I recently had to help my parents through I somewhat different financial situation. No I didn’t borrow from them and no they didn’t have to borrow money from me.
What has happened is that they wanted to take a vacation out west. It was not going to be some small weekend getaway. They wanted to take a month long packaged vacation that was going to be first class all the way but it would have a matching price tag.
Unfortunately all their income is tied up in various annual payments. A few payments are from retirement plans, some investments and one is from an insurance settlement. So we looked into the situation and found an interesting solution.
What we found out is that with structured settlements you can arrange a one time payout. The insurance companies usually do not tell you about these opportunities. You usually have to find a third party company to help you make all the arrangements. There are various companies in the market place that provide this service and the payouts can be different depending on teh comapnies so its best to shop around even if the first offer looks good.
What we did in this case was something even more creative and it was easy to arrange. My parents really like the fact that they have a regular income from their payments. So we loked in to the matter more closely and realized that with some structured settlements you can even arrange to receive just a portion of the settlement in one lump sum payment. That way my parents could finally take that trip out west and they still had the benefits of a regular income stream. That solution is something that more people should look into since its helps in the short term and the long term. It also has some tax benefits which also need to be considered.