Good point about the gender neutrality; that's a disadvantage for me, so I try not to think about it.
TIAA employment-based annuities are also gender-neutral. This increases the payouts by about 8% for a 65-year-old woman in average health.
You have to annuitize to get the loyalty bonus and gender neutrality. If you withdraw money, you will lose both of these features.
Yes, the "gender neutrality" at TIAA might be better for women than for men, but before you "try not to think about it", consider whether annuitizing a TIAA Trad Annuity with your own deposit history into Trad Ann would still be better than what you could get from a commercial market rate SPIA of similar terms.
And then think about whether you have any 'older money' in your Trad Ann, because that's the money that may get even more in that "black box" extra bonus money. That's the second way that TIAA life annuities are likely to be better than what you can get elsewhere.
I do not know how this works for men if there is only "new money" being annuitized (that's money that is only recently moved into Trad Ann, regardless of how long it's been at TIAA in other holdings).
Perhaps someone can do a few hypothetical comparisons?
And if one already has money "stuck" in Trad Ann for, say, that 9 years and 1 day, then chances are good there will indeed be some of that assorted bonus money to add to the base annuity income.
So, it may well be that even with the gender neutrality, annuitizing at TIAA is still a "good deal", for both men and women.
That might help a bit.
RM
Statistics: Posted by ResearchMed — Tue Feb 25, 2025 10:03 pm