Planning Doesn’t Work in Isolation

Most people calculate Internal Rate of Return (IRR) like this: “How much income is paid yearly?” "How many years am I expected to live?"

But retirement planning doesn’t work in isolation. When an asset is used to solve income, its real value isn’t just the return it produces...It’s what it allows other assets to do.

Here’s what most people miss- If one asset is responsible for producing income, every other dollar in the portfolio no longer needs to be touched.

That changes everything.

Instead of:

- Pulling income from investments

- Interrupting compounding

- Taking on sequence-of-returns risk

You now have:

- Guaranteed income handled elsewhere

- Investments that can grow uninterrupted

- A portfolio with clearly defined jobs

So the real question isn’t: “What’s the IRR of this annuity?”

It’s: “What opportunity cost did I eliminate for the rest of the portfolio?”

When income is offloaded, the remaining assets are finally allowed to compound the way people assume they always do. That’s when IRR becomes a system-level conversation, not a product comparison. The return isn’t just in the annuity. It’s in what the rest of the money no longer has to do.