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A comment on Rich Retirees Are Hoarding Cash Out of Fear. Parent comment

Re:Rich Retirees Are Hoarding Cash Out of Fear by FabHK on Thursday May 18, 2017 @12:45PM (#14368757)
Annuities are great (if administered effectively, which is helped by economies of scale).

The UK has an efficient annuities market, it seems to me. My understanding was that in the US, it was to a large extent a tax-avoidance scheme, rather than a risk-mitigation mechanism, but I don't know enough about it.

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Re:Rich Retirees Are Hoarding Cash Out of Fear by bradleyjg on Thursday May 18, 2017 @02:01PM (#14369514)
In addition to regular vanilla annuities, for which we have a pretty efficient market, we have these terrible, awful, no good products that are misleadingly called variable annuities.

The variable ones are far more profitable and so get pushed onto people while you need to go seek out someone to sell you an ordinary annuity. They have a deservedly terrible reputation which I fear has tainted the ordinary kind somewhat in the public mind.

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