I would never ever invest in an annuity. High fees, low growth, you're better off in equities.
If I was going to ever use a financial planner, I would look into Creative Planning (
Creative Planning | Wealth Management & Financial Advisors) or Schwab.
Most of the companies that claim they are insurance agents and brokers, they will try to sell you insurance and annuities.
If any financial advisor indicates they have beaten the market every year for 30 years, put him/her in Ripley’s believe it or not. Buffet would love to hire him because Berkshire Hathaway can’t or hasn’t done this.
Also, the brokers are the 1’s who get rich, not their clients. For example, there are commercials about a broker that claims they do well only when the client does well. So I called and they wanted $60k to manage my money. 10 years paying them is over $600k. I told them why are they charging me this fee when they haven’t made me a cent? What they should do is have you pay a % of the gain they make you, not what you bring to them. Hell no, they get paid if they make or lose money, they get paid on your portfolio value. Let’s say you bring them $1M to invest day 1. They tell you the fee % you will pay. Then say in a year you los $500k, now the broker only charges you a fee on $500k, but they just lost you $500k!
So then I asked if I’m paying this large sum of money each year will they guarantee that they will make me $60k more money per year than what I was getting doing it myself? Hell no. I just happened to be making 30+% at that time.
One more thing what people should do. I did some Google work looking into this broker on how they did in 2008/2009. Turns out, their customers lost an average of 30+% doing business with them and when I brought this up, they told me they changed things on their end.