Retirement Income Newsbeat #2

This post arrives to you from deep in the heart of Texas.

First, I'd like to thank Taylor Larimore for starting a Bogleheads discussion about my last post, which was my paraphrasing of Laurence Kotlikoff's explanation in support of delaying Social Security. Lots of good discussion followed about the merits of delaying vs. claiming sooner.

Bob Seawright also wrote an interesting post on recent research showing how much trouble people have in processing high magnitude - low probability outcomes, which are the types of events whose risk is mitigated with insurance. 

From Advisor Perspectives, my August column is now available. It is about the trend of image-based and text-lite PowerPoint presentations.

Also worth reading at Advisor Perspectives, Bob Veres tackles 10 assumptions commonly used in financial planning which he finds to be lacking.

Last week as well at Advisor Perspectives, Joe Tomlinson tackled the issue of the credit risk associated with buying an immediate annuity. Guaranteed income for life is only as good as the underlying guarantee, and whether that guarantee is really a true guarantee is a big question for lots of readers. You might interpret Joe's article as good news or bad news depending on your perspective, but generally Joe believes that the more staid actuarial culture of insurance providers will help protect their ability to honor their guarantees.