annuities

An income annuity is the mirror image of a savings account: instead of putting money in over time, you hand an insurance company a lump sum and they hand you a fixed paycheck for the rest of your life. The product solves a problem no spreadsheet can — you don't know how long you'll live, so you don't know how thin to slice your savings. Draw too much and you risk running out; draw too little and you die rich and underspent. A life annuity removes that guess: the income is guaranteed for as long as you breathe. It can pay you MORE each year than you could safely withdraw from the same money yourself, and the reason is mortality credits — the pool of buyers who die early subsidizes the ones who live long, so the survivors earn a return no bond can match. The trade-off is real and permanent: once you annuitize, the lump sum is gone. You give up access to the principal, the flexibility to change your mind, and the estate you'd otherwise leave behind. So the decision turns on a single gamble. If you die before your own money would have run out, keeping it invested wins — you'd have drawn the same income and still left an inheritance. If you live past that point, the annuity wins — it keeps paying while a self-managed pot would be empty. The break-even is the age your savings would have hit zero. Annuities earn their keep only when their payout rate clears what your money can safely earn; when interest rates are low and you're young, the insurer's cut and your long life expectancy make self-managing the better bet. This lesson models a simple single-premium immediate annuity — the cleanest version — and leaves aside riders, inflation adjustments, and the fees that make fancier annuities a far worse deal.