Home

Your True Story

Join the more than 60 people like you profiled here who are too young to retire, and get a free, all-cotton T-Shirt with our eye-catching logo. 

 April 7, 2002

Gift Annuities Have Benefits, Risks,
But Monitor Who Is Behind Pitch

By GLENN RUFFENACH

Gift annuities are increasingly popular among older investors -- but be careful about who's making the sales pitch.

A gift annuity, in simple terms, is a swap. You give cash, stock or other property to a nonprofit group -- a college, museum, health organization, etc. -- which in turn gives you a fixed amount of money each year for the rest of your life. An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 nonprofits now offer such programs, many of which began in the past decade, says Frank Minton, president of Planned Giving Services, a consulting firm in Seattle, and vice president of the American Council on Gift Annuities, a nonprofit educational group in Indianapolis...

Looking for information -- and inspiration -- about how to spend your time in retirement? These Web sites could help.

The chances are good that you will continue to work in later life -- because you either want to or have to. A recent survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, for instance, found that 61% of Americans now expect to work for pay after they retire.

With that in mind, Joanne Fritz, age 60, in January launched www.NotYetRetired.com. The site offers information and resources to help people find jobs in retirement, start a postretirement business, or become what Ms. Fritz calls a "free agent" -- a "sequel to our earlier, organizational lives."

Ms. Fritz says she hopes the site will motivate her peers to find and create jobs in which they can be "deeply engaged." Thus, the site takes users from fundamentals (how to write a business plan) to fantasies (the retired teacher who starts her own cafe). "We want to give people new ideas about what they might be able to do," Ms. Fritz says.

A similar philosophy can be found at www.2young2retire.com. Started in 1998 by Howard and Marika Stone (a former publisher and free-lance writer, respectively) the site is loaded with personal accounts of individuals who found a passion in later life: the engineer who became an environmentalist, the judge who became a teacher, the teacher who became an actor.

"Lots of people are frightened to move through this period of their lives," says Mr. Stone, who is considering adding "life coaches" to the site (to help users through career changes), among other features. "But you can blaze your own trail; you don't have to follow the last generation."

Glenn Ruffenach is a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, and editor of Encore, the Journal's guide to life after 55. You may send e-mail to: encore@wsj.co

Home | True Stories 
Guest Book | Your True Story
2Young2Retire in the News
Top 10 Ways to Reinvent Retirement
Free Newsletter | Links 

Copyright 2002 2Young2Retire.com, All Rights Reserved