Annuities! For years now they’ve been dissed, maligned and misunderstood … which is why we’re setting the record straight on this episode of Retirement Equals Freedom.

Host Josh Bretl, owner of FSR Wealth Strategies, explains why this particular investment vehicle has gotten a bad rap (Co-Host Dave Schmidt can relate) and how to educate ourselves on the facts.

As always, it comes down to taking a holistic look at your financial snapshot, including timelines, mix of investments and overall goals.

Sure. When it comes to annuities, there are some very real downsides. But in addition to outlining those, Josh is also helping us get clear about the fact that it’s not a black and white situation.

Or, to put it another way, as our host warns: “If you ever think something is always good, no matter what, you’ve got a problem. And if you think something is bad, no matter what, you’ve got a problem.”

This episode will help anyone who has shut the door on annuities to reconsider them as an investment option – one featuring growth as well as safety.

If you’re intrigued and want to know more, join us for an upcoming Part II that will take a closer look at what annuities offer, how they work and whether they might be just what you need to round out and grow your retirement nest egg.

Trigger Warning: If you’re partial to water chestnuts or have ever worked at a fast-food drive-thru window, the views expressed by your co-hosts may be upsetting. Jokes, we're just having fun.

I wanted to go through the annuity word

because I am of the belief that no single investment or

no single product where you can put your money, Is ever,

always good or always bad.

If you ever think something is always good, no matter

what, you got a problem.

If you think something's always bad, no matter

what, you got a problem.

There are situations in different people's lives that

everything can fit depending upon on where it goes.

Does this sound like you when you

hear the word annuities?

If so, look, we get it.

For years now they've been dissed, maligned and

flat out misunderstood.

Which is why in this episode we're setting

the record straight.

Sure.

When it comes to annuities, there are

some very real downsides,

but in addition to outlining those, you'll

also learn why it's not a black and white situation.

In other words, as you heard Josh say just a few seconds ago,

No single investment or no single product where you

can put your money, Is ever, always good or always bad.

This episode will help anyone who has shut the

door on annuities to reconsider them as an investment option.

One featuring growth as well as safety.

Ooh.

And uh, a trigger warning.

If you're partial to water chestnuts or have ever worked

in a fast food drive-through

the views expressed by your co-hosts may be upsetting,

but it's all in good fun.

This is The Retirement Equals Freedom Podcast.

Your host, Josh Bretl, is the owner of FSR Wealth Strategies.

And for the last 20 plus years, Josh has been helping

fine folks like you gain the confidence to make retirement

the best part of your life.

And me, who am I?

Thanks for asking.

I'm Dave.

Josh's longtime friend, co-host of the show and

big fan of ordering (drive thru shenanigans mumbling).

You'll learn more about that later.

But for now, let me let you let me end my introduction,

so you can enjoy the show.

Just got to put on my chapstick.

You can't record a podcast with chapped lips.

You know, it's summertime, and I feel like

chapped lips aren't a thing of summer, but I've had some

really chapped lips recently.

Yeah, you've been doing a lot of smooching?

Yeah.

All that smooching.

If that's the way this is going to start, that's what it is.

It is what it is.

Big news in our house.

Yeah?

Zach got new glasses.

Zach is tiny.

Since birth, he has barely been on the growth chart.

On height and weight, he's been less than one

percentile his whole life.

He just needed glasses at a young age.

And his face is so tiny, there was one pair that fit him.

At that point we went to Walmart to get his glasses.

Someone recommended that because they said kids break them all

the time, they lose them, so get a cheap pair of glasses.

And we went to Walmart.

The Walmart guy was great, he fit Zach really well.

Zach never broke his glasses, never lost them.

The kid is amazing the way he takes care of glasses.

About a year and a half later, his prescription

got updated a little bit.

We go back to the Walmart again, his face has not grown enough to

get any other pairs of glasses.

Oh, no.

Same pair?

Same pair.

So the kid, since kindergarten year, has had the exact

same pair of glasses.

Different lens, same frame.

Different lens.

We're now going into fourth grade and it's it.

Now, he has an orange and blue lens, so it's like this orange

frame, and it's got a little bit of blue on the inside.

He looks cute.

It's adorable.

This tiny little face, these little glasses on there.

He is going to a different eye doctor, and he's grown a

little bit and they recommended a new pair of glasses.

