Many people are making periodic payments into variable and fixed annuities also. These are purely retirement products.
As for mutual funds, I can't tell you how many times I have had mutual funds wired into accounts that I am taking over that have a history of periodic payments. I know because we have a hell of a time figuring out the basis for possible future sale.
Bank products are eaten up by inflation and taxes. There are many products out there that are sold as alternatives explicity to taxable CD's. And, no I don't think home equity is included. Even though a lot of seniors downsize and take out equity to retire on.
Basis...
2 yrs ago, my partner and I took on the task of trying to reconstruct the entire history of our book. Our current CF is quite good, with good technology. In 6 weeks we’d accounted for nearly all the dollars in our 1200 hhld book. Frankly, I’m very proud of that project, and my colleagues can’t beleive we pulled it off.
The secret/trick of mutual fund recreation of basis? Hysales hypos, accurate as heck, and very quick. You do need to have the purchase date, initial investment, current value, at least two of those three numbers. Then, you need to obviously know if they were reinvesting divs/cg, and whether they were sys inv in, or w/d.
BTW, we’re totally on the same boat on ins products...
What are the mechanics of the falling dollar, other then more exports and less imports. Can that money all come flowing back into the US and create domestic inflation?