Ahem! This is really an empirical question with an easy Google search answer. :) If you go to http://www.immediateannuities.com/ http://www.immediateannuities.

Ahem! This is really an empirical question with an easy Google search answer. :) If you go to http://www.immediateannuities.com/ http://www.immediateannuities.com/ and say you're a 50-year old man (the age at which at least in some CA cities a police/fire municipal worker can retire with 90% pension), with a 40-year old wife, and you invest $2 million, you'll get an immediate income annuity of $88,560 a year. That's in the ballpark of what the Forbes article was saying ($80,000 a year). The numbers don't change that much if the age of the wife approaches 50. So <ntrails> has the better of the argument, I think: There's no evidence you can buy an $80K annuity for $1M. And I suspect it would cost even more if it were indexed for inflation, as many municipal pension benefits are.