Payment default penalties on annuities
"I don't know how annuities work it's all smoke and mirrors to me. This is a huge red flag to me. I would ask the agent what the penalty is to cancel this contract, and see ho much you can get back. If done right, you should be able to transfer these funds to an IRA or other pretax account.  To be clear, I'd make a similar remark if you said your were in a S&P ETF or any investment you don't understand. ""Appropriate investment"" means little if the investor has no understanding of what they are buying.  Update in repose to comments -"
"This is a bit pornographic, isn't it, in that we're looking at something we'd like to do (namely, ""win the big lottery!"") but probably won't ever have this happen to us. :) Anyway. Ignoring the fact that this is kind of a hypothetical question... Gotta go with The Straight Dope on this one, when deciding whether to take an annuity or a lump sum: What assumed interest rate is underlying the calculations? Do you think you can earn significantly more than that rate on your own? If so, take the lump sum cash value. If not, go with the annuity. What are your financial needs, both immediate and over the next twenty years? Do you need a steady flow of income? If you take the lump sum and invest it poorly or lose it, how much will it hurt you? If you give up your job to enjoy your wealth, what will happen if you're still alive when the annuity payments stop? You don't want to blow it all in a spree and then find yourself in poverty in your old age. What happens if you die before the annuity has been fully paid? As noted, there's the question of whether to ask in advance for an annuity - the tax treatment alone could overwhelm any other considerations." The formula for determining the number of payments (months) you'll need to make on your loan is:  where i=monthly interest rate (annual rate / 12), A=loan amount (principal), and P=monthly payment. To determine the total interest that you will pay, you can use the following formula:  where P=monthly payment, N=number of payments (from above formula), and A=loan amount (principal). A quick example: using the numbers in the screenshot above ($10,000 loan, $500 monthly payment, 10% APR), the number of payments ends up to be 21.97 (which means that payment number 22 is slightly less than the rest).  In the second formula, you take that number times your $500 payment and determine that you have paid $10,984.81 over the course of the entire loan period.  Subtracting the principal, you have paid $984.81 in total interest. On your spreadsheet, the function you are looking for is NPER: NPER(rate, payment_amount, present_value, [future_value, end_or_beginning]) rate - The interest rate. (This should be the monthly rate, or the annual rate divided by 12.) payment_amount - The amount of each payment made. (For a loan payment, this should be a negative number.) present_value - The current value of the annuity. (The initial principal of the loan) future_value - [ OPTIONAL ] - The future value remaining after the final payment has been made.  (This should be 0, the default if omitted.) end_or_beginning - [ OPTIONAL - 0 by default ] - Whether payments are due at the end (0) or beginning (1) of each period. If you have a one-time event, you are allowed to make a single estimated payment for that quarter on Form 1040-ES.  People seem to fear that if they make one such payment they will need to do it forevermore, and that is not true.  The IRS instructions do kind of read that way, but that's because most people who make estimated payment do so because of some repeating circumstance like being self-employed. In addition, you may qualify for one or more waivers on a potential underpayment penalty when you file your Form 1040 even if you don't make an estimated payment, and you may reduce or eliminate any penalty by annualizing your income - which is to say breaking it down by quarter rather than the full year.  Check on the instructions for Form 2210 for more detail, including Schedule AI for annualizing income.  This is some work, but it might be worthwhile depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i2210/ch02.html "There is no formula to answer the question. You have to balance return on investment with risk. There's also the question of whether you have any children or other heirs that you would like to leave money to. The mortgage is presumably a guaranteed thing: you know exactly how much the payments will be for the rest of the loan. I think most annuities have a fixed rate of return, but they terminate when you both die. There are annuities with a variable return, but usually with a guaranteed minimum.  So if you got an annuity with a fixed 3.85% return, and you lived exactly 18 more years, then (ignoring tax implications), there'd be no practical difference between the two choices. If you lived longer than 18 years, the annuity would be better. If less, paying off the mortgage would be better. Another option to consider is doing neither, but keeping the money in the 401k or some other investment. This will usually give better than 3.85% return, and the principal will be available to leave to your heirs. The big drawback to this is risk: investments in the stock market and the like usually do better than 3 or 4%, but not always, and sometimes they lose money. Earlier I said ""ignoring tax implications"". Of course that can be a significant factor. Mortgages get special tax treatment, so the effective interest rate on a mortgage is less than the nominal rate. 401ks also get special tax treatment. So this complicates up calculations trying to compare. I can't give definitive numbers without knowing the returns you might get on an annuity and your tax situation." "There are a lot of unintended consequences of fairly arbitrary IRS guidelines when it comes to 401Ks, they both close and create tons of loopholes and many companies are left to implement their own policy around these laws. Ultimately what you are left with are a lot of random things, interpreted differently by every single company in the country, that aren't directly codified by the IRS or Congress. If you have a choice regarding what brokerage firm manages your 401(k), then just call around. Be sure to ask the pencil pusher on the phone to double check because they might say ""OF COURSE you can get paperless statements it is 2015"" but then when you sign up it becomes ""ooohhh sorry due to recent guidelines this kind of account isn't eligible for paperless statements""" You signed a contract to pay the loan.  