However, annuities may not be right for you. Suppose you are receiving more than your annual income needs through pension(s), 401K distributions, and Social Security. Alternatively, maybe you are of advanced age or have severe medical problems, so that the annuities still available to you would not be cost effective. You may, on the other hand, still be expecting to work at a good earnings level for a number of years more. You may also be an independent investor and confident you can over time achieve a significantly better return than an insurance company can for you. Be careful about this last one: most investors think they are above average. Unfortunately, for some of us this does not compute.

For example, perhaps after several decades of working, saving, and investing, you have an extra half-million dollars. Your retirement plans plus Social Security provide you with the $60,000 a year you need to live on now, but you are not sure they will continue to do so as inflation eats away at the value of the dollar.

One alternative is to acquire a few rental properties. While real estate prices are depressed, there may be good rental income houses or office buildings in your area. If you are handy, fixer-uppers might be purchased and improved at low enough overall cost that your resultant rents will pay for maintenance, taxes, plus a little extra to keep you ahead of inflation while, chances are, the value of the properties will appreciate long-term as well.

Another is to buy a low-risk group of stocks offering both reasonably safe dividends and good chances for profits. Right now, many Blue Chips and other sound companies are available at prices seldom seen, true bargains among them. Investors apparently are still traumatized by the near financial melt-down of 2008 through early 2009 or are understandably disappointed over the poor performance of stocks during the past decade, a dismal record that I believe has not been equaled since the Great Depression. Yet others may be anxious about a looming double-dip after the just ended recession, or about new terrorist attacks, run-away inflation, deflation, a Japan style mini-depression, national or U.S. state insolvencies, etc.

As always, I recommend that, before any purchases, the investor check with a trusted financial consultant and/or do careful research on one's own.

(Disclosure statement: Larry and Val have holdings in some of the suggested assets but do not "make a market" in any of them and do not derive any direct benefit from recommending them, except perhaps for a bit of smug self-satisfaction.)