Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Would you trust this guy with your money?

Just look at this guy - he could be Lex Luthor's twin brother.  Ty J. Young is the guy on TV shilling the virtues of his 'can never go down' investment strategy.

If you trust this guy, you are making a huge mistake.  Mr. Young is an insurance salesman, selling you what all insurance sales guys sell: protection from bad things - for a fee.  An enormous fee, in most cases involving insurance products.

Mr. Young's product, which he never names in his ads, is nothing more or less than an annuity: a contract with his company that requires you to turn over a big gob of your money to him for a very long time, and he will trickle a portion of it back to you over the duration of the contract.  Annuities have a bad name for a reason, and that is why Mr. Young doesn't bring up the word, much like Democrats don't like calling what they believe in socialism.

Annuities have a place: they are for those who are deathly afraid of taking any risks with their money, and are completely willing to let the insurance company take those risks, reap the rewards and then give you back a sliver of what you could have made had you even a modicum of a backbone.  They are for cowards, and nobody else.

Anyone with half a brain can invest in the market, invest in real estate or invest in themselves as entrepreneurs.  Paying insurance companies to watch over your money is about the worst investment strategy anybody can possibly make.  If you give the idea of an annuity even a bare minimum of thought, you would figure out that the only way this can make sense for the insurance company to offer such a deal is that they make money off of your money well above and beyond what they pay you back.  They do with your money what you could have done, but didn't have the spine to consider.  Duh.  And once you give them your money and tie it up in an annuity, you can't get it back until the contract expires, many times 10 years or more into the future.  Or you can extract it slowly, one withdrawal a year (a surrender payment during the surrender period), or whatever punitive terms the insurance company gets you to sign up for.

In any event, just avoid annuities.  They are a bad deal, and don't let slick, slimy sales guys like Ty J. Young tell you any different.  You may as well give your money to Lex Luthor.




4 comments:

Gorges Smythe said...

Never trust anyone who says they want to help you.

Fredd said...

Gorges: except your mom. She means it, most of the time.

LSP said...

Is it just me or does that shark in the infographic look a lot like Avanetti, the CPL?

Fredd said...

Reverend: Might be evil twins, I wouldn't trust either of with my money, or anything else.