Everyone knows that March and April are tax season, when everybody scrambles to get their taxes done, mailed off, and out of mind for the rest of the year; but according to this article from Reuters the taxes you pay in April can be significantly lower if you take the time to think about them… Read More »
Posts Categorized: General Items
Not All Healthcare Directives Are Created Equal
Google is getting into the healthcare industry. Google recently made it possible for individuals to store their healthcare records online through their Google Health Records Management Service, a move that has met with mixed reviews. Even more recently, Google Health has started offering another, similar, service: storage of your “end-of-life wishes” along with your healthcare… Read More »
Internet Tools to Improve Your Personal Finances
The realm of personal finance is in the midst of being revolutionized. The crash on Wall Street has made many armchair investors mistrustful of professional financial advice, and many people are now taking the time to manage their own personal finances with the focus shifted from investing and earning to budgeting and saving. The problem… Read More »
E-mail, Twitter, Pay Pal—Oh My! How to Protect Your Online Assets
E-mail, blog, iTunes, social networking, online photo albums… more and more of our lives and our businesses are moving online, but what happens to that online life when you pass away? Will your accounts languish, becoming an easy mark for hackers? Eventually be deleted? Perhaps they’ll be passed to your spouse after petitioning the court… Read More »
A Situation Such As This
A child paralyzed in a tragic accident; a spouse diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and then placed in assisted living after a terrible fall; mounting medical bills. How does one plan for a situation such as this? Kate Michelman certainly thought she and her husband had planned for every eventuality—she is a well-known and well-to-do public… Read More »
Family Business? You Might Flip For A FLP
The Wall Street Journal says that family limited partnerships are finding renewed favor as an estate planning tool, thanks to recent tax-court decisions. In an article entitled “Covering Your Assets” Journal writer Mark Klimek asserts that despite some IRS opposition, tax court rulings in recent years have endorsed the use of FLPs when they are… Read More »
Help for Growing Old Gracefully and Peacefully
There is a saying that goes something along the lines of “the only thing worse than getting old is the alternative,” which is said to express pretty well the dismay, betrayal, confusion and sometimes horror that go along with the aging process. Americans are living longer than ever—which really means that there are more opportunities… Read More »
Preserving Your Grandparents’ Story
An estate planner’s office can feel a lot like it’s all about the logistics of death: who gets what and how, who gets to make decisions, where things are kept, etc. But at our office, we know that every estate plan is also about a personal or a family story, and we encourage our clients… Read More »
Advance Business Planning is the First Step to Success
Big corporations may be laying off employees in distressingly record numbers, but big corporations are not the only employers in the U.S.—as long as we have our small business community, all may not be lost. According to this article on Reader’s Digest.com, small businesses are taking the economic downturn in stride, and in some cases… Read More »
The Financial Diet
Towards the beginning of the year most people make resolutions having to do with diet or finances—or both. But what if you combined the two and put yourself on a financial diet? This is exactly what Ron Lieber is suggesting in his February 6 article in the New York Times. As Lieber points out, because… Read More »