In 1980 when Ronald Reagan became president, he inherited an economy with an inflation rate of over 13%. From 1971 to 1981 the average inflation rate per year was nearly 7.5%. Imagine living in those times today. This would mean the cost of your goods and services would double in a decade. Even assuming an inflation rate of just 3.5% per year if you retired at age 60, you would need to double your income by age 80.
Inflation erodes your purchasing power. A cost-of-living adjustment must be included in your retirement budget just to maintain your current standard of living. The question is, what can you do to help ensure that your income has a chance to keep up with inflation?
You have been told that investing in the stock market is a way to hedge against inflation. As your investments go up, they are worth more and should help with inflation. Well, that is until your portfolio gets cut in half, just like during the Technology Bubble from 2000 through 2002 and during the Financial Crisis from 2007 through 2009, when the market was down over -50% each time.
It doesn't mean that you should not own equities, it means you can’t be “naked in the market” because do you really want your
retirement income invested in anything that could crash? The safest way to protect your retirement income from inflation and increase your income during retirement is what I call “The Perfect Annuity."
First, you have to create a plan that provides you dependable income, and one that is guaranteed to be paid to you for as long as you live. Then secondly, you need to build-in opportunities for your income to increase.
How do you like the sound of receiving
income guaranteed for as long as you live? Even if you live past age 100, even if the stock market crashes multiple times, you also have an opportunity to receive increases to your guaranteed lifetime income in the future! Moreover, as soon as you receive an income increase, it becomes your new guaranteed lifetime income for the rest of your life. Wouldn’t that be nice? It’s important to understand your income can be established for a single life or for a joint life if you are married.
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