Variable Annuity Comparison

Okay so I just turned 18 yrs old and am attending a community college . here are my questions:
1) Can someone give me an explanation of what annuity is?
2) Is there anyway I can start one w/o interest, I am Muslim.
I plan on investing in stocks in while. thanks

PV Annuity Question:

“If you will get a series of future cash flows of $5000 per year for 2 years, and you would like to earn 8% on your investment, how much are you willing to invest today”

“If you are told that you will receive an annuity of 1,000,000 per year for 20 years, and you would like to earn 8% of your money, what is the most you would invest today?”

I dont get it… wouldn’t I just want to invest all my money?

i have a anuity coming due soon and don’t want to pay the tax on the income from it so i want to use a 1035

I don’t know if I have made a big mistake investing my Mom’s money into a variable annuity. Of course, the agent made it sound really good, but after checking her contract values online, they have gone down quite a bit. I don’t know what the consequences of withdrawal would be, investment was recently made-March 2007. If I can reinvest, what would be the best investment to make? It is a large sum of money, so it would have to insured and hopefully make interest monthly.
The variable annuity is with Hartford.

My grandfather passed and left all his monies to me and my sisters. We cashed some CD’s and are waiting on paperwork for IRA, investment, and annuity….do you have to claim this as income since it was inheritance and do you have to pay taxes on it? PLEASE HELP! It’s under $500,000.

what type of investment should I take out? and, can you have more than one on it since the person is up in years, she may be dead I was wondering if you could do that, from what I understand it has be lock in for five years. since her trust is loosing money I need to do something for her. do you think this would be helpful?

I was going to pay $1000.00 a month into this annunity act,but decided not to do this,this was 5 months ago,should I get JG Wentworth to cash me out at a discount or what? My broker told me I cant get my money back for 7 years,when I signed , What to DO?

Dave tells to buy mutual funds and ignore the safety of fixed annuities. Buy ALL term life and invest the difference in mutual funds and ignore ANY need for whole-life. Now that the economy is down, people that did the opposite are MUCH better off. I can imagine MANY of his listeners will end up at the end of their term with no insurance and way depreciated investments. At least they will be debt-free (the obvious thing to be before investing anywhere.)
I know my opinion may not matter because I’m a lowley insurance salesman (term & whole-life.) What do others think?

I’m about 7 years from retirement age. I have a taxed deferred mutual fund annuity with Dreyfus that’s structured somewhat conservative. My cash surrender is at full value. Realizing there’s always risk with these funds, I can no longer think long term and risk another plunge at this stage of my life.