We're like, "Oh dude, you deserve this."

We went and we got him from the eye doctor, and he had

a lot more choices to make.

But of course, Zach had to pick an orange lens.

No.

Or an orange frame, I'm sorry.

But it's a bigger, rounder orange frame.

It's those things that I saw him this morning as his

glasses for the first time.

I worked last night.

He's had the same thing for so long that I almost

didn't recognize him this morning in his new glasses.

Oh man.

Does he just not like change or does he love the frames?

He likes to try new things, but he doesn't like to

change things that he likes.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

That's deep.

Yeah.

We have what we call vacation Zach.

Vacation Zach is the happiest version and

best version of Zach.

We take him on vacation and he thrives on vacation,

trying new things, doing new things like that.

Does he bring the platypus with him?

No.

The duck billed platypus?

Yeah.

Sean, I'm glad you remember that.

Sean the duck billed platypus.

Oh God, is that funny.

Good old Sean.

How are you?

I don't know, Josh.

I'm feeling a little gloomy today.

Is there a reason why you're feeling gloomy?

For those that listen to episode 39, you

asked the question what I'm looking forward to this summer?

I was worried about this.

And I answered the Chicago Dog's

game for my birthday.

My birthday was June 4th.

The day before and the day of, I was down and out.

Felt like poop.

So we rescheduled to last night.

Tuesday, June 13th and they got rained out.

So Dave's summer, I'm not going to say it's officially ruined,

but it's kind of off to a...

Dave, I'll take you to a Dog's game.

You and I, let's go.

Yeah?

Yeah, we don't need kids or spouses or anything.

We'll just go watch the Dog's.

Should we record video of ourselves

enjoying cocktails and hot dogs at this Dog's game?

Oh, that sounds like a great idea.

Okay, we can start a new segment on the show.

If you guys could see the smile on

his face occur again.

Yeah.

Did that just make your day seem me smile?

It did.

Your dad's been in town for the last week and you're taking him

to the airport this afternoon, I'm sure that has you down too.

It does have me down.

Did I tell you he officially requested to refer to him

as something different now?

Are we only allowed to call him Big Mike?

He likes to now be called Cowboy

Mike from Colorado.

Why cowboy Mike?

You know how us Americans, you watch a few

episodes of Yellowstone and start drinking a little bit of

bourbon, we think we're cowboys.

So that's what...

Again, if we were a sports talk show, he wants his

own name associated with him?

Absolutely.

To be fair, he showed up from O'Hare.

Carla picked him up when he came in wearing a

full-blown cowboy hat with a cow skull on the front.

I'm like, "Wow."

He lives in Denver.

Yeah.

It's not like he's in the Wild West.

He's in Denver.

I mean, what are you got to do?

What you going to do?

We all have our personas.

That's it.

Cowboy Mike.

Oh man.

Yeah.

But you know what?

There are three things in life that cheer me up.

Pizza, family, Retirement Equals Freedom podcast recording.

Okay.

So Josh, if I remember correctly, you have a

nice little glow going on here, a nice little tan.

I haven't seen anything below the shirt, but I believe

you were just in the lovely city of San Francisco.

I was.

And that has nothing to do with the tan.

The tan is all from when I've been back, but-

Oh, why?

You mean-

Coaching soccer games.

And golfing.

I didn't golf.

Oh, I thought you golfed.

Oh, I did golf once.

I mini golfed.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

You got a tan from that?

It was actually the night it was like 59

degrees and everyone's bundled up and I'm wearing

shorts and a T-shirt.

There is your weather.

No.

First week out of school, we took the kids

out to San Francisco.

I think I mentioned this in our last podcast.

It was our very first vacation as a family that didn't revolve

around a beach or a theme park.

The kids loved it.

They were rock stars.

They loved San Francisco.

I don't know if you've been out there to visit Alcatraz?

Yes.

We did a tour.

I was probably our kids' age.

Okay.

Well, it's one of those tours you take a boat ride out to

the rock off of the shores of San Francisco, and you

walk up to the jail and they give you this audio tour

to wear around your head.

And I was a little worried at how the kids would do.

They rocked it, they just loved it.

They didn't want to leave.

They were listening to all the stories but

it made me so excited.

It was like, oh, this opens up a whole new world of

vacation possibilities.

And they were rock stars.

