The High Price of Nice Dinners, Continued

Robert Neubecker's illustration for
"We Went to a Steak Dinner Annuity Pitch."

After an invitation to a gourmet dinner arrived in the mailbox of his 80-year-old aunt, NY Times columnist Ron Lieber decided to go along as her guest. Like other (but not all) nice dinners, Lieber found that this one – promoting equity indexed annuities – was garnished with dubious financial claims.

Almost a decade ago, in “Protecting Older Investors: 2009 Free Lunch Seminar Report,” AARP said 63 percent of the people it had surveyed had received an invitation like the one my aunt found in her mailbox. Among that group, 57 percent had received five or more within the previous three years. The organization figured that 5.9 million people ages 55 or over had attended at least one seminar. 

AARP’s protective instincts were warranted. Two years earlier, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the North American Securities Administrators Association and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority sent examiners to 110 free-meal seminars.  They found  that 57 percent of the time, the salespeople used materials that “may have been misleading or exaggerated or included seemingly unwarranted claims.”

I genuinely hoped not to encounter any such thing Tuesday night. But I did.

To avoid elder abuse, annuity sales efforts are said to target people no older than 70. But oldsters certainly get dinner invitations. My mother has received several this year. Had she not died in the 1990s, she now would be well over 100.

The High Price of Nice Dinners

After enjoying a free dinner, the WSJ tells us, a retiring tour bus driver bought an annuity. Several years later, after another nice dinner, she paid a heavy penalty to ditch her annuity and invest in a portfolio, including other annuities, pitched by another retirement "adviser."

The DOL effort to impose a fiduciary rule dampened annuity sales for a time. Now the rule is gone, and sales of annuities – some paying 6% commissions – are booming.

"Filing Chapter Heaven"

In the WSJ Brett Arends uses the term "filing Chapter Heaven" to enliven a report on how the Great Recession may prompt retirees to buy annuities and die broke. Sounds like a win-win situation – stable income for the retirees, freedom from the worries that go with investing an inheritance for their kids.