Estate Planning
Estate Planning is the process of determining how your wealth and assets should be transferred to the heirs of your choice: your children, grandchildren, friends, families, charitable causes, etc. and then deciding which legal tools and structures to use to best meet your estate planning goals.
Estate planning is not simply reducing or eliminating taxes and avoiding probate. Only after establishing how you want your estate’s assets to be distributed should you consider ways to reduce taxes and avoid probate. From there, good estate plans deal with a host of other issues. Now, with all but a few estates exempt from the federal estate tax, those other issues are, or should be, at the forefront of estate planning.
An estate plan is to ensure that you are taken care of the rest of your life and that your wealth is transferred to the people you want to have it. A good estate plan ensures these goals are accomplished with as much efficiency and as little cost as possible. An estate plan addresses the management and distribution of an individual’s property and financial obligations after he or she dies with financial tools such as wills, revocable living trusts and power of attorney.
For a comprehensive overview of Estate Planning, please start with our article:
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How to Generate Guaranteed Lifetime Income (Second Social Security Check)
Lifetime income security is what everyone wants in retirement, but it is increasingly a challenge to achieve. Low interest rates and investment returns, longer life spans, inflation, long-term care expense, medical expenses, higher taxes and more are major obstacles to achieving financial security in retirement. Everyone wants what I call the “Second Social Security Check.” […]
Bob’s Journal 12/20/2018
Last week’s Employment Situation reports were extremely strong, but don’t use them as good indicators of the strength of the economy or its trend. The nonfarm payrolls report showed that 312,000 new jobs were created, and revisions added a total of 58,000 jobs for the previous two months. The number of new jobs was well […]
Bob’s Journal for 1/3/2019
While Treasury bonds outperformed stocks in 2018, what happened within the bond markets was more important to investors. Stocks outperform bonds over the long term, but bonds have better years from time to time. Treasury bonds have outperformed the major stock indexes for only a few calendar years since the end of the financial crisis. […]
Bob’s Journal (12/20/2018)
Recent inflation data are sending a warning to the Federal Reserve, but the Fed doesn’t seem to be heeding it. About a year after the financial crisis hit bottom, I presented a workshop to a group of individual investors. One of the group members gave me a hard time. I had said inflation would stay […]
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The Power of Framing
Dear Reader: Would you rather spend $3 a day for something or $1,095 a year? Which makes you more likely to pay for something by a certain date: a 20% discount for early payment or a 20% penalty for paying later? The answer to both these questions is supposed to be that it doesn’t matter. […]
The Scope of Retirement Success
Some years ago, I was a speaker at a conference in the Cayman Islands. Most of the speakers dressed casually and enjoyed the local attractions when we weren’t making presentations. One afternoon, I ran into one of the other speakers in the hotel lobby. He was dressed in a suit and tie. While wiping away […]
Can You Spend More in Retirement Than You’ve Been Told?
Longtime readers know I believe the spending plan is the biggest gap in most retirement plans. The spending plan ensures you won’t run out of money in retirement. It answers the question: What’s the maximum amount I can spend each year and not risk running out of money? The longtime consensus among financial planners is […]
This is the Best Time of the Year for Giving
The start of the year is the best time forestate plan-motivated gifts. Even if you made gifts late in 2018, consider making your 2019 gifts soon. Estate tax reduction used to be the major incentive for annual giving to family members. Now, only the very wealthy need to make gifts to reduce estate and gift […]
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Estate Planning Basics
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Estate Planning for Singles
Estate Planning Forms and Documents
Estate Planning Mistakes
Estate Planning Strategies
Estate Tax
Executors and Trustees
Family Limited Partnerships
Gifts and Gift Giving
Grandchildren
Heirs, Beneficiaries, and Children
IRAs & Your Estate
Power of Attorney
Probate
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Wills and Estate Planning
