If you don’t want to hear it from me, listen to Ron Lieber, The New York Times’ “Your Money” columnist. “The insurance companies that create annuities often make them seem like investments,” he wrote in a recent explainer about annuities. “But really they’re more like insurance.” Lieber went on: “Like insurance to stave off financial disaster, an annuity is something you purchase to guarantee that you won’t run out of money if you live a long time.”
