Preface By Tom Jacobs

And whether or not you know it, risk is all around you as you save for the future.

~Martin Ruby

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines mission as a calling/ vocation.

I am a man on a mission.

My mission is to help people who are approaching retirement or who are already retired protect the precious savings they have worked for decades to accumulate—so they can spend part of those resources enjoying this season in life, knowing they will never run out of money!

The genesis of this mission is the heart-breaking story of my parents. Like many people, my parents were hard-workers and big savers. They retired after working for forty-two years with a nice sum of money saved in a 401(k) account—enough for a comfortable retirement. When the market tanked in 2008, my parents lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. By the time they finally told me what was happening, they’d already lost half of their savings.

My mom and dad had been robbed of their retirement, and it was all because they had been listening to bad advice. Their entire 401(k) was invested in the market, and the market had crashed!

If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s common. There are many Americans out there, just like my parents, who are struggling to hang onto their money. Navigating retirement preparation in our country has gotten much more difficult over the last few decades.

Let’s face it, the traditional retirement path is becoming obsolete. In the not-so-distant past, there were three key common components to retirement planning: pensions, Social Security, and savings, which was most likely a 401(k). Today, pensions have all but disappeared. In the 1980s, 60 percent of workers participated in an employer-sponsored pension plan. Today, that number is only around 4 percent.¹ (Although traditional pensions are still offered by about 84% of state and local governments). As of June 2023, pensions for public-sector employees are under-funded by an estimated $1.49 trillion dollars!² For many newly hired employees in the public sector, participation in the pension program is no longer an option. Social Security is designed to make up only about 40 percent of retirement income;³ but the future of social security ten, twenty, or thirty years from now is uncertain – it’s expected that the Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted by 2033, which means that only 77% of benefits will be paid out, unless changes are made to the program first. ⁴ largely due to the large aging population surge among the baby boomer generation.⁵

So, this puts more responsibility on savers to focus on the option that is completely in your control: your savings.

Younger people obviously have more time to plan and save for retirement, and older people don’t. This is why, as we get older and closer to retirement, we should consider reducing our exposure to market crashes—because there’s simply less time to recover—and why it’s so important that you protect yourself (and your money) from these types of events.

The roller coaster ride of ups and downs in the markets makes it a risky spot for those precious retirement savings. A recession or a dramatic drop in the market can take time, possibly several years for our economy to recover. As we get older, the sad reality is time is not on our side. When we are in our sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond, we may not have time to recover from such setbacks.

That means if I want to retire and I’m sixty-two years old, and I lose half my money in a market correction, I probably have two options: work longer or retire with less money.

Do either of those options sound ideal? No.

So let’s circle back to my clear and urgent mission, which is to create solid retirement strategies to guide the right portion of my clients’ money into financial vehicles that offer guarantees, including guaranteed an income for life as appropriate—and perhaps even income that can increase as they get