Ed Lichtig is the owner of GSL Advisory Financial Services. For more than twenty five years, GSL Advisory Financial Services has been marketing traditional financial products and alternative annuities to businesses around the nation. Edwin Lichtig studied math and computer sciences at Trinity College before earning his master of business administration at the University of Maryland.

A traditional financial product can be defined as a contract between two parties that controls cash flow both in the present and for an agreed upon time into the future. Bank accounts, insurance, investments, credit and loans are all common financial products. Certain products are merely matters of convenience, like using a credit card, whereas other products grow money as we prepare for retirement or larger investments. It is never too early to start looking into financial products, starting with a savings account. Whether you are waiting tables between classes or starting your first undergraduate job, growing your money in a savings account can never start too soon.

Depending on your line of work, disability income insurance is another product you might want to invest in to protect your savings should you be unable to work due to injury. Perhaps the most important and complicated product is life insurance, which covers situations as sudden as death and as temporary as loss of income. Either way, the importance of this financial product cannot be understated.
 
Edwin Lichtig, the owner of GSL Advisory Financial Services, has more than 25 years of experience marketing and selling various financial products and annuities all over the country. GSL Advisory Financial Services offers traditional financial products as well as alternative annuities. Ed Lichtig earned his master of business administration from the University of Maryland after studying math and computer sciences at Trinity College. 

A traditional annuity is created when an individual agrees to pay a life insurance company a premium that will be redistributed to the individual over time. The two main types of annuities are immediate annuities and deferred annuities. Immediate annuities are more common and involve an insurance company issuing regular payments either at a fixed rate or increasing as time goes on until death or a predetermined date is reached. Immediate annuities can also be integrated with other investments so that the level of return will rise or fall depending on the success of those investments. The primary purpose of this type of annuity is to take advantage of tax growth and provide retired investors with a pension later in life. Deferred annuities work in a similar manner, but are more profitable when earnings are acquired at a later date in the form of a lump-sum payment. Money in a deferred annuity is not taxed until it is withdrawn, meaning a higher total sum is growing over the years and not being taxed. Upon withdrawal, however, all interest is taxed immediately as traditional income. Choosing between annuities is a personal matter, but immediate annuities are generally utilized by families as a safety net and future source of income, while deferred annuities are more of an alternative investment.