Sell Annuity Payments In Light of Uncertain Economic Future, Part I
- This was posted on November 27, 2008
While there may have been writing on the wall in terms of this present economic state, the fact of the matter is that most of us were simply going about our daily life – figuring we would deal with economic changes when we forced to do so. The first inkling that things were really starting to take a turn for many of us was the gas prices quickly followed by larger and larger dips in the stock market. Today many of us have seen our investments depleted significantly and we wonder what will happen to the money we worked so hard for and which we have invested in college and retirement savings.
The fact is that these are uncertain times and for most of us the desire to hunker down is strong. We just don’t have the cash flow or the spending power that we once did; this dramatic shift has made us look at our money much more carefully and make decisions that will not only help us in the short term but will be appropriate in the months and even years to come as we just have no way of knowing what is to come economically.
The option to sell annuity payments has always been there for those who currently receive a structured settlement payment through an annuity. It was just one more way for consumers to be able to take control of the money that was rightfully theirs and make changes that would best serve them at the time.
Structured settlement payments are set up by a court system that has essentially awarded a claimant money in a personal injury case. These payments are an alternative to giving the claimant all the money at once and they come on a scheduled basis from an annuity that has been set up for this purpose. But this doesn’t mean that options are out of the recipient’s control. In the next post we’ll talk about how the decision to sell annuity payments can put a structured settlement recipient back in the driver’s seat in a chaotic economy.
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