Retirement Watch Weekly
6 Easy and Legitimate Ways to Protect Assets
Many people consider asset protection to be part of an estate plan. Protecting wealth from creditors, lawsuits, and other claims during life can be just as important as protecting it from taxes. A good plan also can protect assets from claims against your heirs. Assets can be protected without elaborate schemes that involve multiple levels […]
How to Manage Retirement Spending Cycles
Most retirement plans assume spending at a steady rate throughout retirement. That might have been a good idea when retirement lasted only five to 10 years, but today’s retirement is a very different case. Spending is not steady in retirement. This is not a small point. A plan that assumes steady spending in retirement might […]
Instruction Letters and Ethical Wills
The typical estate plan is a collection of legal documents with sterile discussions of trusts and property distributions. It need not be that way. Your estate plan and your legacy can be enhanced by adding to your plan documents that are more personalized and speak directly to your loved ones. Certainly the main focus of […]
Strategies to Pay for Long-Term Care
Are consumers doing the right thing by not purchasing long-term care insurance? Insurers long have been frustrated by the small number of people purchasing LTC insurance. Though more people enter the target age group for the policies, few buy. In 2004, 326,000 new policies worth $700 million were sold. That was a 25% decline from […]
The New Breed of Vacation Homes
A vacation home is passé for some people. While vacation and second home owner-ship are on the rise, and more Boomers plan to buy second homes, a number of people are moving on to what they consider the next level of second home ownership. This innovation is known generically as the destination club. There now […]
Five Proven Ways to Reduce the Mortgage on your IRA
Most people who are busy accumulating large balances in their IRAs and 401(k)s forget that the IRS holds a mortgage on those accounts. You put pre-tax dollars in the accounts and let income and gains compound tax deferred. But that balance in the IRA is not all yours. The price for those tax breaks is […]
Annuities – How Not to Run Out of Income in Retirement
Running out of income is the biggest fear of most retirees. Annuities often are the best way to avoiding running out of income. Yet, few people take advantage of this opportunity, and many who do buy annuities make the wrong decisions. That is because annuities are complicated, and commissions can give sales people the wrong […]
Survival Guide for Family Limited Partnerships
The family limited partnership has been widely-used in estate planning for years. The benefits are so significant that for almost as long the IRS has been trying to curtail the tax advantages of FLPs. While some of the IRS efforts have been successful, taxpayers also logged some victories. In addition, the IRS successes were in […]
