Are you ready if disaster strikes? It’s not just a hypothetical question after a record year of natural disasters in the US — from a billion-dollar blizzard in the East to raging wildfires in the West.
The lesson here is that there’s no way to predict when or where a disaster – natural or manmade – will occur. What you can do is make yourself ready for whatever comes. Start by making a plan to protect the lives of yourself and loved ones – and then make sure your plan includes safeguarding important family papers such as your structured settlement (more…)
When someone wins a court case that involves a significant monetary award, that money may be placed in a structured settlement (or annuity) to be paid out in installments over time. While it’s great to have a steady stream of income, it can be hard to wait for those payments to add up when cash is needed right away to pay debts.
The good news is that if you have a structured settlement or were recently awarded one, you can sell all or part of your (more…)
Would you rather receive more money or less money for something you own? The answer is easy, you would always prefer to get more..
But there are exceptions to most rules – including this one. Life changes or pressing financial needs may cause people to sell all or part of their right to receive payments from a structured settlement for less money than the future payments add up to (more…)
Here is a fact: very few people have any idea of how best to handle sudden, large sums of money.
We’ve all have heard stories of how some lottery winners find that instead of their dreams coming true after they cash in a winning ticket, they instead wind up broke and in debt because they didn’t know how to deal with their new-found wealth.
That doesn’t have to happen to you. If you do come into a windfall of cash, you might consider setting up a structured settlement or an annuity. One of the advantages (more…)
The basic definition of an annuity describes a financial instrument or arrangement that provides regular, periodic payments. In the U.S., an annuity contract is often used to create a guaranteed income stream over a fixed period of time. Annuity payments may be made until a certain date or they may extend until the death of the person named in the contract.
Annuity contracts are defined by federal law in the tax code but are regulated at the state level. In most cases, annuities are issued by insurance companies, either as (more…)