They went on a three hour hike with us up

in the Redwood Forest.

They walked through Chinatown and they got to

try some new food and they were really, really cool.

But vacation Zach came out and we laughed because if

we try to take his picture, if we're here we're like,

"Zach, smile for a picture."

No smile, just is goofy.

Out there he doesn't stop smiling.

You're like, "Zach, let me take your picture."

He's like the best smile ever.

So Missy and I'll look at our memories of our phones.

We'll be like, "Oh, that must be on vacation

because Zach's smiling."

It was a great vacation.

I know you missed me while I was gone.

I think I mentioned that last time on the show that, that

was the longest you and I have been apart in a year.

I know.

It's unfortunate that we're starting to do video because

people can see that I am...

Oh, I think I'm at my nine week mark since a haircut.

It is absolutely all over my ears and my neck and

it's so uncomfortable.

All I do is I think about, I'm so self-conscious about it.

Is getting bigger.

It's huge.

You can put product in there and it really goes.

I know.

I think tomorrow at one o'clock, I think I'm going to book an

appointment and then show up to the workshop with a new dew.

Josh, in our past, I've had some run-ins with annuities.

You have?

You've run into them.

Yeah.

I don't know.

It just sounded like something that sounds like authority.

And so I'm like, "Okay, let's start off with that bad joke."

Well, this is a topic that we've been wanting

to do for a while and I've avoided it, not because I'm

afraid of it, but because I don't think any one product or

any one vehicle should get its own platform that's out there.

Let me back that up and why I say that.

Back that thing up, would you?

Retirement planning itself is a process.

We've spent a lot of time talking about the process and

how to think about it and the underlying what you should do.

And we've never ever mentioned a product or

a vehicle on this show.

Dave Schmidt:

Yeah, you're right.

We never have.

And I never wanted it to be that way.

Because people that just mention product, and if you

go to one of these workshops and they just talk about

how the wonders of this product, they're salespeople.

It gives our whole industry a bad name.

And I never wanted to talk about that, but this is one of

those vehicles that whenever I do recommend something, and by

the time I am working with a client, making a recommendation,

we have a great rapport.

We've usually had three to five meetings, and I know

them really well and there's a trust that's been built up.

And when I make a recommendation to them, they almost

never even think about it.

They're just, "Yeah, if that's what you think, that's

what we're going to do."

And that's what I like.

Now, this is one of those weird vehicles that people

have heard about or they've read about, or it's something

that triggers this, not in everybody, but in some people

this response that is unnatural.

I wanted to go through the annuity word because I am

of the belief that no single investment or no single product

where you can put your money is ever always good or always bad.

If you ever think something is always good, no matter

what, you got a problem.

If you think something's always bad, no matter

what, you got a problem.

There are situations in different people's lives that

everything can fit depending upon on where it goes.

You mentioned annuities.

It's like how I used to think about blue cheese and

peas and water chestnuts.

The idea of it's like ewe!

But now I love, but food is different.

Water chestnuts are just inherently bad.

Whoever puts-

Right.

Those are still bad.

But blue cheese, delicious.

Yeah.

But I mean blue cheese and annuities,

there's a correlation there.

Are we getting a peek into your DR2R on here?

No.

Oh, thank you for telling me.

You're trying to peek again, let me flip that back over.

But I wanted to talk today a little bit about

why we don't use annuities in different situations.

Now, just to set this up, we are planning a two

part series in this, right?

We are.

Yes.

Today we're going to talk about all the things that

people see online that say hey, why this is bad.

And I'm not trying to defend it.

For some people, annuities serve zero purpose in their

portfolio, but there are some people that annuities can

add a lot of value to it.

So it really has to go with the whole process and your situation

and things along those lines.

So today I want to talk about some of the bad parts

to it, but also reframe it a little bit for people who

should be thinking about it a little bit differently.

Let's dig in baby.

Al right.

The first one is-

No, wait.

First, you're listing the reasons people typically

hate annuities or-

Yeah.

Hate them, and they should hate them for these reasons,

but there's also reasons you should like them.

So the first one is a lack of liquidity.

So liquidity means how fast you can get access to your money.

Now, annuities do provide a lot of benefits.

There are benefits that people would love to have.

There can be downside protection.

There can be some guaranteed interest rates.

There can be some income guarantees.

