Your first step? Take stock of all your assets. These include your investments, retirement accounts, insurance policies, real estate and any business interests. According to CNN Money's "Identifying your assets" (i.e., part of its Money Essentials Series), a good first step for estate planning is to review and inventory all…
Who will be your child's guardian, and who will be the guardian of your estate? Experts say it's a difficult decision many families agonize over, and there's no one-size-fits-all scenario. In the event that you pass away suddenly and unexpectedly, what will happen to your kids? Just the thought of…
The best time to discuss finances with your parents is when they are competent, self-sufficient adults. Planning ahead and seeking out the appropriate professional financial assistance on their behalf can help ensure your parents enter their golden years in the most comfortable, stress-free and secure way possible. You may dread…
As we age, we begin to reflect on where we've been and what we've accomplished. Do we leave an imprint on our family's lives? Do we live life to the fullest? What is our purpose in life? Results of several studies indicate that a sense of living a purposeful life…
Leaving even a small inheritance to your children requires planning. Regardless the size of your estate, structuring an inheritance properly can avoid problems and help your beneficiaries use your hard-earned assets more wisely. Last year, AARP included an article in its materials titled, "How to Leave an Inheritance to Your…
If there is a boogeyman when it comes to family conversations about inheritance, it is not death. It’s the $40 trillion that financial advisers say their baby boomer clients are going to pass to their children either in an orderly way — or in a chaotic mess. A report by…
Did you think estate planning would be easier because you don’t have children … or that you don’t really need an estate plan? If so, you couldn’t be more wrong! The website dailycall.com recently posted an article, titled "Aging and estate planning for singles and couples without children," to help…
You may have made a giant estate planning mistake without even knowing it — forgetting to update the names of your beneficiaries for your employer-sponsored retirement plans, IRAs, life insurance policies, mutual funds, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, annuities and 529 college savings plans. The recent MarketWatch article, titled “Don’t make…
Now is the time to adopt financial habits that determine a successful retirement, even if you’re still in your 20s. (Note: Parents, here is a great article to share with your twenty-something adult children!) If you are a twenty-something, you have plenty of time to think about investing, right? Even…
A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court holding that assets contained in an inherited individual retirement account (IRA) don’t qualify as retirement funds for the purposes of bankruptcy exemption, has turned the estate planning community on its head. Prior to a recent US Supreme Court ruling, inherited IRAs were treated…