- This was posted on December 22, 2009

I am not the first one to say that I overspent this holiday season but I couldn’t help it. The truth is that we - like so many families around the country - had a tough year. The loss of my job (and thankfully it was only mine) put a huge dent in our income and with so many bills to pay, including college tuition, it was a big stretch to cover all our expenses. And that was before the holidays. Enter the Christmas season when gifts must be purchased and entertaining is underway. Can you cut down and go with a minimal holiday? Sure. But I didn’t want to because I so wanted my family to have an extraordinary holiday. The other part of my ability to let go and just relax for these few weeks is because I have already made the decision to sell annuity payments so I know that there is money on the way.

I have had a structured settlement in my life for years - as a result of a personal injury case in which I was awarded money. The money was not mine to have in total, however. Instead it was put in an annuity and the payments were sent to me every month. This is not to say that I wasn’t happy to have them; they have, for all intents and purposes, saved us in our time of need. But it quickly became clear that we had to do something “bigger” to take care of the debt and to make those tuition payments. I don’t ever want to struggle under this kind of debt again. I kept thinking that if I could just have three or four payments at once I could really make some headway. What I found out is that I could do that - by choosing to sell annuity payments. More to come…

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