There's things that people want.

And in order for the insurance company to offer these,

what they look for is they look for the ability to

hold onto your money for a longer period of time.

So liquidity comes into play.

The shortest term might be like a three year liquidity, and

you're not going to get as many bells and whistles as you will

with something that has a 10.

I mean, the longest term I've seen is 16 years.

16 years seems ridiculous.

Who wants to tie their money up for 16 years?

And when I say it like that, that does sound pretty awful.

But when you think about it as part of a process, if you're

looking for some of these benefits that come into play

and you have enough other money in other areas doing other

things, for a lot of people, the liquidity may not matter.

I do admit you have to take the liquidity under-

Advisement.

Advisement.

And you have to think about it.

Your hand signals there.

But just because it's illiquid doesn't make it necessarily bad.

There's a lot of other illiquid assets out there.

Is that a word, illiquid?

Yeah, it is.

Is it really?

Lack of liquidity.

Illiquid.

Wow.

So I said advisement, you said illiquid.

You know what I'm starting to sense here?

And I'm totally interrupting you.

You ever watched Pee-wee's Playhouse back in the day?

Oh yeah.

As a word of the day?

Word of the day.

We're going to-

We're all go crazy?

We're going to implement that.

Yes.

So liquidity is an issue.

I'm not saying it's not an issue, but it's not

something you can't overcome.

The next one, and I see this scares a lot of

people away, is complexity.

We talked about, on the last episode, everyone's

looking for simplicity.

Everyone wants it to be simple and easy to understand.

There's a lot that can be very complex inside some

of these annuity contracts.

If you don't understand it and how it applies to

your situation, I agree.

You should not do it.

But that complexity can also add benefits to it.

Ask as many questions as you can, understand

it as best as you can.

And if it's too complex for you, no, don't do it.

But if it's simple enough to be able to be used into

your situation and you know how it's going to apply for

your personal process, just because something's complexed

doesn't mean it shouldn't be applied to your situation.

Just like I am a complex individual,

but you understand me.

I do.

It's really scary.

Mm-hmm.

Carry, on my friend.

Like an annuity, I understand it.

Still scary too.

This one gets a bad rap quite a bit.

And this has to do...

It says high fees.

Now when we say high fees, it's specifically talking

about one type of annuity.

Ain't nobody got cash for that.

Yeah.

We haven't used that drop in a while.

I know.

I've heard of the word fee.

Might as well drop that though.

There's a type of annuity out there

called a variable annuity.

We're going to talk more about that in the next episode.

And these were developed, I believe in the '80s sometime.

They were built around a mutual fund.

A mutual fund has its own fees, variable annuity

adds fees on top of that.

There may not be a reason for it.

So some people were sold these annuities, which were

nothing more than the same mutual funds you could have

gotten outside the annuity with higher fees in it.

That's where that gets the bad wrap and effect if anywhere

gets the bad wrap, that's really necessary, that is it.

Hands down.

Fees.

Yeah.

But there's other types of annuities that have

no additional fees.

The fixed annuities that you see, that we'll talk about

next time, they're no real really different than a CD

with an insurance company.

So CDs are through banks, annuities are through

insurance companies.

CDs for most people have no fees built into them.

Those same annuities have no fees built into them.

So we want to think about that in the same way.

Now, but fees is something you want to take into consideration.

And they don't all have super high fees, but some of them do.

It's a decision making process that has to go into it and how

it fits into your situation.

Make sense?

Yeah.

Josh, of course it does.

I mean, you're an expert at this stuff.

There are some misleading sales practices that go into it too.

Some of these annuities do pay a high upfront commission

to the person who sells it.

They will sell it at all cost.

They don't care about the person they're selling it

to, they just want that money that comes in the door.

They don't care about how it fits into your situation.

I have seen numerous people that have come into my office,

they've sat with somebody else, they put them in an annuity

that has zero purpose for what they're trying to achieve.

And we have to fix it in some way, shape or form.

So again, I don't necessarily think annuities are bad,

but they have to be used for your specific situation.

People get mad at, there's high commissions.

Well, they're not high necessarily.

In fact, if I were to use an annuity for one of my clients,

we actually get paid less over the long term on an annuity

than we do when we manage their assets, but there is payment

as that comes into play.

What you want to do is you want to make sure that the

person that's recommending it to you does not push

it above everything else just because of that.

