month. But if your cost of living went to 7000, you're stuck. You got to figure out how to fix that gap on your own. There's no real growth and if you pass away early, then you don't really get the benefit of it. Okay, so this is what we call an immediate annuity. It's one of the first ones that you might see. It's probably one of the simplest ones that you'll see. The second type of annuity that you'll see is what we call a deferred annuity. And a deferred annuity, it's designed to accumulate assets over time, it's designed to. Accumulate assets over time with payouts starting. At a later date. What you're looking at here is that this is something that there can be a whole host of fees around, including mortality charges, expense charges, administrative fees, fund expenses, surrender charges. There's all kinds of they'll call it all kinds of things. But the bottom line is they're fees. They're stuff that you got to pay to someone else. Just have the privilege of working through this, okay? And you want to be really careful in understanding what those fees are to make that happen. Now, I have been in deferred annuities. I am currently full disclosure in deferred annuities. I'm going to be totally frank with you. I'm not sure I fully understood them when I went into it. I happened to be fortunate enough that. They performed well for me, enough that. They'Re going to take care of me the way I wanted. Now, could I have put that money. To better use in investments? I might have been able to. In all likelihood, I would have been. Able to, but I didn't understand it at the time. I got in. I got in a long time ago and everything. So this is a deferred annuity. It's typically, if you're going to use. It, it's something that you want to. Use when you want to accumulate assets over a long period of time before you ever get to any kind of payouts, okay? And if you start to look at it from that perspective, you realize that. This is tax deferred. You can get higher payouts because there is growth. The immediate annuity, there was no growth. But again, no liquidity. If you want to get out early, you're going to have some expensive surrender fees. You might be locked in like I was for years. The fee structure is complex and sometimes convoluted. So that is a deferred annuity. Now, the third type of annuity, the third type of annuity is what we. Call a fixed annuity, okay? Now, the nice thing with fixed annuities. This is where they will guarantee a minimum rate of interest on your investment and fixed payouts. So now all of a sudden they. Start to talk about things like safety predictability, guarantees. You are guaranteed to get this kind of rate of return minimum, you're guaranteed to get this kind of payout. Minimum. You're going to get these fixed payouts, all that type of stuff. Now, once again, fees here include things. Like surrender charges, administrative fees, and other structured fees that are in there because they're going to give you all these guarantees and benefits, but they're not going. To give it to you without you paying for it. You're not getting a free lunch here. Now, can you do this? Yeah. I mean, you can look at it and say, hey, if you want a safe, guaranteed rate of return, then this is a possible avenue for you. And this is one of the ones that I got into. The challenge is, as you'll see here. Is that there's no liquidity. Again, you will see that the returns. In many cases are far lower than you're going to get if you just invested long term in an ETF index fund or in the market itself. So you start to look at that. Surrender fees are extremely onerous. You're locked in for a period of time, those kinds of things. The fee structure is more complex. And now you are relying on an illustration from the insurance company. So they're going to give you this illustration. They're going to turn around and give it to you in a way where they say, hey, this is the illustration. If you put this kind of money in, this is what it's going to look like ten years, 20 years, 30 years down the road. The problem is that it is an illustration, it's not the reality. So an illustration is just that it's an illustration. Does it mean that you're going to actually do that? It's not necessarily a guarantee. Now, the guarantee will be on the rate of return that they guarantee that you bought. But if the market is going up. Faster than that rate of return, you may not participate in it. Okay, so that's a fixed annuity. And now the last two annuities get a bit more complicated. But when we look at it, the next annuity is really what they call a variable annuity. Now, a variable annuity. They offer a whole range of investment options in the. Sense that you can decide how they're. Going to invest, what kind of portfolio that they're going to invest in. The returns on the investments can vary. Now, because of this, you're participating in. The market, you're participating in an investment portfolio. So you're cloaking an investment portfolio in this annuity. And so there needs to be some management to it. That means that the fees can be really high. You've got more administrative charges, you've got mortality fees, you got expense risk charges, you've got fund expenses, you've got surrender charges, you've got writers that