Retirement Watch Weekly
Strategies to Protect Your Estate Plan
What’s the biggest problem with most estate plans? Often it is not taxes or cash flow. Many times the biggest problem is the trustee or executor that was appointed to carry out the estate plan. Trusts usually are a key part of the estate plan. How the trustee administers the trust determines the quality of […]
How to Beat High Mutual Fund Taxes
Mutual fund investors have both the tax law and the markets working against them this year. On top of mediocre returns, many funds are making very high taxable distributions to shareholders. That cuts into your after-tax return. But you can beat this double whammy and walk away with much of your hard-earned gains intact. The […]
Surprising Retiree Tax Havens
Did you know that you might be able to move from low-tax Virginia, retire in Massachusetts, and cut your tax bill dramatically? That’s true, if you are a federal government retiree. Your government pension annuity is exempt from taxes in Massachusetts and several other states, but not in Virginia. Florida seems like a tax haven, […]
How to Prepare Your Financial Emergency Kit
You might have solid investments and a good estate plan. But your financial planning isn’t complete without a financial emergency kit. An ideal time to put one together is when you are working on your estate plan. A financial emergency kit is a set of tools that can keep a difficult time from becoming much […]
How to Teach Grandkids Wealth Management
It is nice to give wealth to grandchildren. But an even better gift can be to teach them how to multiply and manage their wealth the rest of their lives. Youngsters today are more financially savvy than any prior generation. They own investments, have such high discretionary income that retailers pitch to youngsters, and even […]
The New Health Care Orphans
It looks like a Medicare experiment is coming to an end. Many seniors are losing the option of receiving their Medicare-covered health care through health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Over 1 million seniors will be dropped from their HMOs next year, because the HMOs are leaving the Medicare program. Over 900,000 of these seniors will have […]
Return Of The Dull Investor
One of the things I was taught when learning to fly a small plane is that the plane’s design and aerodynamics do most of the work. The pilot needs to make only small adjustments and inputs to keep flying smoothly and on course. There are many activities in which the less work you do, the […]
The Modern Way To Give: The Total Return Trust
Too many trusts these days are set up the old-fashioned way. I see them all the time. The result is that all the beneficiaries of the trust are short-changed, and they often end up angry at each other, the trustee, and the grantor. A once-generous endowment eventually becomes a legacy of discontent. Suppose you want […]
