I think “budgets” are the reason many more people don’t have a sensible strategy for reaching their financial goals. The word “budget” creates obstacles in two ways. First, budgets imply choices, tradeoffs, and the unpleasant word “no.” Second, most people lack even half the clarity about their spending that’s required to make a reasonably accurate budget. Without good […]
A financial plan should be a thoughtful alignment of your income, expenses, saving, and asset allocation that makes it more likely you’ll achieve what matters most to you. Your estate plan is financial plan’s autopilot, ensuring that your capabilities carry out your goals, even if you’re not around to supervise things yourself. Using the Quadrant-based life cycle planning […]
It’s unclear whether Auguste Comte really said that “demography is destiny,” but you can and should use demographic data to make better estate and financial planning decisions. As we’ve noted, an estate plan often represents a set of predictions about a family’s future, predictions that will be improved when the plan considers the family’s Longevity Distribution. Your […]
People live their lives as a unitary whole, but often analyze them in segments. It’s valuable to keep in mind how these segments relate. Consider the diagram below: The Life Cycle Estate and Financial Planning Quadrant has four domains: Facts, Forecasts, Life Stages, and Unexpected Events. Facts are empirically observable data, things you can measure. […]
It’s not uncommon for an old irrevocable trust to no longer fit a family’s circumstances, for the simple reason that Yogi Berra was right when he noted that “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” Trusts provide advantages, including protection from creditors, divorce, or spendthrift behavior. To obtain these advantages, trusts place restrictions on a beneficiary’s access to […]
It’s wintertime, when one can’t help but think about Florida’s many advantages as a retirement haven compared to northern states. In addition to no state income taxes and better weather, a lesser-known but important Florida feature is its homestead laws. “Homestead” presents deceptively complex issues in snowbirds’ estate and tax planning when they finally become […]
In 2010, KYEstates provided coverage here, here, and here regarding creditor protection for inherited IRAs. At that time there was no clear consensus on the degree of protection these accounts enjoyed. Earlier this year, in Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. ___ (2014), the Supreme Court resolved a circuit split and delivered bad news for debtors, finding […]
Even in an era of relatively high estate tax exemptions, I work with many families who want to use a trust to provide for the management of a child’s inheritance. How a son in law or daughter in law should be treated in a parent’s estate plan, though, is a more subtle issue that families […]
Youth. A time when the average person might say (as Ferris Bueller did 28 years ago): “I don’t believe in isms. I believe in Me.” Usually putting things off works out, but if a young person is prudent (or has family members around them who are prudent), a Will may be one thing that’s unwise […]
If you are a KYEstates reader in a state where it’s cold in the winter, you have probably seen them: people who seem to live in your own neighborhood and golf at your club, but have a car with a Florida license plate. Who are those people? They’re the lucky ones: the Snowbirds who get a […]
The popular financial press is pretty crowded, just like the blogosphere. Yet every once in a while, an article says something pretty simple that’s also really important, something that connects strongly with issues we see time and again in our practice. Last week, Howard Gold published that sort of piece on Marketwatch.com: “The biggest retirement […]
This series on how grantor retained annuity trusts can be applied in situations with upside business potential presented an overview of how GRATs work in Part 1. Part 2 presented a case study of how an “Entrepreneurial GRAT” could be used to substantially improve the net-of-tax risk-adjusted return for a risky venture with a new […]