The Wealth Counselor With the end of the year approaching fast, now is the time to consider ways to reduce your 2014 income tax bill. In this issue you will learn: How charitable trust-based planning can be used to reduce your taxable income. If you are the Trustee or beneficiary of an irrevocable, non-grantor trust…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor You don’t have to make your family’s assets easy for creditors to reach. Protecting your hard-earned assets for the benefit of yourself and your family can be accomplished through careful planning. These seven trust-based asset protection strategies can put significant (and often insurmountable) obstacles in the way of a creditor. In this…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor If you’re like most people, when you hear “estate planning” or “asset protection planning,” you think of someone like JR Ewing of the 1978 show Dallas, Bill Gates, or the Kennedys. WARNING: Common Misconception A very common misconception is only wealthy families and people in high-risk professions need asset protection planning. But…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor In a landmark, unanimous decision handed down on June 12, 2014, the United States Supreme Court held that inherited IRAs are not “retirement funds.” This ruling is important to you and your family because it means you need to take action to insure your retirement funds are protected when they pass to…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Income tax basis may not be the most exciting topic to read about. However, it is a critically important topic to anyone who owns significant assets. Gaining an understanding of the basics of basis is a way to avoid costly mistakes. The Real Meaning of Basis According to IRS Tax Topic 703,…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Asset Protection Philosophy 101 The Most Important Parts of Estate Planning Can’t Get Legislated Away Matthew T. McClintock, JD, Vice President, Education, WealthCounsel There is always a media swarm around the death of a celebrity, especially when they’re young, active in their careers, beloved, and tragic. The death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman in…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Make this your top New Year’s resolution — update your estate plan this year. If you didn’t update your estate plan last year when the federal tax laws changed, 2014 is the year to make some important changes in it. Alterations to tax laws can definitely impact your estate, plus addressing two…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Financial planning has become a generic term. You find it mentioned across media channels from banks to brokerages to accounting firms to personal finance. While the term itself may be diluted, planning is the first step in securing your long-term security. But this security is only realized when the plan is implemented.…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor The aging, healthcare and special needs conversation is vitally important to you and your family. Except for government employees and Social Security, retirement plans that pay benefits until death are pretty much a thing of the past. Plus, people today are living longer. Yet retirees’ need for income that is sustainable and…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Did you know that April is National Financial Literacy Month? This is the perfect time to sit down with your loved ones to discuss your financial and estate planning objectives. To help you move the discussion forward, we would like to suggest three action items: (1) Gather around the computer monitor with…
DetailsPlanning for the New “Zero Percent” Tax Bracket There was a recent change in the tax law that you might not be familiar with – yet it may entitle you to significant tax savings. Beginning January 1, 2008 and continuing through December 31, 2010 (unless extended by Congress), a zero tax rate may apply to…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor The law passed to deal with the so-called “fiscal cliff” included revisions to estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer (“GST”) tax laws and income tax laws that will affect estate planning for the foreseeable future. In this edition of The Wealth Advisor, we will take a first look at those changes and what…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor Visit EstatePlanning.com for free resources, including a one-hour webinar on Planning Opportunities Not to Miss in 2012, November 16, 2012, at 2 p.m. E.T. Does it seem like you are hearing more about estate planning lately? Well, you probably are. The financial press and estate planning professionals (lawyers, CPAs and financial advisors) have all…
DetailsThe Wealth Counselor 2012 is truly an exceptional year to do estate planning. The estate, gift, income and generation skipping transfer (GST) tax laws are the most favorable to taxpayers since the 1940s, or possibly ever, and are scheduled to become far less favorable in 2013. That gives taxpayers like you just five more months…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor You have signed all of your estate planning documents and, if your plan includes trusts, completed their funding. You sit back, relax, and enjoy the peace of mind that comes with completing that task. But don’t bask in that feeling for too long—estate planning is an ongoing process, not a one-time event.…
DetailsPrivate Counsel For the vast majority of Americans, planning is not discretionary. These individuals continue to have – or perhaps for the first time have – personal concerns that they need to address now because these concerns are unrelated to the economy. In fact, some of these concerns may even be made worse by our current economic…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor Almost everyone knows someone who had a problem and lost everything. Claims can, for example, allege professional liability, responsibility for a car accident, or unpaid creditors. Whether meritorious or not, defense can be enormously costly. With our litigious society, with limited risk for those making liability claims, asset protection planning has become…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor Actually, they do have something very important in common: your estate plan. In this issue of The Wealth Advisor, we will look at what the recent debt ceiling debate can tell us about the estate tax. Then we will look at several specialized trusts designed to solve particular estate planning problems, including…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor With the rash of bank failures, you may wonder whether – and to what extent – the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) will protect your bank accounts. Fortunately, new rules from the FDIC clarify how you can ensure maximum FDIC insurance coverage. You may need to modify your planning slightly to take…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor With the political and economic climate as it is in the summer of 2008, we are not likely to see total repeal of the federal estate tax in the foreseeable future. However, both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates support estate tax reform. Realistically, such reform is at least one year away, but…
DetailsThere was a recent change in the tax law that you might not be familiar with – yet it may entitle you to significant tax savings. Beginning January 1, 2008 and continuing through December 31, 2010 (unless extended by Congress), a zero tax rate may apply to long-term capital gain and dividend income that would…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor For many pet owners, pets are members of the family. These individuals often say that if something happens to them, they are more concerned with what will happen to their pets than to their children or spouse. This issue of The Wealth Advisor examines the issues surrounding caring for pets after the…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor This issue of The Wealth Advisor addresses a topic that is important to many Americans yet is sometimes misunderstood – trusts. In the right circumstances, trusts can provide significant advantages to those who utilize them, particularly in protecting trust assets from the creditors of beneficiaries. Admittedly this can be a complex topic,…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor No one likes to think about the possibility of their own disability or the disability of a loved one. However, as we’ll see below, the statistics are clear that we should all plan for at least a temporary disability. This issue of The Wealth Advisor examines the eye-opening statistics surrounding disability and…
DetailsThe Wealth Advisor The purpose of this newsletter is to inform you of changes in the law and to provide planning information and general financial news. These newsletters also give me a chance to share new techniques to enhance your planning, as well as to help you to stay current with tactics designed to maximize…
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