“When the Market Goes Up, You Make Money! When the market goes down, you don’t lose!”

Jim Lorenzen, CFP^®, AIF^®

Sound familiar? If so, it’s because you saw all those television commercials selling safety to a frightened public. After all, all those daily market gyrations are scary to an aging boomer population who’ve spent most of their adult lives getting their financial education from television gurus, talking heads, and financial (entertainment) magazines.

When in doubt, hide. Buy gold, buy silver, buy guarantees! Maybe all risk will go away. Maybe. Maybe not.

Being conservative when inflation and interest rates have nowhere to go but up is probably a smart idea. The question is, where does conservative leave off and ignorance take over?

What are those commercials really selling? Equity-indexed annuities (EIAs). Without getting to far into the weeds, EIAs are basically insurance company IOUs. Your money is not invested in the stock market. It’s loaned to an insurance company. The insurance company puts the money in its general account and invests in a conservative portfolio, made-up mostly of bonds.

How do they tie returns to the stock market when the company has invested in bonds? You can getmy 3-1/2 page report here!

Jim

Jim Lorenzen

Jim Lorenzen is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional and an ACCREDITED INVESTMENT FIDUCIARY® serving private clients’ wealth management needs since 1991. Jim is Founding Principal of The Independent Financial Group, a Registered Investment Advisor providing wealth management, retirement planning and investment advisory services. Jim's background includes founding, building, and selling five successful businesses and international consulting. He has been headline speaker at more than 500 national and international association and corporate conventions for clients such as Foster Grant, Hobie Cat, CapCities/ABC, H.R. Textron, Hearst Corporation, The National Management Association, the National Newspaper Association, and Cox Communications and has been featured on American Airlines' Sky Radio heard on more than 19,000 flights, as well as in The Wall Street Journal’s SmartMoney magazine, The Profit Sharing Council of America’s Insights; also published in the Journal of Compensation and Benefits, NASDAQ, and in scores of national and international association trade publications.

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