you need in place to facilitate some of these. So what you need to look is. The stacked up fees in these variable annuities to do that. Now, what you might look at is. I'm willing to take on a little more risk. So if you're willing to take on a little more risk for potential higher returns than you would have in the other types of annuities, and you have a long term investment horizon, maybe, just. Maybe, this may make sense for you. But you need to be mindful of. What that can look like down the road, what the expenses can look like. Because anytime you're looking at an investment of any sort, what you really want. To do is look at that investment, your facts and circumstances, and ask yourself, is this the best keyword, best investment for me and my facts and circumstances at this moment in time? And does it get me to my strategic goal? Is this the best investment for me at this point in time? And every investment is evaluated against what you are trying to accomplish, what your. Facts and circumstances are and as compared. To what alternative investments you have. Is this the best? If it's not, pass on it. And that's the thing that, frankly, I. Made the mistake of doing when I. Got into some of the annuities is. That I looked at and say, hey. This makes a lot of sense. I've got a guaranteed return, I'm going to get this income stream, beautiful, I'm going to do it. I didn't look at the fees properly. I didn't understand the structure effectively. I didn't understand my ability to get out or not get out. And I certainly didn't look at the returns compared to the alternatives that existed at the time. And had I looked at them and looked the long term and if I. Had done that, I might not have. Done the investment in annuity. But that's water under the bridge. And if you look at the annuities themselves, variable annuities are tax deferred. You can typically have higher payouts. You typically take on though more risk, but you have the ability to participate in growth. But like the rest of the annuities, no liquidity. Now your complexity is going through the roof. It's starting to increase tremendously because of all the moving parts. With this annuity, your surrender fees are going to be higher and the fee structure in general is going to be higher. So that's a variable annuity. Now this last annuity that I want to talk about, this one is the one that they're pushing a lot these days. And this one is what's called an indexed annuity. So here's what they're really doing. They're coming to you and saying, look, we've had volatility in the market. The market's dropped 10%, 20% in 2022. This was a big thing. As they said, we can put you into a program. We can put you into an annuity that protects your downside. In other words, if the market goes. Down, you don't go down with it. Or if the market goes down, you don't go down as far as the market and you're protected, which sounds really wonderful on the outside. The returns on this investment, on this indexed annuity are based upon stock market indexes performance. It's based on what's going on in the market, it's tied to the market. But here's what they do in order. To give you that. Remember, there's no free launch if they're. Going to protect the downside. In other words, they're going to say you're not going to lose or you're not going to lose as much. In order for them to give you that protection, they need to get something in return. And what they typically get in return. Is one, they cap how much you get on the upside. So if they say the worst, you're going to go in an indexed annuity is maybe 5% down, but you'll only get 10% on the upside. Okay? And so if the market goes up 25%. You're only getting 10% of that. If the market goes down 10%, you're only losing 5%. Point being is that in order to. Protect your downside, they're taking away from the upside. One, two, the fees on this thing. Are often high, complex and opaque. Okay? There may be insurance charges, they may be surrender charges. There's fees for different writers. It is a very complicated contract that you have here. It is something that if you were. To do something like this, you'd have to be looking for higher returns than a fixed annuity. But you want to get less risk than a variable annuity because variable annuity you're going to participate in. And so one of the challenges is that if you're not careful with this is that you're taking on a very expensive investment vehicle where you don't participate fully in the upside and you are guaranteed something on the downside, but there's a cost to it. And sometimes we don't understand the cost. Or it's not really explained to us at the level of detail that it quite frankly should. So these again are tax deferred. You get higher payouts in most cases. You get downside protection, you get participation and growth. Although it might be limited, it is again illiquid. The complexity is the highest complexity of all the annuities at this stage. You have caps on the participation, you have surrender fees and again a high fee structure when doing this. These are the five different types of annuities. If we look at them all on one sheet, it looks like this. So you have the five annuities. There immediate deferred, fixed, variable, and indexed annuities. But