With over four decades of experience in the annuities industry and a track record of serving more than 10,000 clients, our team has accumulated a wealth of knowledge. We are excited to share some of the valuable lessons we've learned along the way, which we believe will greatly benefit you. In this section, we delve into the major insights we've gained, providing you with valuable information and insights to enhance your understanding and make informed decisions.

First, let's cover some of the things that we always avoid and why:

Why We Don't Use Averaging

Averaging precludes achieving high returns as a method of trying to lessen the effect of the Date Lottery.In our methodology, we do not concern ourselves with the Date Lottery at all. We have solved it with more pragmatic means that do not cost us returns.At the time when averaging was developed, it was better than nothing against the Date Lottery. However, it has never been a popular option in the history of the Averill portfolio.

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Why We Never Risk Control

At our company, we utilize annuities that protect your principal from loss due to market downturns. We've eliminated the Date Lottery altogether. That's why we don't feel the need to use additional risk control strategies that could potentially reduce your returns. Many companies slip in the Standard & Poor's 500 risk control index with uncapped participation. However, these strategies can be very different from the Standard & Poor's 500 and could lead to an unintended purchase.

Instead, we focus on buying from highly-rated companies that offer good principal protection from market downturns. We believe that by going for the greatest return possible and trying to limit market downturn risks we can help combat inflation and achieve the best returns possible for your money.

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Why We Never Use Specialty Indicies

Specialty indices typically have sketchy short-term track records that do not go back more than 30 or 40 years. This means unstable option pricing. From my experience, clients are more disappointed than not when they select averaging options or specialty indices. There are exceptions, but I'm not a big fan of being a pioneer with my retirement money.

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Why We Never Use Caps

While capped annuity contracts have their advantages, our extensive experience in the field has taught us that they are not our favorite choice. The advantage of caps is that you get 100% participation in the market index up to the cap, but it limits high returns. Our methodology considers this limitation, but there has scarcely been a decade where our clients weren't looking at returns of 40 to 50% on their two-year allocations. If your principal jumps by 50% in two years, whatever rate of return you get subsequently is on 150% of the money you started with. Therefore, if you were cruising along at 7% and had one 50% jump in your values, your income stream thereafter would be equal to if you were making 10.5% on the original amount you had.

People forget that if you're not losing during the down years, you want all the volatility that you can get, if you are being credited on the up years' volatility. I have never figured out why anyone would want to limit themselves from the potential for leapfrogging up their principal amount without limitation during volatile market environments. This is why we exclusively use Standard & Poor's 500 induction in our portfolio with very little exception and uncapped participation.

Contracts have been a huge part of client satisfaction and our personal satisfaction, coupled with our proprietary methodology for management, which reduces the Date Lottery effect. We simply don't believe there's any other way. People take 30% bonuses on a fictitious annuitization value without even realizing that they probably won't want to give over their account balance to the company when the time comes. While they're doing that, they don't pay attention to the parameters on the real money - how much is there in real money, and how much is it going to grow?

Additionally, it is presumptuous to think that no insurance carrier could ever possibly have any issues. Purchasing a contract that entails you assume you are going to have to leave your assets with that carrier for the rest of your life comes too easy to people in my view. Field experience gives us the depth of experience with these products, but product design does even more so. Above all, there is no replacement for having held the majority of your own personal assets in these types of accounts consistently for decades.

*Note: past returns are no guarantee of future results.