When you’re planning for retirement, income is the name of the game. The more sustainable income that you can generate, the less you need to worry about things like sequence of returns and major stock market downturns – before and during retirement.
The idea is to build a base, or floor, of predictable income that will cover your day-to-day expenses. For most people doing retirement income planning, Social Security is the core element of an income floor. Although pre-retirees today can plan to receive a full Social Security benefit beginning somewhere between age 66 and 67 depending upon their year of birth, the benefit that they, and potentially their spouse, will receive will increase by 8% per year for each year that they defer their start date up until age 70. This equates to as much as a 24% – 32% greater benefit depending upon your year of birth and how long you defer your start date.
Assuming that your goal is to build a solid base of sustainable income with the ability to increase your lifetime income amount similar to Social Security, one of the best ways to do this is to invest in a flexible fixed index annuity (“FIA”) with an income rider. The reason that you want to use a flexible, vs. a single, premium FIA is to provide you with the ability to add to your investment should you choose to do so. In addition, you need to purchase an income rider, which is optional with most FIA’s, in order to receive guaranteed (subject to the claims-paying ability of individual insurance companies) income.
Like Social Security, the longer you wait to begin receiving your income, the greater it will be. Unlike Social Security benefits which are increased by cost of living adjustments (“COLA’s”), the lifetime income from the majority of FIA’s available today will remain unchanged once it’s started.
To demonstrate the benefit of deferring the start date of FIA income withdrawals, let’s use one of the contracts purchased by my wife and me two years ago when we were 55 and 48, respectively. I will use my wife’s age as a point of reference for the remainder of this post since income withdrawal amounts are always calculated using the younger spouse’s age.
Per our annuity contract, my wife and I are eligible to begin income withdrawals at least 12 months after our contract was issued provided that both of us are at least age 50. It generally doesn’t make sense to take withdrawals from a FIA income rider before age 60 since the formula used to calculate the withdrawal amount is less favorable and the withdrawals will be subject to a 10% IRS premature distribution penalty and potentially a state penalty. Assuming that we plan on retiring after my wife is 60, there would be no need to begin income withdrawals before this age.
I have prepared a spreadsheet with various starting ages in increments of five years beginning at 55 through 75. The spreadsheet shows the projected percentage increase in our annual income withdrawal amount that we will realize by deferring our income start age compared to ages that are 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years younger, depending upon the starting age chosen.
Using an example that’s comparable to the Social Security starting age decision, suppose that we decide to defer our income start age from 65 to 70. This would result in a 31.2% annual increase in lifetime income. We will receive 120.3% more income if we begin our income withdrawals at age 70 instead of at 60. The percentage increases are significant in many cases depending upon the chosen withdrawal starting age compared to another potential starting age.
Similar to the Social Security starting age decision, there are numerous factors that need to be considered when determining the optimal age to begin income withdrawals from a FIA with an income rider, a discussion of which is beyond the scope of this post. Like Social Security, when possible and it makes sense, delayed gratification is the key to maximizing lifetime income.