the thing is that you need to look at things from the perspective. Of what fits for you. So let's look about how do you avoid the pitfalls in these things and let's see where that takes us as we move through it. And there's eight things that I want you to watch out for as we close this out. And the first is this is that. You need to understand the product and the fees. And this goes for any investment that you're doing. If the investment advisor or the insurance. Salesperson or the person that's trying to put you into one of these things. Is not willing to take a tremendous. Amount of time, whatever time you need. Not the time they think you need. To make sure that you understand every single nuance and the little things that. Are in that contract, then you walk away. Then you walk away. You need to understand what you're getting into. This is a long term contract that has exceptions in it, has clauses in it, has fees in it, has charges in it. You need to know all of that and how it illustrates. You don't want this perfect utopian worldview illustration that they put in front of you. Tell them to walk you through the downsides. And if they say there's no downsides, run, okay? Because there are downsides, okay? We've talked about them. So as we do this it's really important for you to then start to look at things from the perspective of these pitfalls. Now the second pitfall is this is to understand. That different companies have different programs, different companies have different contracts. I have annuities at three different companies. Like I said, I didn't get into these annuities properly. I don't think I did. I did not have all the information. I didn't understand them fully. And so there are some nuanced things that come into play. And every company is different. They have their different lock periods, they have their different surrender charges. So you want to shop it around to make sure that you're getting if you're going to go down this annuity. Route and I don't know that they fit for everyone, but if you're going. To go down this annuity route, you want to shop it around. Okay? The third is to consider alternatives. Remember I said when you are doing. Any kind of investment analysis when you are doing any kind of investment plan or financial plan like we do in the Affluence vision and the Affluence plan. You have to look at all the. Investment choices you have, the alternatives you have compared to your facts and circumstances. Your needs and the plan you have and say, is this the right investment. The right vehicle to get me there? Or is there a better vehicle you want to make sure that you're invested in? The best thing for you at the time based on your facts and circumstances. And the plan, okay? It's how we look at things through the Affluence blueprint. It's what you need to do and. You need to be very dogmatic about it. And so what are the alternatives? Now, I'm going to be real straight with you. If you have an insurance salesperson or. A captive salesperson that's sitting in front. Of you, they may only have three. Cards to deal you. And it's their insurance policies or their programs and their products. That means the way they're looking at it is that this is the best. Thing I have for you. Very different than then this is the. Best thing for you. My wealth team. And everyone knows I'm looking for the best investment out there for me. And if I am sitting with someone that has their hands tied because they represent one product, one company and one. Thing, then the only thing they're going to sell me is that it's like. That carpenter, that all he has is a hammer. Everything's a nail. No, I need to know that they. Have their eyes on the population of all the investments so they can walk. Me through the right alternative for me. And if they don't have that, they're biased. And it's fine to work with them. But just understand the bias so you can make the. Right decision. So you want to understand the alternatives. The fourth is to consult a financial advisor, someone that has their vision on. Your whole financial future, not someone that has a product to sell you. Okay. When I work with my elite clients or even in my master's group, I don't sell investments. I don't sell insurance. I don't do any of that. I'm there to look at from a top down view, holistically at their financial plan, their vision for their financial life, and help them facilitate and make that a reality. And so there'll be other advisors involved with making sure that they get these things in place. But I need to have someone in. My court, me or someone in your. Court that is unbiased from the sales transaction and totally focused on your dreams and on your vision. So make sure that you're consulting a financial advisor. Then number five is, if you're going. To go into one of these things, you got to look at the company itself. If they have problems or they have potential problems or they're C rated. Now, insurance companies in general, they're rated by Am Best, it's called. And it's like a credit rating for insurance companies. And so if they have a low. Rating, then their financial stability isn't great. And so if you've got a low rated company and their financial stability isn't. Great, I wouldn't be putting