An important decision before deciding for an annuity or even after investing and putting your hard earned money into it for some years is to choose the method of receiving back the money or the payout. This is a very crucial decision and often can be complicated to arrive at a satisfying answer. Insurance companies provide a large number of options in which you can get your money back. The simplest manner is taking it in lump sum. Other versions are not taking your money back in total but agreeing to receive a steady payment for life. The pattern in which you choose your annuity payout is important in the whole annuity agreement.

Most websites of insurance companies offer online annuity payout calculators or estimators. Such calculators are quite handy for both parties - the service providers as well as the investors. It simplifies the heavy mathematic calculations involved in understanding how your money shall grow and come back to your spanning over 20 or 30 years of investment, or even more!

Annuity payout calculations involve a series of tables and numbers, and can be difficult to comprehend in many cases. Hence the online or CD based calculators prove to be popular modes of aiding the decision making process.

Many investors still like to go the hard way out, which is with a pen and paper. And is it agreed that the results are sweeter if you do them on your own. A few tips to gauge whether an online annuity calculator is good are put forth here.

- Calculators should ideally be based a simple online query-based form, which you need to fill up and submit to get a detailed calculation. It should allow you to save your results.

- You should be able to compare your different sets of inputs variables and see the results of each investment within minutes. Hence a good online annuity calculator shouldallow you to compare tables with one another.

- Good estimators help to compare between different types of annuities for a same piece of investment like between equity-indexed annuities, variable rate annuities, and fixed type annuities.

Whatever be an online calculator doing for you, it is always advisable to cross check with an expert or an agent who will finally help you get the deal signed.