This year, total student loan debt has climbed over the $1 trillion mark and tuition continues to grow at double the rate of inflation. Starting a college savings plan has never been more important. The earlier families get started, the better. Most of the time, families are well-intentioned and want to save for their children’s […]
Let’s face it. Needing to buy life insurance for your kids tops the list of Things No One Wants to Think About. It’s difficult to look at the long-term and financial reasoning behind a topic which is full of emotion. Parents often can’t address it and many life insurance agents don’t broach this awkward conversation. […]
One of the main goals at Epilawg is to help you plan your own epilogue to your life. Many of the posts here discuss passing on what you’ve accumulated during your lifetime to your loved ones. However, what if everything you accumulated throughout your life is lost because of your health? Because you did not […]
The New York Times Magazine recently ran an article on life settlements or viatical settlements. These settlements are the process in which individuals sell their life insurance policies to investors to receive cash now. As the article notes, “Life insurance is designed to benefit the living, a spouse or heirs, not those who perish.” However, […]
I’m going to begin this post with a personal tidbit. I decided to run my first full marathon a few months ago. After running five half-marathons in past years, I figured this would be rather simple, double my training and double my time. No problem…I thought. Was I ever wrong! This was the single most […]
While speaking to clients regarding their estate plan, the topic of conversation often shifts to … “I wonder if my parents have done any planning?” As we get further into the discussion of expenses – the cost of funerals, burials, cremation, estate administration, etc., I regularly hear … “I am concerned about my parents’ financial […]
If you are one of the millions of parents who own a life insurance policy, you may have your child named individually as a primary or contingent beneficiary if you were to pass away while the policy was still in effect. However, naming a child individually, especially under the age of eighteen, can have unintended […]
For insured’s under the misperception that their life insurance policy is iron clad simply because they pay their annually billed premium, these folks may be in for an abrupt and expensive surprise. Many policies are designed to stay in force only on the basis of critical assumptions being met or exceeded over the life of […]
Suppose your aging mother asks your sister to take care of her finances and help her to balance her checkbook. You live out of town, and think it’s a great idea. To make things easier, your mother adds your sister as a joint owner of her bank account. When your mother dies, her Will leaves […]
Our good fortune has continued with expanded growth in the markets. This is typical of an election year and if history is any indication, there should be more of this to come. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 13,000 and the NASDAQ Composite has reached a new high as well (much of this […]
We previously discussed the options available to a surviving spouse inheriting a qualified retirement account. This article will address the options available to a non-spouse beneficiary inheriting a qualified retirement account. Just for a brief reminder, for purposes of this article, the term “retirement account” will be used to encompass all qualified retirement accounts, meaning […]