whomever wrote: ↑Sun Oct 22, 2017 12:55 pm
Fortunately I am retired, converted my TIAA Traditional to "lifetime payout"
I'm going to be doing that soon. What's worrisome about where TIAA seems to be going for me (and I think maybe for you as well) is that to some degree the attractiveness of TIAA Trad anuuitization relative to 'normal' commercial annuity providers depends on the additional amounts. The historical tacit bargain has been that TIAA shares the good times with annuitants by increasing the additional amounts. If TIAA decides to spend that money elsewhere, that would not make for happy TIAA retirees.
I hope they don't do that. Their other offerings aren't competitive with Vanguard or Fidelity. If they make Trad unattractive, I don't see how they can survive. ISTM they should have adopted the principle of doing one thing (TIAA Trad) well - but they don't seem to be following my preference.
Hmmmm.... yes, I sure hope that the Trad Ann "extra" continues!
We haven't *yet* annuitized, but we are sort of gearing up for it. We were never going to have all of our annuitized income from TIAA on general principle (also principal, I guess), but we expected most of it to be at TIAA.
As for whether TIAA will "survive", they've got a head start on that, for at least some of their offerings.
When Employer dropped TIAA "entirely" from the 403b plan several years ago, and added Vanguard and Fidelity, they couldn't really drop TIAA "entirely", not unilaterally, at least.
They forced employees in most of the then TIAA-CREF mutual funds to move the money to preferred funds at Vanguard or Fidelity, OR money in most of the TIAA-CREF funds would automatically be rolled over to a list of "similar" funds, per a list of paired funds.
However, money in Trad Ann, TREA, and apparently any of the "variable annuity" account/funds could not be "forced to move" due to contractual arrangements. And for whatever reason, at least 2 of the "regular" TIAA-CREF (now just "TIAA") were allowed to remain.
Employees were given plenty of notice, and were also able to move money that would "be moved" to CREF holdings that would not/could not be forced to move to Vanguard/Fidelity. (We moved some extra money into CREF holdings, to preserve that choice; we can always roll any of it *to* Vanguard/Fidelity, but not back again.)
We are now able to move money around among those choices as we wish, with the regular constraints of Trad Ann and TREA, even though we cannot add even one cent to TIAA within the 403b.
Assuming that there are these same long-term contractual terms of at least the "CREF" offerings (including Trad Ann, and TREA) exist in other 403b's, TIAA has a somewhat captive audience, at least among their relatively large employer plans.
I wonder what those contractual terms say about any Trad Annuity "extra amounts", and how the magnitude is determined. It's all such a black box, how would any outsider ever know?
RM
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