Red flag.

Red flag, hands down.

I always tell our clients, "Look, I think this fits best

in your situation, but if you hate it, we have other

options that we can go to.

And it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

I'm only going to recommend what I think is absolutely

best in your situation."

Fiduciary.

Yeah, it's a huge deal.

So they better understand exactly what

you're getting into.

The last one that I want to bring up and reasons that

people really dislike them, this isn't brought up but

it probably should be, is it does reduce some of your tax

options that are out there.

Hashtag tax nerd.

But people don't think about taxes

with annuities, and with annuities, what we have to

worry about, is how that money is going to come out when you

start taking the money out.

There's two things I want to think about here.

First off, we've talked a lot about Roth conversions.

Sometimes annuities will make it harder to do Roth conversions if

you use them inside of an IRA.

It's not impossible.

You have to structure them a little bit differently, but you

want to make sure that whoever you're working with knows how to

do that, how to structure those.

The second is how annuities are taxed when

they're not in an IRA.

We had an episode all on the non-qualified accounts.

And those are, you have capital gains and interest in dividends.

Well qualified dividends and capital gains actually

have a lower tax rate than annuity distributions, IRA

distributions, things along those lines for most people.

So what we worry about is people who shove a bunch of money into

their non-qualified annuity.

When they go to take that money out, there could be a

tax hit that they weren't aware of, they weren't planning on.

Not saying don't do it.

It has to be taken into consideration though.

As you're doing that, make sure you take those taxes

into understanding on how they get distributed.

And actually different annuities will have different taxation

of how the money comes out.

That is something that it's not talked about too often, but

it's something that you should be looking at if you're looking

at purchasing an annuity.

Make sense?

Total.

Now, Erin wrote in the notes here something

down at the bottom, if someone is looking for a spot to put

their money, there's three main areas that they look for.

They're looking for liquidity, they're looking for growth and

they're looking for safety.

And I always say, for most people, any real spot

you can stick your money, we can almost always get

you two out of the three.

We can get you liquidity and growth.

We can get you safety.

It depends on different things that you're looking for, for

the purpose of that money.

So this goes back to understanding exactly what that

money is going to be used for.

And then is an annuity a good fit?

Is it not a good fit?

That is totally going to be dependent upon

your specific situation.

That word has tripped you up in the past.

You see, I slowed down on that?

You made a concerted effort.

Another good word, concerted to-

We are full of big words today.

I mean, I'm not going to say that we're

like reading Thesaurus' before we record but we

are recording, reading.

Yeah, we're super smart.

I think that whole thing should stay in.

That was fantastic.

But I hope you understood a little bit about where

people are coming from and they have a valid point,

but don't stop there.

You have to understand how it fits for your

specific situation.

And next week, we're going to talk about the different

types and when we do use them, why we use them and

why we should think about it.

So again, nothing's inherently good or inherently bad at all

times but it matters how it applies to your situation.

How was that?

For us?

That was short and sweet.

I'm a little worried about your DR2R.

You should not be worried about my DR2R.

I won't get too worried here.

It's always very on point.

I didn't see you for a while while you're in San Francisco,

so I'm starting to kind of forget some things about you.

So I think it's a good time for...

[Singing].

Chickity.

Oh yeah.

I'm officially running out of bird sounds.

That's a repeat.

Yeah, it is.

Dave Schmidt:

That's unacceptable.

I'm sorry.

There's only so many bird sounds I got in me.

All right.

I'm going to get you a bird sound book.

You know what I'm going to do?

I'm just going to download a bird song to our machine

here, whatever this thing is, and we'll play

it every now and then.

I'm good with that.

All right.

Cool.

All right.

What you got for me Josh?

So this question comes from an

idea I had yesterday with Brian in our office.

He was saying Southwest just put all their flights

on sale for 40% off if you travel after April or

August 15th or something.

His wife called him and said, "Hey, would you like

to go visit your friend in Arizona for a weekend?

Flights are really cheap right now."

And I thought wow, that's really cool.

That's really nice of his wife to do that.

And then I got to thinking Dave, if money was not an

option and you could fly anywhere tomorrow, go on

vacation, where would you go?

Scandinavia.

So I'm going to go with Sweden.

Sweden.

Mm-hmm.

Why?

Because they're my people.

