When most people think about winning the lottery, they imagine receiving a huge lump sum of money all at one time. However, the reality is that most people avoid the lump sum payment option when buying their ticket, choosing the “annuity” payout instead. This puts winners immediately into a “structured settlement” arrangement. While lottery winnings might not be the same thing as a personal injury case settlement, the outcome is very similar.
In essence, you are choosing to receive your money in installments over the course of time. The structure of those payments (when, how long, how much per payment, etc.) is usually up to you, so you can choose to have as much or as little structure as you like. You can often choose to structure part of the settlement into payments and receive the remainder as a lump sum upfront, but that is really your decision.
The situation seems simple enough, and the choice to accept payments rather than a lump sum seems like a “no-brainer”. Wouldn’t it be better to receive your money over time, like a paycheck? While it might make sense, it doesn’t always work the way you think it would. When considering what structured settlements are, you’ll need to realize that life has a way of changing the game and once you have opted for a structured settlement and the payout format is in place, it’s pretty much set. Your money will technically be locked away from you, inaccessible except for those periodic payments.
We are disappointed today by John Darer’s blog response to our article of yesterday (see below). While Mr. Darer is entitled to make allegations, conjecture and innuendo to suit his own agenda, whatever that may be, it is our view that such response misses the point.
The point is that Structured Settlement Quotes provides annuitants with the best prices in the industry. Don’t take our word for it. In a decision of the Rhode Island Superior Court on February 11, 2011, a jurisdiction that carefully monitors structured settlement annuitant discount rates, the Court Record finds that the annuitant, an SSQ client, had obtained the best deal out of over 200 cases in the State that had been heard up to that date.
While Mr. Darer may choose not to refer his clients to SSQ for his own reasons, and therefore we regret that we may not be able to help them out, we will continue to do our very best for those who do choose to seek out our service.
Structured Settlement Quotes
888-665-1257
Today, we are very pleased to launch our new Structured Settlement Quotes service.
Three months in the making, our new and improved Structured Settlement Marketplace is designed to:
1. Provide helpful information to annuitants thinking of selling structured settlement payment rights; and
2. Enhancing the online interactive experience to better serve our clients, not only striving to get them the best price available in the marketplace today, but also to make our Customer Service Experts more accessible to assist with questions and planning.
We, at Structured Settlement Quotes, are proud of the fact that our clients get the most money for their structured settlement payments by having funding companies compete for their business. In fact, recently we were able to get an annuitant a selling discount rate of 6.99 percent. Our average discount rate to annuitants for 2011 was below 9 percent.
Over the coming weeks we shall be reaching out to the structured settlement broker industry to inform everyone about our service. Some of you already may have received introductory emails from Lisa Newton of our firm.