If you chose to waive a personal injury claim or some other insurance pay-out, and now have an annuity in your name, then you may have become interested in the concept of selling it. Though various companies may make it sound easy, selling a settlement can often be a long and arduous process, with various complications along the way. If you’ve been trying to make heads or tails of your options regarding your annuity and just getting confused, here are three important questions to ask yourself to clear it up.
What Does the Agreement Actually Say?
If you want to know more about your settlement, then the first thing you should do is dig out your agreement and look back through it, paying close attention to the bare bones of the payments. Are some of the payments significantly more than others? Have they been adjusted for inflation? You also need to pay attention to whether or not the payments are guaranteed, or if they’ll be transferred without any kind of penalty. What you learn from this process will have a big impact on the amount of your lump-sum payment. You’re not going to get the most out of your settlement without understanding it thoroughly, so make sure that you start by going back over all the details of your agreement.
What Are You Aiming For?
When planning to sell a structured settlement, a lot of people will choose to sell all of their remaining payments. Other people, however, will only take what they need and hold onto the remaining amount. So which of these options is for you? The only way to figure that out is by calculating the amount of money you’ll need to reach your goal, and whether or not you can get by comfortably after sacrificing your ongoing payments. Seen as you’re reading this, there’s a fair chance that life has thrown you some kind of financial curveball that you need to accommodate for in a hurry. While you obviously need to provide for your family, you should also be planning and making sure you’re covered for any other big, unexpected costs which could spring up further down the line. Selling annuities can work miracles, but it’s not always the best decision you can make.
What Are your Options?
When some people decide to sell annuities, their options are narrow, and a single obvious choice rises to the surface pretty early on. For the majority though, there’ll be a range of different ways they can choose to break up their payments. The choice you make here will all depend on your most pressing financial needs, any predictable factors shortly, your job security, and other factors going into your personal financial stability. After you’ve established a clear idea of your goals, and the factors which are going to broaden or limit your options, you’ll be in a much better position to choose a company that will help you with selling on your annuity.
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