“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get

good  breaks  from bad shots – but you have to play the ball as it lies.”

- Bobby Jones, an American amateur golfer, and co-founder of the Master's Tournament Annuities, which can be an effective financial tool when it comes to designing a retirement strategy. However, because there are different types of annuities and annuities can have different options, choosing the right annuity to help achieve your retirement goals from Small Business Owners can seem overwhelming. Since I’m now working with the Golf Cart Generation, I like to compare the process of choosing the right annuity to golf. Some people will say, “Choosing annuities? But aren’t all annuities the same?”

Theoretically, an annuity is an annuity, just as a golf club is a golf club. But the most successful golfers use clubs that have been customized to their game and their way of playing. Don’t believe me? Try using someone else’s golf clubs in your next round. Then let me know how well you score. Chances are, you will recognize if the club feels right to you immediately. The key is customization. Your strategy for retirement from Small Business Owners using annuities, or any other financial instrument, needs to be tailored to fit your needs and customized to your personal lifestyle. Too often I see Small Business Owners employees and retirees in my office who were “sold” a single annuity or several annuities, and after just a few minutes of talking about their goals, lifestyle, family, and their money, I realize they weren’t “fitted” with the right instruments. They were sold something generic right off the shelf. Unless your annuity fits your financial needs, it could be like trying to play golf with someone else’s clubs. 

However, as any golfer will tell you, the right clubs alone won’t make you the next Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy. You will also need to know how to use them. There’s a big difference between hitting a golf ball into a net at the local sporting goods store or off a plastic mat on the practice range and learning how to properly use your clubs on the fairways. Our customized strategies use multiple annuities that are offered by top-rated insurance companies. Which have long track records of financial strength for Small Business Owners employees and retirees. We do not create or design our own annuities. We help you to select features, riders, and appropriate contracts to fit your stated goals.

The greatest golfers in the world never go at it alone. They still take lessons in between tournaments, and they rarely play in a major tournament without their swing coach by their side. A highly trained and experienced swing coach can guide a golfer through any challenge that might pop up during play. They coach their golfers through the tough times, and this advice and support can be invaluable. A personal swing coach not only has an in-depth understanding of their client’s golfing mechanics and tendencies, he or she will also have a detailed knowledge of the golfer’s psyche. The coach is there at the most crucial moments in a player’s career– because those are the times when small adjustments can make the difference between winning and losing.

In retirement after leaving Small Business Owners, we believe that having a “coach” who knows you, your tendencies, your family, your assets, and your core values can provide the best advice and guidance when you need it the most. This is why you have trained and experienced financial professionals – for the tough times. Nobody needs help when things are going great, always hitting the fairways and greens and making all the putts. We need professionals when conditions change, and we are faced with challenging situations.

Most recreational golfers don’t have access to all the professional assistance I’ve described above – which is probably at least part of the reason why average golfers admire how well the pros play. But when it comes to your Small Business Owners retirement, you do have access to a team of financial professionals with specific areas of focused training. Those professionals can be crucial to helping you navigate your way through the entire process by helping you choose your annuity and learning how to use those instruments, to dealing with the ups and downs of life and adjusting as your needs and goals change. At Parady Financial, we’ve created a space we call the parade learning lounge. It is dedicated to providing information about our services, the products we offer, and other retirement issues that may come up for Small Business Owners employees. Our learning lounge is located in our clubhouse where our clients and friends can learn about different facets of the “game” of retirement in a relaxing social and group environment.

We offer full complimentary access to all learning lounge topics and sessions that we conduct. We bring in guest speakers to discuss topics outside our areas of expertise and encourage our clients to attend as many presentations as they like even before they make a commitment. Ultimately, this is your retirement lifestyle at stake, so we believe it’s important to get you fitted with the appropriate tools. We can help you learn the basics on how to use life insurance and annuities and provide all the important “retirement caddy” tools to help you along the way. Keep in mind, over time your life goals may change just like your game. The golf clubs you carried 30 years ago probably are not the same clubs you use today. (By the way, if your 3-wood is still made out of actual wood, we should talk immediately!) Our process of sharing information allows our Small Business Owners clients to learn about the latest products and strategies as they become available, so they can always be on top of their game. 

Of course no one becomes a championship golfer after just a few lessons. Our model is designed to allow you to go at your own pace and get information through a process of osmosis. We believe gradual absorption of complicated retirement issues and insurance-related strategies is a much better approach and more effective than a single sales pitch. Now imagine that every time you play a round of golf, your game improves. You hit more fairways, more greens, and you have fewer putts per round. This continues for months or even years. Each time you are out on the course your game improves. But every time you walk off the 18th green, there is a golf club sales representative waiting for you and trying to sell you a set of the latest and greatest clubs, trying to replace the ones you already have. Since you are playing well, you probably have no interest in changing anything. Then one day, you fall into a slump. Everything stops going your way. Your drives are flying out of bounds and you can’t make a putt to save your life. Feeling frustrated, confused, and emotional about your game, you finish your round and that sales rep is there waiting.

