Your Money Map with Jean Chatzky and Ben Harris: In this episode of Your Money Map, Ben Harris, economist and author, joins Jean Chatzky for the episode titled, What Top Economists Know About Retirement (That Consumers Don’t).
Featuring: Ben Harris, Jean Chatzky
Thanks for having Ben on your show. This is an interesting discussion. I think one of the issues with annuities is that their primary goal is to make money for insurance companies and anyone who has ever looked at buying on understands that pretty quickly.
We would be much better off as a society if we recognized that providing financial security to people in retirement is a social good that benefits everyone. I think a much more effective approach would be to allow retirees to take a portion (or all) of the funds in their 401(k) and use it increase their social security income. Social security is effectively an annuity so why not just leverage what is already in place and optimize the return for the individual vs profit for the insurance companies.