I've always wanted to visit up there.

I mean, I've never left the country except, well

no, Mexico, it's not true.

But never left North America.

Sweden just looks really beautiful.

And my aunt was there taking pictures.

She went on this just her by herself.

She stayed right on some fjords in these little homes.

And I just, oh it was majestic.

It was amazing.

Oh, that's cool.

And so my grandma's parents

are from there.

You're Swedish?

Yeah.

I'm 25% Swedish.

Man, I didn't know that about you.

I know.

That's why we're BFFs.

Woohoo.

Would you take Carla with you?

Absolutely.

I would take Carla and Landon.

Oh yeah, for sure.

And maybe stop at Ikea.

Just because.

Just because yeah.

Cowboy Mike loves Ikea.

Sure does.

Flip it around, reverse it.

How about you, Josh?

Tomorrow, money's not an object.

Where would you guys go?

Well, I'm not taking the kids on this one.

This would be just Missy and I.

And we have been talking about this forever, you

know our love of eating.

Your love of eating.

My love of eating.

We want to go to Spain and eat our way through Spain.

I have heard Spain has some of the best food in the world.

Supposed to be beautiful.

I love going to Europe.

We've never been to Spain.

That surprises me.

And I think it would be a lot of fun to go out there.

Can I go instead of your kids?

I'll bring you to Sweden with me.

You'll have to convince Missy.

Okay.

She loves me.

She does.

Cool.

I like it.

Sweden and Spain.

I mean, they can't be that far from each other.

I mean, look on the globe.

It looks so close.

Yeah.

You have a globe sitting around here, by the way, or?

Oh, boy.

Anything else we're missing today?

I mean, you're Swedish.

Yeah.

Big time Swedish.

Well, hello there friends, this is Dave.

I am having a break here at the, uh, FSR Family Room,

and I'd like to come at you with a little correction

from today's episode.

So, here's the thing.

Uh, Josh asked me where I would like to go visit if

money was not an issue, and I mentioned Sweden.

And while Sweden sounds like a lovely place.

And while I do adore Swedish people, I'm not Swedish.

I'm actually Norwegian.

My aunt didn't visit Sweden, she visited Norway.

My ancestors?

Norwegian.

I dropped the ball big time on that.

Josh, I had to pick him off the floor.

He was laughing so hard at me.

So, hey, I'm humbly coming to you with that correction.

Not like any of you care, but look man, I gotta

admit to my mistakes.

I'm Norwegian.

And with that, enjoy the rest of the show.

Dave relates to retirees.

Yeah.

Dave relates to retirees.

Josh, why are you worried about this one?

Well, because you seem giddy about it

since before we even started.

Yeah.

Well, I made an effort to go back to a very specific

story instead of just rambling about you buying me stuff.

So when you said annuities and how a lot of people

hate them, mostly because they're just misunderstood or

misused in their portfolio.

I thought about a time back in high school where our

good friend, Kevin Collins.

Oh Kevin, we haven't talked about him before.

Yeah.

Good Kevin.

Remember he text us when we were at breakfast the other night?

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

So I've been thinking about him.

But he would drive us around and in, we believe it was

probably a Chevy Blazer.

He would drive in-

major Mark will correct us.

Major Mark.

Yeah, Major Tom.

So Kevin would be driving, and it'd be me and Vince in the car.

And I guess you said you do remember some of these times.

A couple times, not as often as you guys would go.

Sure.

So we called these a drive-through shenanigans.

Kevin would pull up to a fast food restaurant,

Wendy's was one of our favorites, and he would order.

But he wouldn't just order normally.

He would say something like, "Hey yeah, can we get

four bacon cheeseburgers, three [Drive-through

shenanigans mumbling] and then two milkshakes?"

And they'd be like, "I'm sorry, what was the second thing?"

He'd be like, "Oh, we just need three [Drive-through

shenanigans mumbling] and then a couple of milkshakes."

And there would always be a pause.

And I would always be sitting behind him, and the veins on

his neck were popping because he'd be holding in his laughter.

We would all be hands on our mouth.

We thought we were the funniest people ever.

He would just order [Drive-through shenanigans

mumbling] and nobody would understand what

he is talking about.

I he was always just misunderstood.

That's just what I thought.

