Wessel Investment Counsel, LLC Wessel Investment Counsel, LLC

Annuity Rescue

First of all, we do not sell annuities. We are not insurance agents nor do we represent any insurer. We represent our clients – some of whom have purchased annuity contracts they later wish they hadn’t.

Issues of Annuity Management that we may be able to address with you:

Your Tax Position in Your Contract

  • We'll explain the rules to you—in plain English.

Own an IRA Annuity?

  • It’s legal, but it makes little sense. We’ll explain why.

The Cost of the Underlying Annuity Contract

  • Salespeople have a way of glossing over this.

The Cost of any Underlying Investment Accounts

  • We’ll help you analyze this layer of expenses.

Any Surrender Charges that Might Exist

  • We’ll show you how to properly analyze them.

Other Miscellaneous Charges & Fees

  • Annuities can have many cost layers.

General Annuity Tax Attributes

  • There are some good and plenty of bad. We'll discuss both.

Possible Early Withdrawal Penalties

  • The tax code imposes a 10% penalty on certain withdrawals. We’ll explain it to you.

So – What’s in it for us?

Maybe something. Maybe nothing.

Maybe something...

Often, we are asked to oversee the investment management of a given annuity. In the past, we have declined to do this for two reasons.

  •  Since annuities are proprietary products, the investment sub-accounts are generally not set up so that investment advisors can oversee them.

  • Even in those cases where such an arrangement could have been worked out, the high cost of many annuities has lead us to conclude that adding yet another cost layer (our fee) would simply not be in our clients’ best interests.

  • Because at least one insurer has come forward with an exceptionally low-cost annuity that features hundreds of investment vehicles, and because that insurer has indicated a willingness to work with fee-only investment advisors, we may be in a position to coordinate your annuity investment options for you for a modest fee.

Maybe nothing...

Or, if you’d prefer to exchange a high-cost annuity for an especially low-cost one and not have an investment advisory firm oversee the assets within your annuity, we would be pleased to show you how to accomplish it yourself. Our fee would be precisely zero. We call it goodwill.

We’d tell you more about the annuity here, but then we’d have to ruin our website with a lot of nauseating boilerplate.

Let us know if you think we might be able to help.