when i go into my TIAA account and choose the Retirement Income Illustration it states "Non-Annuity Assets: Assets such as mutual funds, non-TIAA accounts, TIAA access funds, with the exception of the Retirement Income Fund, and self-directed brokerage window holdings are hypothetically transferred to a standard variable annuity account." So, I suppose equities one holds in non-annuity funds, such as the OP and me, will be transferred to TIAA Trad if one wishes to include them in annuitized income option at TIAA. But I don't see why I couldn't just as well move them to CREF Stock at any time before I want to include them in the annuity, which would be an advantage for the reasons you state (or a disadvantage if it declines.)[emphasis added]I am also invested in a 401 and 403b at TIAA and all of my equities there are in a vanguard total stock market fund. When I run a retirement illustration on the TIAA website, the lifetime annuity uses all my funds including the vanguard equity investment. I really can’t see why you wouldn’t be able to annuitize yours. You can always transfer it to TIAA trad. The only thing you lose compared to someone who’s been in TIAA trad longer is the loyalty bonus. It’s very small and would not steer my investment decisions at TIAA.
The above section is interesting.
Are you sure that the modeling is actually annuitizing that Vanguard Total Stock fund? Or is it moving the "amount in Vanguard Tot Stk" to the Trad Ann amount? (That would be like the second underlined comment above.)
When a fund like CREF Stock is "annuitized", the money remains in that *fund*, so that the growth within that part of the "annuity" is different from the growth within, say, Trad Ann is very likely different. That money isn't added to the basic Trad Ann amount, at the regular rate for the relevant vintage.
We've got several Vanguard funds in our 403b "core" section of the Employer-contributed money (meaning not part of what our University includes as a possible "brokerage window" section.
But IF we want to annuitize any of the Vanguard fund monies, those would be added to Trad Ann. OTOH, if we held CREF Stock (or CREF Equity Index, with is different from the TIAA flavor of an equity index), the CREF fund would sit in the "annuity", but still within the CREF Stock fund and continue to accumulate at the CREF fund rate rather than the Trad Ann rates.
I'm not sure whether the basic modeling shows how the "equity fund parts of TIAA's annuitized amounts" are handled.
Perhaps someone who has already annuitized Trad Ann and also annuitized, say, CREF Stock could let us know how it's done...?
RM
Statistics: Posted by JS-Elcano — Tue Nov 04, 2025 9:42 pm — Replies 17 — Views 819