Lump Sum Payments?

I am surprised that you do not have the option of naming a survivor and the % she/he will get. In fact, if you are married, the other spouse must sign an agreement that she/he accepts the condition of no survivor payments. Once you start getting the pension payments, at least for most plans, neither you nor spouse will have access to whatever the balance would theoretically be. There are some retirement payment plans that have a formula for automatically drawing payments from a variable annuity. Most of these have a lot of fine print written in favor of the insurer. Read carefully if this is what you are talking about.

To get this answer (lump sum), you'd have to make an estimate of what the tax rate will really be. I would guess that it might be considerably more than your usual amount. To get a rough estimate, add the amount of the gross lump sum to your AGI of last year's return and recompute the taxes. Your tax bill will be a lot less if you take the pension because you will always be in a lower tax bracket.

A better alternative could be to roll your retirement plan into an IRA. A rolloever to a regular IRA incurs no taxes. Then when you are ready, use part of the rolled over money to buy an immediate annuity within the IRA. That way you would both have some of the lump sum still and be able to get a "pension."

This last answer was an excerpt from Ask Bud.

You already qualify considering your age. But you'll still need to own a residence, have equity in that home and never have defaulted government debt. If you're still looking for more information about lump sum payments.