Some days you can stack benefits one on top of the other.  Yesterday was one of those days.  Real simple - I went to one of those "I can show you how to secure your money" type of seminars.  I have to say it wasn't the worst thing ever, but the woman did downplay some of the downsides of what she was promoting.  Realizing this is one of the upsides/downsides of being financially literate.

And the product was... "Fixed Index Annuities".  I won't go into the pros & cons of them, you can easily do a quick search and find out the details.  I think I was sitting at the "sofisticated investor" table as while other tables seemed to be mostly enthusiastic about this idea, we could see the downside to them.  Hopefully I came up with the most balanced response as we discussed this: "If you are an unsofisticated investor without tons of money this may not be a bad idea.  If you are less than 55 y.o., or have a pension, or have over say $250,000 these are probably not a great idea."  To the presentor's credit she did say variable annuities are bad, so at least she knows will say that much.

EDIT: I did some searching on Bogleheads forums on these products.  They bring up worse issues than we could see during this sales pitch.  Also, the woman wouldn't answer questions during the presentation (OK I suppose), but would only answer afterwards.  One thing however, we started food right away so she would only answer questions a table at a time.  You don't want a large group of people to hear various issues with your product when you can keep it limited to a small number of skeptics.  Right????😇

Anyway, so what was the triple win?  I was able to get out and learn about this financial product, I got a great meal out of it (everyone at our table thought the food was good - maybe not super great, but much better than expected), and I had my car charging for free just outside.  The presentation & meal took so long I was able to get 95 miles of charge, just in time for me to drive out of town to Florida this Saturday.  They even gave us boxes so we could take home any extra food, which we all did.

Now comes next week... do they offer me another time share presentation at my mother's timeshare?  Last year I didn't get any good offer so I passed on it.  I was sad as the prior three years I was able to get a free timeshare week in Florida.  So is a freebee week on the horizon for me or will I be disappointed again?  Only the shadow knows.