money in. Them because there's a potential for loss if you're not careful with doing that. So you want to look at the financial strength of the company behind it and what their rating is. Okay, then number six is, how does it fit? Everything that you do in your financial. World needs to be informed from the plan down. When we look at this and I had this happen a lot where people will say, I've got $10,000, $20,000, where. Should I invest it? I don't know. See, it could be that you invested in paying off debt. It could be that you invested in an ETF. It could be that you invested in your liquidity or emergency fund. It could be that you invested in your college fund. I don't know. Because until you look at what your plan is so remember, what we do. Is you start with a vision for your life. That vision for your life informs the. Plan, the financial plan, to achieve it. That plan informs the strategy to make it real. That strategy informs the tactics that you need to use, and those tactics inform the actions. So the question is, what part of. The plan is this annuity going to fit? And for that matter, any investment to help you facilitate the vision. And if we don't know what that is, then we need to figure it out. But we never make a decision financially that isn't informed by the plan and the vision first. We don't make it transactionally. Transactional financial decisions get you in trouble. But vision plan motivated decisions move you. Towards the goal that you want. Now, the 7th thing is to watch. Out for the seller's bias. Let's face it, if this person is. There trying to sell you something, the question you got to ask yourself is why? What's their bias? Are they getting paid a commission? And I ask them straight up, how are you making money on this investment? Tell me, is it embedded in the fees? Am I paying a commission? Am I paying a transaction cost? Are you making money every year? Every time I pay on this, are you taking a portion of my returns? Where are you getting it? Look for their bias and then understand. That that bias is there. And now look at it and say, still again, does it fit for the plan? Does it fit for the circumstances? Is the right thing? Are they doing it for the right reasons? And so that's how we start to look at it. And then the last is this. You got to look at your cash needs and availability. Remember, these are illiquid investments. You can't just put money in and then if you need the money out oh, I'm going to get the money out. No, you're not going to get the money out. Okay. Or if you do, it's at a huge cost. So you got to look at your. Cash availability and your needs. What are your needs down the road? What are your needs now? And what's the cash available to do this? All right, so annuities, they're a breed of investments. They're a breed of insurance policies. They're a breed of different things mixed together. They're complex. They have structure to them. They have clauses to them that can. Get you in trouble if you're not careful. These investment vehicles are more complicated and should not be undertaken without proper advice, proper support, and proper guidance. Otherwise you can get yourself into something you thought was really wonderful because that's. The way the salesperson told you, but it's not as wonderful as they told you. So I want you to buy or. Beware annuities can work for certain purposes, in certain ways, with certain contracts, but. They'Re not for everyone, and they're certainly. Not a one size fits all. All right, so you've been forewarned. You've been forewarned. Make sure that you think about how you process this and how it fits with your plan, your strategy, and your vision, and does it really, truly make sense? I hope that this helps. I hope that you start to look at through the eyes of objectivity and. Your worldview of annuities and do they fit? Should they fit? Or do you even want to entertain the idea? All right. I hope that you found this episode of value. And this was an episode that I actually ended up doing because someone kept asking questions about annoys. If you've got financial questions, if you got some things that are coming up and you're not sure about what to do. Go to askmelnow.com. Leave me your question. You can leave me a voice text. You can leave me a text text. You can leave me a video, you can whatever. Leave me your question. We'll make sure that we get it on an episode. We make sure that we get it answered. Here's the idea. I want you in financial motion towards your dreams. That's it. I want you making progress every day towards those dreams. I don't want you stagnant. I don't want you in fear. I don't want you in a place where you see and go. I don't know if you don't know. That'S when you bring it to Mel, that's when you bring it to the show. And we try to guide you to make you moving forward. All right. Have what we're here for. I hope that you found this of value. I look forward to seeing you on. The road as I speak or in. Another episode or as I travel around. All right, until then, always, always strive to live a life that helps. Thank you for listening to the affluent Entrepreneurship. With me. Your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by by going to melabraham.com/group, and I'll see you there.