Before you can join the growing ranks of annuity buyers, you need to know something about the variety of annuities that are available to you. There are a good number of annuities available and finding the right one for you can be difficult. You'd be wise to consult with a qualified professional before buying any annuity; they can take a look at your personal circumstances and help find the right annuity for you.

The first decision you're going to have to make is how you want to actually buy your annuity. You could either buy it outright or even by installments. A lump sum annuity is pretty straightforward to understand. You just promptly pay your money in and then you can just sit back and watch as your investment grows. Fortunately, for those of us who are on tighter budgets, you can choose to pay monthly instead.

When you start to consider an annuity, you'll soon discover that there are basically three kinds of annuities that are offered to you. These are the variable annuity, the fixed annuity, and also the hybrid annuity.

A variable annuity is an investment, where the payments you receive are determined by how well your mutual funds perform. You can select the mutual funds from a list or you can ask the annuity company to choose them. The big downfall with this annuity is if the market was to perform very badly, you could end up losing all of the money that you invested in this annuity.

Hybrid annuities are similar to variable annuities but with an hybrid annuity you will always receive a set minimum payment. This gives you the advantage of still being able to benefit when the market does well and also receive a set minimum payment when the market doesn't do so well.

When buying an annuity, you'll find that you can choose how you want to withdraw funds from it. You can choose to receive either a lump sum or you can receive payments over a set period of time.