A Perspective Built on Both Sides
of the Industry

Our Founder

Our team is led by Jason Rindskopf, WMCP® RICP®, founder of Two Waters Wealth Management, a retirement planning firm based in the Charlotte, NC area. He holds the Wealth Management Certified Professional (WMCP®) and Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP®) designations from The American College of Financial Services.

Before starting his own firm in 2018, Jason spent 13 years on the institutional side of the financial services industry working as an annuity wholesaler with independent financial advisors across the country. That experience gave our team a vantage point that most advisors never get: working alongside 30-year career veterans building advanced planning strategies, collaborating with actuarial scientists to understand how financial institutions price and structure products, and partnering with roughly 75 financial institutions, from global investment banks to niche insurance carriers, to bring those products to market.

That experience also revealed a consistent truth: the advisors who served their clients best understood that a complete retirement plan requires both growth and protection working together. Growth means building and compounding your assets over time. Protection means ensuring that a difficult market year, a health event, or an unexpected expense doesn't derail the lifestyle you've worked to create. Most people focus on one side or the other. The plans that hold up over time address both.

Our team has also seen the other side. A significant part of the industry operates through fear tactics and sales pressure that give the profession a black eye. That disconnect between what the industry knows and what families are actually told is what motivated the founding of Two Waters Wealth and the creation of this resource.

Over the past eight years working directly with families, our team has seen firsthand how wide that gap is. The SMART Annuity Review™ exists to help close it: to give people an honest, complete picture of what annuities do, what they cost, where they fit, and where they don't. Because an annuity is not a retirement plan. It's a tool that may or may not belong in one.

Most People Sign Without Fully Understanding What They're Buying

Annuity contracts are complex. Surrender charges, rider fees, income projections, and participation rates are rarely explained clearly at the point of sale. Our team spent 13 years on the institutional side learning how these products are built and priced, and we built this resource so that knowledge doesn't stay inside the industry.

Annuities Are a Tool, Not a Replacement for a Plan

The best advisors we worked with during those wholesaler years all shared one trait: they treated products as tools and built plans first. An annuity placed inside a comprehensive plan can be powerful. An annuity sold as a substitute for one is a problem.

The Industry Has a Transparency Problem

We've seen annuities used effectively and we've seen them abused. Our goal for this site is to help people understand both sides: the genuine benefits, the real costs and trade-offs, and how to evaluate whether one belongs in their specific situation.