You owe the money.   Stories of people being arrested over defaulted student loans are usually based in contempt of court warrants when the person failed to appear in court when the collection agency filed suit against them. Explore student loan forgiveness program. Research collections and bankruptcy and how to deal with collection agencies.  There are pitfalls in communicating with them which restart the clock on bad debt aging off the credit report, and which can be used to say that you agreed to pay a debt.  For instance, if you make any sort of payment on any debt, a case can be made that you have assumed the debt.  Once you are aware of the pitfalls, contact the collection agency (in writing) and dispute the debt.  Force them to prove that it is your debt.  Force them to prove that they have the right to collect it.  Force them to prove the amount.  Dispute the fairness of the amount.   Doubling your principal in 6 years is a bit flagrant.   So, work with the collectors, establish that the debt is valid and negotiate a settlement.  Or let it stay in default. Your credit report in the US is shot.  It will be a long time before the default ages off your report.  This is important if you try to open a bank account, rent an apartment, or get a job in the US.  These activities do not always require a credit report, but they often do.  You will not be able to borrow money or establish a credit card in the US. Here's a decent informational site regarding what they can do to collect the loan.  Pay special attention to Administrative Wage Garnishment.  They can likely hit you with that one.  You might be unreachable for a court summons, but AWG only requires that the collectors be able to confirm that you work for a company that is subject to US laws. Update:  I am informed that federally funded student loans are not available to international students.  AWG is only possible for debts to the federal government.  Private companies must go through the courts to force settlement of debt.  OP is safe from AWG. First off, you should contact your health plan administrator as soon as possible.  Different plans may interact differently with Medicare; any advice we could provide here would be tentative at best.  Some of the issues you may face: A person with both Medicare and a QHP would potentially have primary coverage from 2 sources: Medicare and the QHP. No federal law addresses this situation. Under state insurance law an individual generally cannot collect full benefits from each of 2 policies that together pay more than an insured event costs. State law usually specifies how insurance companies will coordinate health benefits when a person has primary coverage from more than one source. In that situation, insurance companies determine which coverage is primary and which is secondary. It’s important to understand that a QHP is not structured to pay secondary benefits, nor are the premiums calculated or adjusted for secondary payment. In addition, a person with Medicare would no longer receive any premium assistance or subsidies under the federal law. While previous federal law makes it illegal for insurance companies to knowingly sell coverage that duplicates Medicare’s coverage when someone is entitled to or enrolled in Medicare Part A or Part B, there has been no guidance on the issue of someone who already has individual health insurance and then also enrolls in Medicare. We and other consumer organizations have asked state and federal officials for clarification on this complicated situation. As such, it likely is up to the plan how they choose to pay - and I wouldn't expect them to pay much if they think they can avoid it.  You may also want to talk to someone at your local Medicare branch office - they may know more about your state specifically; or someone in your state's department of health/human services, or whomever administers the Exchanges (if it's not federal) in your state. Secondly, as far as enrolling for Part B, you should be aware that if she opts not to enroll in Part B at this time, if your wife later chooses to enroll before she turns 65 she will be required to pay a penalty of 10% per 12 month period she was not enrolled.  This will revert to 0 when she turns 65 and is then eligible under normal rules, but it will apply every year until then.  If she's enrolling during the normal General Enrollment period (Jan-March) then if she fails to enroll then she'll be required to pay that penalty if she later enrolls; if this is a Special Enrollment Period and extends beyond March, she may have the choice of enrolling next year without penalty. "The point of the enrollment penalty is basically the same as the ACA penalty.  Any sort of health insurance - or really, any insurance - is funded by creating a risk pool of high and low risk people and pricing it so that the overall payments cover the total risk.   That means, however, that on average the low risk people end up paying more than their share - more than it would have cost them, without the insurance, excepting any provider agreements to charge less (which is significant in the health insurance business).  (Of course some of them do end up using more than they pay - but not on average, assuming the risk was calculated accurately.) While there isn't really a completely low risk pool in Medicare, there is a significant difference in utilization (=cost) between younger (65-70) and older enrollees.  As such, for many health 65 year olds, it would be beneficial to not enroll in Medicare right away - delay a few years, if they're fully healthy, and wait until they are less healthy.  Since Medicare won't turn you away for pre-existing conditions, that's a risk some would take. In order to accommodate for that, Medicare effectively says, ""If you didn't help subsidize the costs of the high users when you were younger, you need to pay more to make up for that fact"" - hence the enrollment penalty.   The New York Times explains this in part in a 2006 article discussing Part D (which was new that year, and has a similar penalty): The purpose of the late enrollment penalty is to encourage people to   sign up as soon as possible, before they have significant drug costs."