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Making Backwards Choices
I was reading this past week about a woman who lost 170 lbs in 9 months by eating backwards. She had breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. She lost the weight without leaning on a typical diet plan. Her result, losing 170lbs, has lasted ten years. It's not so much the weight loss that caught my attention, but the fact that she took responsibility for change in her life. This now size 1 woman didn't go on a diet, she made a lifestyle change. Diet is a bad word. It represents a temporary nutritional change that will require sacrifice and results that are often unsatisfactory and short lived. She made up her own solution, and that's why it worked for her. Chasing down someone else's ideas is rarely effective. We are more likely to be successful when it is our own plan. What is your plan? What do you want to change? If you have been craving something new, different, better, but find yourself mired in the same spot you started in, maybe you would consider making some backwards choices? Identify a few areas in your life you expect something greater that what is right now. One important place to make changes in your life is in the financial arena. Are you paying yourself first? Preparing for your future? Spending within your means? Our typical mindset is to spend what we have, or more likely, spend more than we have through loans and credit cards. We live paycheck to paycheck because that is the choice we have made. I encourage us to make some new choices. Take responsibility for where we are, and decide where we want to be. Then all it takes is a plan, a few backwards choices, and watch how quickly we find ourselves in a new and better place. As a structured settlement recipient, you can make some backwards choices by cashing out your annuity. Instead of waiting for the settlement to pay out over time, you can get the money you want and need sooner. Consider carefully any financial choice you make, and seek expert advice. If you want the best, you have to seek it out. Whether you are trying to lose weight, or regain control of your finances, sometimes making backwards choices can get you going in the right direction. Jason Rigler
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Structured Settlements ? Should You Sell Yours? In recent years, it has become more common for victims of accidental injury who accept a settlement from the at-fault party to accept a structured settlement instead of a lump-sum payment. With a structured settlement, the injured party receives payments over an agreed-upon length of time ? five years, ten years, or even a lifetime, rather than receiving payment up front in a lump sum.There are advantages to this for both parties. The injured party may require constant medical care, and the regular payments of a structured settlement guarantee that income will be available to cover the medical expenses. For the paying party, the settlement can be paid by purchasing an annuity, which allows an upfront payment to accrue interest, thereby producing a larger long-term yield from a minimal investment. In many cases, a structured settlement is viewed as a win-win situation for both parties.There are restrictions on structured settlements that may not suit everyone. Once you agree to accept a structured settlement, you cannot trade it back in for a lump sum payment, nor may you use it for collateral for a loan. What if you want to buy a home and pay cash? What if some other unexpected expense comes up and you simply do not have the cash available? Under certain circumstances, you may be able to sell your structured settlement to a third party.There are companies that are interested in purchasing structured settlements for investment purposes. Perhaps one or more of these companies has already contacted you. They will agree to pay you a lump sum, in cash, in exchange for you signing over your future annuity payments to them. Be aware that any party that offers to buy your annuity is interested in doing so for investment purposes. They wish to make money on the transaction, and for them, that profit will be spread over the long time that it takes to receive all of the payments that constitute the settlement. Once you combine the factors of time, interest, inflation, and the buying party's profit, you will find that the offer made to you will seem quite small. The amount you receive will be an amount equal to the present day value of the settlement, minus whatever sum the investors require for their profit on the transaction.You should also know that some states prohibit the sale of structured settlements, that some insurance companies who handle the annuities prohibit sales to a third party, and that you will probably need to go to court to arrange the sale. In addition, there may be tax considerations involved in the sale, and the taxes due on large sums of money are not insignificant. If you are interested in selling your structured settlement, you will definitely want to discuss the sale with an attorney and a tax advisor beforehand.While structured settlements are designed to benefit those who receive them, there are times when it may be desirable or necessary to sell them. If you are considering selling your settlement, make sure that you weigh all of your options carefully. Once you agree to sell, you cannot get it back. The Target Capital Structure Firms can choose whatever mix of debt and equity they desire to finance their assets, subject to the willingness of investors to provide such funds. And, as we shall see, there exist many different mixes of debt and equity, or capital structures - in some firms, such as Chrysler Corporation, debt accounts for more than 70 percent of the financing, while other firms, such as Microsoft, have little or no debt. Structured Settlement ? Guaranteed Income for those with Disabilities Up until twenty years ago, anyone who won a lawsuit as a result of a claim involving worker's compensation, wrongful death or accident had to accept a lump sum payment as their compensation. The payment would be intended to be invested, with the beneficiary living off of the proceeds for as long as their recovery was expected to take. In many cases, this type of settlement works fine, but in other cases, the results are a disaster.It is difficult enough for someone who has been through the trauma of an accident or illness to have to adjust to a new lifestyle without having to also become an expert in the art of financial investing. If you have been active all of your life and you suddenly find yourself in a wheelchair and having to handle assets of several hundred thousand dollars or more, you could be overwhelmed. 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You should not cash out your annuity when it's not in your best interest.Here are 3 reasons it might not be in your best interest; it's too soon, you don't have a good enough reason, it will cost you too much. Every day someone cashes out their annuity or settlement when it might not have been in their best interest. It's an easy mistake to make when the call of money and burden of financial stress is weighing heavily on you. But read carefully and maybe you can avoid digging the hole deeper. Structured Settlements Are Like Ants Ants are powerful creatures. The powerful ant legs are able to lift 20 times their body weight, and run the equivalent of a man running as fast as a racehorse. Structured Settlements are strong agreements that turn an agreement to pay a plaintiff into an ironclad guaranteed structured award. Options for Lawsuit Settlement Winners Receiving Periodic Payments On January 22,2002, President George W. 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The agony of financially struggling and the ecstasy of financial abundance are dramatically different moments in a person's life. And I for one would choose the abundance over the struggling any day. What is a Structured Settlement A Structured Settlement is an agreement between a personal injury victim ( a Plaintiff ) and an Insurance company ( the Defendant )to compensate the Plaintiff by the defendant with long term periodicpayments instead of a single cash lump sum. Consider a Structured Settlement? Structured settlements have been around for a long time however their popularity has steadily increased over the past 6 years. In 1999 only 7% of insurance settlements that were under $7,000 were completed as structured settlements. While we don't have hard data for the current year, the number is much higher now. Surviving High Debt States Are you more likely to have more debt according to what state you live in? 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On the scene arrives your hero, the "Cash Now" guy. Lucky Have you ever looked around and wondered how everyone is buying houses? Are they really doing that much better than you are? Maybe. Maybe not. Some people have gone deep into debt to purchase a home and are teetering on the brink of financial free fall. Others used creative unconventional financing to afford a home. There may be not-yet discovered risks and consequences to this type of home financing. But there is a fairly substantial group of people who were able to buy a house because they were the recipients of some unexpected or untraditional cash windfall. Making Backwards Choices I was reading this past week about a woman who lost 170 lbs in 9 months by eating backwards. She had breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. She lost the weight without leaning on a typical diet plan. Her result, losing 170lbs, has lasted ten years. It's not so much the weight loss that caught my attention, but the fact that she took responsibility for change in her life. |
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