The Iran crisis is making this retirement strategy look better than it has in decades

MW The Iran crisis is making this retirement strategy look better than it has in decades

By Brett Arends

Recent wild movements in the bond markets may have created an opportunity

Annuity rates may be heading up.

Are annuity rates for new retirees about to break out to their best levels in 25 years?

If the wild movements in the bond markets in recent weeks are any guide, they just might.

And that would be terrific news for the estimated 5,000 Americans turning 65 every day and thinking of handing in their notice.

Annuities - referring here to single-premium immediate annuities, known as SPIAs - are simple but powerful life-insurance products that can convert a lump sum into a guaranteed pension for life.

The amount you get each month from the product depends heavily on the state of the U.S. bond market when you first buy the annuity. When interest rates are higher, you can get a better deal.

Which is where we've been heading for the past few weeks.

Since the start of the war with Iran, the average yield, or interest rate, on AAA-rated corporate bonds has risen from 4.56% to just over 5%, according to FactSet. And the yield on benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note BX:TMUBMUSD10Y has gone up from 3.95% to 4.38%.

At the moment, the payout ratios for single-premium immediate annuities for someone age 65 are 7.8% for a man and 7.4% for a woman, according to recent market data. (The monthly payout for women is lower because they typically live longer. The actuarial value is the same.)

This means if you buy a $100,000 single-premium immediate annuity at age 65, you can lock in monthly payments of up to around $650 for a man or $615 for a woman.

Those are already among the highest payout rates seen since early 2003 (apart from a brief period during the global financial crisis when investment-grade bonds, like everything else, went haywire).

And those payout rates are nearly 40% higher than you would have received if you had bought a similar annuity when interest rates were on the floor five years ago.

Yet if history is any guide, those annuity rates are poised to get even better. Insurance companies invest annuity premiums in bonds, which then pay the interest they use to send your monthly checks. For technical reasons, insurance industry experts say, the companies typically follow the process in reverse, buying the bonds first and then selling the annuities.

So today's annuity rates partly reflect the lower yields on bonds that were available a few weeks ago, before the start of the war.

And that means annuity rates may soon be heading higher, reflecting the rise in bond yields in recent weeks. If this happens, it will create an opportunity, especially for new retirees.

Such life-income annuities have been unfashionable for a long time. Last year, consumers bought just $19 billion worth of them, out of a staggering $464 billion in total purchases of all kinds of annuities, the life-insurance industry group Limra has reported. Most of the money went toward other types of "annuity," such as variable and indexed-linked products that aren't annuities in the same sense and that have often been criticized for their complexity and high fees.

Economists have been grappling for at least 50 years with the so-called annuity puzzle, which is the question of why so few members of the public buy straight life-income annuities, even though so many want a secure income for life.

Edward McQuarrie, an emeritus professor at the Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business and a prominent expert on annuities and bonds, says that in his view, retirees should be looking at annuities and at inflation-protected Treasury bonds, known as TIPS.

"The choice today is between TIPS ladders and simple life annuities," McQuarrie tells me. "I started annuitizing some of my TIAA [retirement account] just this January, and it's hedged with a big chunk of TIPS."

McQuarrie says that by the standards of history, TIPS look like a good value. "TIPS yields, especially at the long end, are extremely attractive," he says. Historically, the real or post-inflation return on long Treasury bonds has averaged less than 2%, he says. Today they are much higher.

McQuarrie adds that he has a "growing distaste for nominal" - in other words, regular non-inflation-adjusted - "bonds in a fiat-currency world. I no longer own any."

Annuities are not riskless. The main risk is that by locking your money away in exchange for a monthly income at a predetermined interest rate, you are at the mercy of a massive surge in inflation and interest rates. This is why McQuarrie recommends adding long-term TIPS bonds to your portfolio as well.

Fortunately, most U.S. investors have access to one life annuity that is actually adjusted for inflation: Social Security. And the simplest way to maximize the income you will get from that is to wait until you are 70 to claim your benefits.

Now read: The surprising reason Americans are working longer than they used to

-Brett Arends

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March 24, 2026 13:19 ET (17:19 GMT)

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