Empowering Financial Decisions: Leveraging Structured Settlement Payments for Educational Purposes
Is a degree, certification, or other educational achievement standing in the way of your goals? If so, it’s time to take action. The future you want is waiting — and your structured settlements can help you cover the cost of getting there.
Generally speaking, we often discourage people from selling their structured settlement payments. The way those payments are structured means they provide you with a long-term, reliable income stream. For many folks, that goes a long way toward maintaining their quality of life.
But there are some instances in which it makes sense to liquidate some or all of your payments. Education is one of those cases.
Exploring what education can do for you
Maybe you’re in a situation where you want a promotion at work, but a hiring requirement for that role is a specific degree. Or maybe you just want a way to earn more income over the course of your life. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the higher your degree, the higher your pay is likely to be.
Ultimately, adding more education to your resume — whether that’s the next degree or a specific certification — makes you more valuable as an employee. And you can potentially leverage that into a raise, a promotion, or a new job altogether.
The problem? Pursuing education comes at a literal cost. You’ll need to pay the college or university if you’re going after a degree, and even credentialing programs have a price tag. This is one of those areas where the old saying is true: you need to spend money to make money.
Fortunately, if you have a structured settlement, you can potentially use that money to move toward your goals.
When selling payments to fund education makes sense
Breaking up your structured settlement only makes sense if you have a clear plan for how you’ll move forward.
To start, you should know precisely which educational opportunity you’re going to pursue and where you’re going for it. You might pinpoint that you want to get a master’s degree in a certain field and narrow down a list of three universities you’re interested in attending, for example.
Then, you should get clarity on how much that education will cost you. This way, we can help you decide precisely how many of your payments you should sell.
Other companies might advise you to liquidate your settlement altogether. Actually, though, it’s in your best interest to sell only as many payments as you need to cover the cost of your education. Keep what you can intact. This way, you can get the education you require to go after your goals, but you maintain some consistent income in place for yourself in the future. If anything goes awry with your plans, the stability those future payments provide goes a long way.
Educational opportunities can be a good reason to sell some of your structured settlement payments. If you want to explore this option with a team who can help you tailor a plan to your specific goals, contact us at Strategic Capital today.
