In estate planning, our financial assets and material possessions often take center stage. While these assets and the impact they can have on the lives of our heirs are important, they fail to fully capture the wealth accumulated throughout our lives ...
So, how do you go about coaching this team of guardians, agents, executors, trustees, and beneficiaries; and what should you expect from them in return? We’ve highlighted the best practices we encourage all of our clients, friends, and family to follow below:
Haunted houses are not the only thing that can be downright terrifying, give you a shock, and make it hard for you to sleep at night. A poorly made or forgotten-about estate plan can leave your loved ones vulnerable to hauntings of the financial kind.
I wasn’t thinking about the emotional aspects (which I’d selfishly like to assume would be devastating) or even the long-term financial stuff (we’ve taken care of our life insurance needs and periodically update our estate plan). Instead, I was thinking about the day-to-day practical things, like the physical act of paying our bills and our mortgage.
While both men and women should have a plan in place for aging, the statistics particularly demand a female’s attention. According to the American Association for Long Term Care Insurance, more than 70% of nursing home residents are women. Add to that the 4.7 million women who used an in-home nurse aid just last year.
Consequently, we encourage our clients to think about their investments as a means to an end (or as Greene puts it, “Connecting investing to what it can accomplish”) and to gauge how well they are doing by seeing if they are still on track to accomplish their goals. In the end, that’s the only benchmark that truly matters.