Scott Burns of the Dallas Morning News always has great information on retirement planning.   His recent column discusses variable annuities and advantages of income annuities.

Recent research shows exactly that – your investment portfolio is more likely to survive a long retirement if you convert a portion of your portfolio to a lifetime annuity.

The reason for this is simple, if you think about it a bit. What destroys portfolios are high withdrawal rates – rates that are far above the income-generating capacity of the portfolio.