One popular perk that many insurance companies and insurance brokers are offering nowadays is an online annuity calculator. To find one of these all you have to do is type the words 'online annuity calculator' into a popular search engine like Google or Yahoo and you will be presented with scores of insurance companies urging you to try out the latest calculating gadget on their web site.

Of course you don't necessarily need an online calculator to figure this out. You can use your very own non-virtual calculator or a pencil and a piece of paper to figure it out as after all it only means crunching a few numbers. However if you decide to calculate your annuity payments this way be sure to have an eraser handy as well. This is because you will find yourself constantly changing the amounts that you are calculating depending on the terms of the insurance, what kind of insurance it is and whether it is an investment with a fixed or variable interest rate. An online annuity calculator makes this process much easier. Many of the easy to use online calculation programs offered by insurance company and insurance brokerage sites also allow you to save your results so you can vary your input without too much fuss or concern.

The best online annuity calculator is usually to be found on sites that also allow you to compare one offer to another. On many of these sites you can compare over three hundred fixed annuities. Some sites also have calculators to help you compare the kind of income you could get from equity indexed annuities, variable rate annuities and CD-type annuities.

The great thing about using an online annuity calculator is that it can help you determine exactly how this type of secure, tax delayed investment can help ease you into a comfortable future as a senior citizen.