Capital Wealth Solutions

09/23/2024

Word is getting out~

Can buying a lifetime income annuity improve longevity?

There is an interesting quote in this article by Jim Szostek about annuities, which references my “License to Spend” research with Michael Finke for the Alliance for Lifetime Income, from Jane Austen’s classic “Sense and Sensibility” (which I haven’t read!):

“… if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them…”

What struck me about the quote (as a research guy) is idea implied causation, whereby people live longer because they have a lifetime income annuity.

Now, it’s clear that people who buy lifetime income annuities tend to live longer than the average American. For example, if you look at annuity mortality experience tables, life expectancies for 65-year old annuitants are around five years longer than general population mortality tables.

So, it’s not the fact that people who have lifetime income annuities live longer that’s surprising, it’s the potential for the purchase to further extend their longevity (i.e., after factoring in that they were already relatively healthy).

I think this would be really, really hard to actually test… but it’s definitely a fun thought exercise

03/17/2024

“There are hundreds of different economic measurements that supposedly measure how we’re doing on the money front.
However, you really only need to look at a few to understand how things are doing on a practical level.
According to Chartr, these four measurements are particularly important at this moment in time:

Inflation: The word nobody wants to say! Well, here’s the good news: It appears to have peaked at end of 2022 and is now coming back down to earth. The latest data shows prices were up roughly 3.1% in January – which sounds like a lot – but pales in comparison to the 9% increases that were seen in 2022.

Housing Affordability: High mortgage rates combined with soaring home prices mean it now requires at least 34% of the median income to make a monthly payment on a median priced house. Yikes!

Wall Street: The S&P is feeling a little frisky so far in 2023 – up nearly 9% as of this writing. In total, the S&P is up roughly 43% since hitting a low in the fall of 2022.

Wages: For the first time since the start of the pandemic, real hourly compensation has finally turned back into the black! (Or green, if you’re looking at the chart above.) But regardless of the color, that’s good news for millions of Americans.”

My Conclusion:

The stock market is the only thing that has been good during the Biden administration. The rest has been a disaster. They actually have gone up and up regardless of who is in charge of the government. The S&P is weighted heavily in 7 stocks: Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvidia. Otherwise not so great!

Vote correctly 2024 or it will continue but most likely will be the next failure.

09/17/2023

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/16/business/aging-population-insurance-costs/index.html

About one in six Americans are now age 65 or older and, as the average population ages, a majority are reaching the age of retirement in a precarious financial position, as costs of personal care continue to rise.

07/04/2023

Happy 4th of July