What kind of decision do you think you’ll make when you’re feeling frustrated and emotional? It is almost never a good idea to make big decisions under stress or when you’re emotionally charged. Decisions about your retirement after leaving Small Business Owners shouldn’t be made quickly or when under stress either. One of the mistakes a retiree can make is a snap or emotional decision when life is not going your way, no matter how noble the intentions. A decision made from a place of frustration, anger, or fear almost never turns out to be smart in the long run. It’s also valuable to note that changing clubs isn’t always the right answer. Maybe it's not the club? Sometimes all you need is a lesson, or a meeting with your swing coach, to steer you in the right direction.

Everybody loves income, right?

But “deferred income”? That may be a different story.

One type of annuity that people own today is known as “deferred annuities”. This means during the accumulation phase; interest is growing tax deferred. Then during the distribution phase, the interest that is paid back to you is taxed. It’s not uncommon for people to own annuities and keep them in the deferral phase into their mid-to-late 70s. Not because this is the way they want it, or that it still makes sense to defer the payout, but they often don’t know how to make their annuities work for them. I think it’s important to understand that at the core, annuities are intended to provide income. This can be income now or income later. But why do so many people continue deferring income with their annuities? They would have never done that with a raise from their boss. It comes down to knowing and understanding how to use your annuities to your best advantage, especially for retirement after leaving Small Business Owners. Let’s think about what this means for you.

If you had an option today – right this minute – to begin receiving income for the rest of your life, how many more days, weeks, or years would you want to wait before you begin to collect? Let me rephrase the question: How many people chose to take social security at age 62? How about age 66? How about the maximum monthly payout offered at age 70? A few of my clients waited until age 70 to begin collecting Social Security benefits. It’s true that the longer you wait, the bigger the monthly benefit. But it’s also true that you will receive that benefit for a shorter period of time. Annuities don’t just sit there like Aunt Irene’s furniture with the plastic on. Annuity payments can be used as a tool to help supplement your lifestyle and goals or to purchase other financial or insurance instruments.

When you have an annuity that will provide a stream of income for life, you’re in control of how those funds are used. You can decide if you need a smaller amount of income for a longer period of time or a larger amount of income for a shorter period of time. As financial professionals, we can help you determine which annuity strategies may suit your needs for the first half, second half, and overtime in your retirement after Small Business Owners. I meet a lot of people that already own annuities and aren’t taking the income from them. It is a source of great frustration for me because if you’re in retirement and you own an annuity contract that guarantees income and you’re not taking the income yet, why did you buy it? Of course, annuities must be suitable for each individual’s needs. But remember, annuities can pay you income for the rest of your life. When you own something that will pay you forever, how many more years do you want to wait before you start collecting those payments?

The Retirement Group is a nation-wide group of financial advisors who work together as a team.

We focus entirely on retirement planning and the design of retirement portfolios for transitioning Small Business Owners employees. Each representative of the group has been hand selected by The Retirement Group in select cities of the United States. Each advisor was selected based on their pension expertise, experience in financial planning, and portfolio construction knowledge.

TRG takes a teamwork approach in providing the best possible solutions for our clients’ concerns. The Team has a conservative investment philosophy and diversifies client portfolios with laddered bonds, CDs, mutual funds, ETFs, Annuities, Stocks and other investments to help achieve their goals. The team addresses Retirement, Pension, Tax, Asset Allocation, Estate, and Elder Care issues. This document utilizes various research tools and techniques. A variety of assumptions and judgmental elements are inevitably inherent in any attempt to estimate future results and, consequently, such results should be viewed as tentative estimations. Changes in the law, investment climate, interest rates, and personal circumstances will have profound effects on both the accuracy of our estimations and the suitability of our recommendations. The need for ongoing sensitivity to change and for constant re-examination and alteration of the plan is thus apparent.

Therefore, we encourage you to have your Small Business Owners plan updated a few months before your potential retirement date as well as an annual review. It should be emphasized that neither The Retirement Group, LLC nor any of its employees can engage in the practice of law or accounting and that nothing in this document should be taken as an effort to do so. We look forward to working with tax and/or legal professionals you may select to discuss the relevant ramifications of our recommendations.

Throughout your retirement years, we will continue to update you on issues affecting your Small Business Owners retirement through our complimentary and proprietary newsletters, workshops and regular updates. You may always reach us at (800) 900-5867.

1. What to do with an Early Retirement Ebook

2. Social Security Ebook

3. Lump Sum vs. Annuity Ebook

4. 401(k) Rollover Strategies Ebook

5. Closing the Retirement Gap Ebook