Annuities are a financial product you can purchase that offer a guaranteed annual payout to you and (optionally) your spouse or partner after your death. Purchasing an annuity with your retirement account assets and receiving payments from the annuity can sometimes result in higher yearly payouts over the course of your retirement than gradually drawing down your retirement accounts.

If you choose this option, we'll try converting all of your retirement assets for each account to a nominal annuity in each year and compare that impact on discretionary spending to not converting at all or to converting the percentage amount you have set in your Base Profile if that percentage is something other than 0% or 100%. In short, we’ll look at every year and evaluate annuitizing 0%, 100%, and whatever percentage (if any) is currently set in your Base Profile settings in order to find which option provides the highest discretionary spending.

See disclaimer.