So in this particular example Josh, the sweet innocent Wendy's

employees who misheard and misunderstood Kevin were like a

lot of us out there who we hear the word annuities we're like,

"What the heck's an annuity?

I don't want that in my portfolio."

They hear annuity, they might as well be hearing [Drive-through

shenanigans mumbling].

They don't know what it is.

Now, I'm definitely not saying that you are responsible

for that confusion, but you have this deep...

See, you're starting to think about your full house

moment here and I love it.

But Josh, you are here to help clear up the misunderstandings

that are annuities.

I'm pretty sure I just nailed it.

So instead of a mic drop, I'm going to do a pen drop.

I just got a pen in my pants.

I got to wash them now.

It's that one time a year.

One time.

So first off-

First off, when we go for lunch later, can

we get some [Drive-through shenanigans mumbling]?

You worked in the restaurant industry.

Mm-hmm.

How mad would you be if Kevin came

in and did that to you?

I would absolutely love it.

But no, if I just took my job too seriously, I'd be furious.

Yes.

And I understand why people who work in the service

industry hate the public.

Because of Kevin.

Oh, sure.

So just get a mental image of his veins popping.

He was trying so hard not to...

Oh, it was so good.

When you think about it's truly innocent

as it comes in there.

There was nothing bad that happened there, but I do see

why they would dislike that.

Now, unlike the annuities that I think are misunderstood,

because people aren't taking the time to truly understand how

they fit into their situation, Kevin was intentionally

misleading these people.

I see.

Where I'm going with this.

So there's a little bit of a divergence there.

But then I got back into, I was thinking about why I talked

about one of those issues was the misleading sales practices.

Kevin was using misleading sales practices against

these poor, innocent Wendy's drive-through workers.

When they took a step back, and they could still dislike

Kevin because of him being a high school age, little punk.

But in the long run, they probably got a smile out

of it, I would think.

I don't know about that.

But as you look at the innocence as it comes into

play, I hope that Wendy's drive-through person eventually

got to smile or at least roll their eyes at it.

There is some misunderstanding there.

And I feel like I should tie this together a

little bit better somehow.

And I'm trying to see where I should go with this.

I think it's pretty good.

I think they ended up having the last laugh because all things

being equal, Kevin did have nipple rings in high school.

So they did win that one.

What was that?

I mean, it's true.

It's a fact.

I feel like this full house moment didn't

connect the way it should have.

No.

Because I think when I so eloquently tie things

together for you, you don't have much work to do.

I mean, I should have just shut up and just

said, Dave's pen drop worked.

Or maybe we have Kevin on the show to

explain his side of the story.

Will we understand him?

Sure.

Yeah, he's so much more mature now.

He is one of those guys that you look back and

he's super successful right now.

You go, "Man, how is he successful?"

But it's it.

Yeah.

Annuities part one.

Annuities part two, we have people outside waiting to hear

what you have to say about annuities on the next episode.

I hope Dave, it goes over as well

as you think it will.

I think it's going to go over great.

And hey, if not, we can always go mess with some employees at

the Wendy's down the street.

Yeah.

Order some [Drive-through shenanigans mumbling].

Try it.

I want you to try it.

Have your hand at it.

No?

No.

You and I were much more innocent.

Do you remember our wave to the mailman game or the

wave to strangers game?

But we would honk first.

We'd honk first and we would wave.

Yeah.

With a friendly smiley wave.

And we just wanted to see if people would wave back to us.

And we kept tally.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we said, who would always wave back?

Mailmen.

Oh, mailmen.

Mailmen would always wave back to us.

Yeah, that's true.

I felt like that was more innocent

than [Drive-through shenanigans mumbling].

It was still innocent, but...

Still at good times.

All right.

You know what, let's get going here because we

need to start planning for the next episode, Josh.

With that, David...

On behalf of Cowboy Mike, who

cannot be with us today.

Bye.

Bye.

[Drive-through shenanigans mumbling]

[Drive-through shenanigans mumbling]

Hashtag tax nerd.

FSR Wealth Management is a registered

investment advisor located in Elmhurst, Illinois.

Information and opinions contained in this audio

have been arrived at by FSR Wealth advisors.

All information herein is for informational purposes

and should not be construed as investment advice.

It does not constitute an offer, a solicitation or recommendation

to purchase any security.

FSR is not providing legal, tax, accounting, or financial

planning advice in this audio.

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