Everytime I see this thread get bumped to the top I think, "I'm going to ask if anyone might have advice for my dad." and I never do....until today.

I'll try to avoid writing a book as best as possible. My dad is a 67 year old widower. He worked as a manual laborer at a cattle feedlot all of his life so no 401K, no retirement, nothing. He still works there, but is planning to retire in the next couple months. He gets social security and his rent (which has not moved since the 1980's is still $125/mo.) So his monthly bills/obligations are not too big. He doesn't tell me a whole lot about his financial situation, just bits and pieces here and there. I do know he has a modest savings (probably in the mid five figures) that he believes will "get him bye until he dies." He currently has a pretty large chunk of that savings "in the stock market." I believe this is actually in some sort of an IRA with Edward Jones. My question for those on here is: his Edward Jones rep told him he could pull his money out and put it into an annuity where he would get a check for roughly $300/mo. for the remainder of his life, but after death, that money is gone. I wanted to see if this was correct and if there were better options for him. He keeps telling me he's going to "get his money out of the stock market," but each time he meets with Edward Jones, they talk him out of it. I know my question isn't clear, but I guess I'm just looking for recommendations from people who have been there or have some knowledge in this area. Thanks in advance. Sorry, I tried to keep it short.
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Paragraphs are your friend........:-)
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So annuities are definitely a thing. Unfortunately, they're not a thing I'm terribly familiar with. They are generally offered by insurance companies. It's basically a mathematical computation to them -- you give them X, and based on your life expectancy etc. they will pay you Y dollars per month, every month, until you die.

At 67 if in reasonable health he should be looking to support himself for maybe 20 years. His biggest likely costs are health-related and housing, if anything happens to that sweet essentially no-rent situation he has. He presumably has Medicaid/Medicare (programs I am not familiar with), but may want to look into supplemental insurance (sometimes call Medigap) for the things Medicare won't pay for.

As to staying in the market or not -- for his anticipated life expectancy, he should be in the market to some degree, though obviously with a focus on capital preservation and income generation rather than the straight growth I'm often promoting on here for people who have 20+ years of anticipated work-life in front of them.

Hope that helps.
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errr...sure, but this "shrug, my timing might be bad" approach is a completely fucked up way of thinking about it. So you wilL NEVER invest in stocks because the timing MIGHT be bad? That's your approach? Well, your approach is idiotic if so.

Start small, and start with the obvious stuff:

1. If you company offers a 401(k) with matching, THEN FUCKING TAKE THE FREE MONEY. You should put in at least enough to get the match. Because you're investing pre-tax dollars, the take-home hit is less than the amount you put in.

2. If not, then open an IRA and at least put in what you can, even if it's only a small amount per week. You can weigh Roth vs traditional, but at least START for God's sake.


Nobody is going to save your ass in retirement. Social Security will likely exist in some form, but you dont' want to bet your life on it being what you need, or enough for you. You have to start somewhere, and sometime. NOW IS THAT TIME.

Sure, it might go down. But I'm assuming based on your post you have 30+ years of work in front of you. Who the fuck cares if the market dips for a while? You think in 2050 you'll be moaning that you didn't get the timing of your 2019 investments right? When it's some small, starter, amount per week or whatever? Yeah, no.
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Sure, but the dividend is factored into the price as of the ex-dividend date, so you aren't getting any kind of windfall.
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If you put the booze and gambling money into investments, you'll still be getting lap dances from 21 year old strippers when you're 70. That's called the 'time value of money'.
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Yeah, I know. I was just letting Hog know how long you had to own the stock before getting a dividend payment.
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Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it. I just wanted to make sure he wasn't being taken for a ride by some commission hungry college grad working for Edward Jones. He's reluctant to go the annuity route because he feels some moral/paternal obligation to "leave me something" when he's gone (I'm an only child). I keep telling him not to worry about it because I have a 401k and a pension, but he's old fashioned. I just want him to be able to be comfortable aka pay his bills & have a little left over for recreation/fun/travel/etc.
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I've never looked into annuities, and the occasional thing that I read about them is that they're a bad idea.

I can see a value of them, though. For someone like your dad, getting a return while avoiding risk of loss is important. That usually means investing in lower-return investments. Presumably, companies sell annuities because they can take a longer term approach to investment and can be more aggressive. They can spread the risk over a longer-term period, invest more aggressively, and give your dad a little better return because they're making the difference that he would otherwise never see.

At least, that's how it should work. I have no idea the return that your dad would get. Common assumptions would say that he should get more than 4 percent return, but I have no idea if that's true and how much more it would be.

You're also betting that you'll live a long time rather than dying early. If you've got kids and care about inheritances, then maybe this is an issue. For someone like me with no dependents, the financial loss of dying early doesn't matter, and the benefit of always having income is a big draw.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should look into annuities. I think I'm a good market.
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US Steel (X) is now at $13.75. Getting real tempted to buy some long term options.
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So annuities are somewhat infamous as being promoted by brokers for the commissions they get. But, somewhat like regular life insurance policies (which are similarly infamous), they aren't necessarily bad -- they are rather a certain product that might be right for someone depending on the circumstances.

But the concern about the commission aspect isn't misplaced. If he wants an annuity, he should DEFINITELY shop around. The web is filthy with websites that will compare them etc. it seems, based on my ten second review (and I'm hardly surprised; it's exactly what I expected to find).
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Something to keep an eye on:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-v...-idUSKCN1U40EZ

(Reuters) - Richard Branson’s space-tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, plans to go public as part of a deal with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) created by Social Capital LP Chief Executive Officer Chamath Palihapitiya, a person familiar with the matter said.

The deal was earlier reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said the SPAC, Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp (IPOA.N), will invest about $800 million for a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic.

The deal could be announced as early as Tuesday morning, said the source, who declined to be named because the matter is confidential.

Virgin Galactic and Social Capital Hedosophia did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters outside regular business hours.

Branson’s company is racing against Blue Origin, the space business of Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos, to bring tourists into space.

Virgin Galactic in February soared to the edge of space with a test passenger for the first time, nudging the company closer to its goal of suborbital flights for space tourists.

After Branson founded the company in 2004, his ambitious timeline for taking customers into space suffered delays and a fatal setback when the original SpaceShipTwo crashed on a test flight in 2014 that killed the co-pilot and seriously injured the pilot.

Branson has said he plans to be the first passenger on SpaceShipTwo’s first commercial flight in mid-2019.
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I’m done chasing a needle in a haystack.

I’m trading only blue chip companies now for modest gains. Too many times burned by stocks like IQ. Still holding on that piece of shit.
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Don't be a puss.
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Slow and steady wins the race has been my motto for a long time now. I have neither the time, energy nor experience to micromanage a stock portfolio. Some very high percentage (certainly 95+%) of what I have in the market is in index funds.
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