Life insurance and annuities can be useful tools, yet like any financial planning strategy, they should only be utilized within the context of your overall financial life plan. This is especially true of their role in a particular, and frequently pitched, wealth-transfer strategy that employs a single-premium immediate annuity (SPIA) in conjunction with life insurance.
The strategy is designed for retirement savers with a large estate and a large IRA account that they won’t need to tap for living expenses. At an essential level, it calls for such individuals to purchase a SPIA inside of their IRA and use the guaranteed income from that SPIA to pay the premiums for a life insurance policy held outside of their estate, typically in an irrevocable life insurance trust (ILIT). Because the life insurance proceeds would, in general, be free of income and estate taxes, the expectation is that retirees could leave a larger legacy than if they only left the IRA to their heirs.
For starters, the strategy isn’t universally appropriate. What’s more, it can be misapplied. While properly structured solutions that involve life insurance or an annuity may make sense for some people in some situations, such products are also often among those most popular to pitch. I will walk you through a case study where this particular strategy was proposed, and provide you with some information you may find helpful in determining if it would be right for you.
Case study
Some time ago I learned about a couple in their mid-60s we’ll call Homer and Marge who were working with their existing insurance agent to get quotes for long-term care insurance and Medicare supplements. You might naively assume that the insurance agent in question would focus on the task at hand.
But, instead of receiving what they had asked for, Homer and Marge left the insurance agent’s office with numerous proposals, which they suspected may not have been entirely in their best interests, and a big headache.
When reviewing this type of proposal, I think it is good to consider the following higher-level questions before diving into the nuts and bolts:
· Are you prepared to lock in an annuity rate during this period of historically low interest rates?
· Are you comfortable with losing access to a large sum of money?
· Will this strategy negatively impact your ability to meet your retirement spending goals?
There are some additional elements to be mindful of when considering this strategy, and these items may also apply to other situations where life insurance proposals are involved.
Death benefit period: One way for an insurance agent to minimize the proposed life insurance premium is to reduce the guaranteed coverage period. In this particular case study, although the illustrated non-guaranteed values provided a death benefit to age 121, the guaranteed coverage expired when Marge reached age 98. That’s all fine and dandy – until Marge is 97.8 years old.
Guarantees: Because the purpose for this life insurance proposal was legacy planning, rather than using a traditional universal life insurance policy to cover Marge’s life there is a more appropriate product. A no-lapse survivorship universal life (SUL) policy has a contractually guaranteed lifetime death benefit payable upon the second death. Legacy planning should be based on contractual guarantees, not flimsy projections.
Ownership: There was no mention of the policy in our case study being owned by a trust. Although the creation of a trust can lengthen the process of implementing this strategy, ownership by an insurance trust should be considered. Doing so would not only keep the insurance proceeds outside of Homer and Marge’s estate, should it ever exceed the federal estate tax exemption limit, it may also provide creditor protection and clarity in distributing the insurance proceeds.
Other alternatives
If you don’t want to potentially jeopardize your retirement lifestyle in order to leave a legacy, there are simpler alternatives to consider:
Roth conversions: By executing partial Roth conversions over time, your heirs would receive a tax-free Roth IRA instead of a traditional IRA on which taxes would be owed. In addition, you would still have access to the funds in the Roth IRA.
Scrap the annuity: If utilizing a life insurance policy is the best way to meet your legacy planning goals, rather than lose control of a large sum of money by purchasing an annuity, you could simply pay the ongoing life insurance premium from cash flow or by liquidating investments. Sure, it isn’t tax-efficient to withdraw IRA funds to pay life insurance premiums, but this would at least reduce the odds that down the road you would be required to pick up a side job as a bouncer at your local watering hole just to make ends meet.
Although life insurance and annuities can be effective in certain circumstances, they should only be considered within the context of your larger financial and life plan. Understanding the variables in play can help you avoid some common pitfalls that could threaten your financial future or that of your heirs.
This article originally appeared on The Street.
