Estate Planning
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When you become a parent, another person’s life is in your hands. It’s scary and exciting all at once, and you only start to feel confident in your new role once you have a few years of experience under your belt. However, there’s one big step you can take now to ease your fears, and that’s handling your financial planning.
Financial planning is about more than funneling money into a retirement account. When you have a family, you need to take steps to provide for your family if you pass away. Without safeguards in place, a single unfortunate event could put your family’s security and well-being at risk. If you want a financially secure future for your children, these are the four things you need to do.
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When a senior loses a spouse, their lives change dramatically. No longer do they have a partner to help make major decisions; not only that, they also have to make hard choices about their finances and lifestyle during a period of grief. It can be physically and emotionally draining, which can take a toll after a while. That’s why it’s so important to help your loved one emotionally and with both financial and legal decisions that could affect them for years to come.
Not only will your loved one need help planning for the funeral and other services, they need assistance with small things, like grocery shopping and paying bills on time. The loss of a spouse is a major blow that can lead to depression, stress, and anxiety, and few people have the capacity to think about the details during such a trying time. It’s also important for you to help them figure out their legal needs, such as creating a will, naming an executor of their estate, handing over power of attorney, and naming a health care surrogate.
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Finances are a difficult subject to talk to family about in the best of times. Add death to the discussion and it’s no reason why virtually nobody talks about it until there is no choice.
Personal finance decisions are best made when things are calm. Once emotions become involved poor decisions are sure to follow. And nothing heightens emotions more than the death of a loved one. At their weakest moment they are required to make choices that can cost $10,000 or more. A lifetime of planning for retirement and financial independence can be strained due to an untimely death.
Planning ahead allows loved ones to focus on the grieving process. With decisions, and expenses, handled in advance, a funeral doesn’t have to break the
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As children we dream. We dream unfettered. We dream of traveling to the stars; we dream of life as a policeman, fireman or even a doctor. Some fall in love with numbers and can’t think of anything else. We dream of great discoveries as scientists or helping people reach their dreams and goals financially.
Then we grow up.
Society tells us we must prepare for retirement as soon as possible. The financial services industry breathes and dies by our willingness to buy into their story.
The news feeds are filled with stories of people who started early, saved hard and retired early. As someone living inside said community I notice a pattern. A large majority of people who
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Countdown clocks abound. The most infamous is the doomsday clock counting down to Armageddon. With 26 days to the tax due date here in the States tax professionals are counting down to a less tragic event.
Early retirement was something I dreamed of from high school on. I was attracted to the seasonal nature of the tax profession. The ease at which tax offices can be sold also held my interest. The original goal was to build the business, save like crazy, invest said monies and take an early bow. I decided I should at least enjoy my profession if I’m going to give it my all. The unintended consequence was that I couldn’t unplug as planned.
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Recently I discussed my net worth and how I went from a poor farm boy to an eight figure net worth. To keep the discussion moving I glossed over a few issues, most notably some of the vehicles I use to invest and protect my net worth from taxation. My sole mention of using trust instruments to protect net worth and save taxes caused several requests to hit my email inbox. People wanted to know more about trusts and how they can be used to super-charge net worth, provide guaranteed income, reduce taxes and protect against lawsuits stealing your hard earned money.
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Every so often I say something that starts a firestorm or causes my inbox to overflow. Since the laws of nature state I am one human being and have a limited amount of time to read and answer emails, most emails go unanswered unless from a current client.
It may have been something I said in a podcast or new readers enjoying a deep drink of my lovely prose triggering the question in question. (Yes, I wrote that intentionally.) The latest question storm revolves around retirement plans. The questions are all the same with slight nuances. As a human being with limited time to dedicate to cold call questions, I left most unanswered and the few I did respond to were given quick and to the point answers. And as I fired off these quick answers it occurred to me I misinterpreted the question asked in some cases. A fresh blog post on the subject should clear that up. If not, some ointment might also do the job.
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Money is the leading cause of divorce in the United States and in most Western countries. Marriages survive infidelity better than money problems. The worst part is how expensive divorce is and since money issues are the leading cause of divorce, it doesn’t solve the problem.
Then we need to think of the children. They suffer disproportionately. Adults have at least some control over their actions and the outcome. Children are helpless victims in the middle of elevated negative emotions. The damage is significant and lifelong.
Every marriage has its challenges. Forty-one percent of first marriages end in divorce. Abundant data on divorce exists, but there are large discrepancies in some of the data. It is also hard to put an exact number on the percentage of marriages that will end in divorce when the married couple are still alive. Using the number of divorces in a year compared to the number of marriages is useless. Still, many marriages end in divorce, statistics aside. Money is a large factor in divorce and divorce only exacerbates money problems.
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