Annuity

The concept is seductive: a financial product that provides upside exposure in the event that equity markets trend up and to the right while also providing a floor of protection in case the bottom falls-out from under markets again.

Sort of like having your cake and eating it too. Very tempting in light of the massive financial uncertainty that has existed for the past several years.

Products playing into this “upside plus protection” theme include (but are not limited to) variable annuities with guaranteed...

In a recent Barron’s interview, Ray Dalio discusses financial deleveraging and makes an interesting point about the relationship between nominal interest rates and nominal...

Laurence Kotlikoff is a Professor of Economics and Boston University. Professor Kotlikoff is one of the nation’s leading experts on fiscal policy, national saving and personal finance. 

Professor Kotlikoff is the author or co-author of 15 books and he publishes extensively in newspapers, magazines and blogs on issues of personal finance, financial reform, taxes,...

Dividends contributed five percent of the 7.9 percent total return from stocks over the 200 year period from 1802 through 2002.

Dividend paying stocks in the S&P 500 produced an average return of 8.92 percent since 1972.  Over that same roughly 40 year period, non-dividend paying stocks in the same index returned 1.83 percent.

Most equity indexed annuities only count market price gains in their reference index when crediting...

The...