It’s New Year’s Eve. Have you made your New Year’s resolutions for 2018? If you have, you are with the majority of respondents of a recent YouGuv online survey. The top four resolutions for 2018 were to eat better, exercise …
Articles
Should You Consider Long-Term Care Insurance?
According to an AARP survey, 43% of 65 year old persons will spend time in a nursing home. Of those, 55% will spend more than one year in a nursing home and 21% will stay more than five years. And …
My Beneficiary/Joint Owner Will Handle Things. Not!
“I’ll just name my sister or brother as beneficiary of all my accounts; they will know what to do to take care of my minor children when I am gone.” Or “I will name just one of the kids as …
Be aware of the Holiday Blues
It’s such a fun time of the year. Right? We are in the midst of the holiday season. For many people, it is time for the holiday party hop. In addition to family and friends, most organizations and employers are …
Your Estate Planning Documents When You Move
This past week, I was asked by a former Missouri resident now living in Michigan if her will and powers of attorney drafted in Missouri are good in Michigan. Without having reviewed the documents, I had to say it depends. …
Plan While You Can
Would you agree that you have more options now while you are alive and well, than after you’re dead? Would you also agree that you have more options now when you are alive and well, than after you are mentally …
When Should I Give Up Control?
I am now in my tenth year of writing the weekly column Planning Matters for the Times Herald. If you include the Savvy magazine columns, I’ve had over 500 columns published. I am always looking for estate planning, elder law, …
More Estate Planning Questions
On a daily basis in our office, we get a lot of estate planning questions because of all the estate planning that we do. In this column, I like to periodically cover the questions we get. Today, we are going …
How to Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt
The average U.S. household has $5,700 in credit card debt according to the researchers at ValuePenguin. The researchers also found that the average credit card debt for balance-carrying households is $16,048. That’s more than a quarter of the annual median …
Three Critical Questions When Planning Retirement
Are you at or near retirement? Or are you in your prime earning years? Or are you just beginning your career? Regardless of where you are in your working life, you should be thinking about retirement. You should start planning …