Making Cents: Where Entrepreneurs Go Wrong
The lives of many entrepreneurs frequently get defined by their business. Business owners are typically smart, hard driving people with their eye on one thing only – SUCCESS. Entrepreneurs take on an alter ego that makes it very difficult to separate their lives from their business lives. There are six common missteps that, if avoided,…
Making Cents: What Does Your Parents’ Estate Plan Say
Speaking to your children about money is not easy, but speaking to parents can be even tougher. No parent goes through life wondering how they can ruin their finances or make their adult children miserable while settling an estate without a plan. Yet it seems that this scenario is more common than the elder parent…
Making Cents: Money Is The Root Of Many Family Problems
A common goal for most parents and grandparents is family harmony. They hope that the family will stay close and love each other beyond their lifetimes and for generations to come. Unfortunately, these dreams often fail to come true through a combination of their naivety, poor planning and weak communication. The reality is that you don’t…
Making Cents: Protecting Your Assets For The Next Generation
Many people are more concerned about preserving their wealth for the next generation than they are about their own well-being or bucket list. Hat’s off to you paternalistic savers – your next generation would thank you if they only knew how you really feel. Many make gifts that they can’t afford and avoid spending on…
Making Cents: How to talk to Elderly Loved Ones about their Estate Planning
In many ways, this is one of the most important issues that I see, and one of the least frequently discussed within the family ranks. The topic is family awareness of the aging parents’ financial situation and estate plan. All too often adult children are surprised at the poor planning that their parents did to…
Making Cents: How Close Should You Watch Your Plans?
A financial plan is just that, a plan to help attain the financial freedoms you want while taking precautions so that the unthinkable doesn’t sink your ship. This requires diligent coordination of many moving parts. Those parts are, but not limited to, cash flow, inflation, earnings, investment performance, tax laws, estate plans, insurance plans, family…
Making Cents: Beneficiary Choices Need to be Reviewed
With certain assets, it doesn’t matter what your will says. Upon your passing, these assets will flow to whomever you elect as the beneficiary of each individual account. Beneficiary elections are made for retirement accounts and insurance contracts. Typically, these beneficiary elections are made when you establish the account. For certain retirement accounts, these elections may be…
Making Cents: How To Pick A Trustee
A trustee is generally a person or a company who oversees the governance and maintenance of a trust. For some trusts, you may be your own trustee while for others, you may need or want an independent trustee. For simplicity sake, realize that if you are your own trustee and have the power to reach…
Making Cents: One Thing About The Internet, You Can’t Take It With You
Sometimes things that are designed to make life simpler seem to complicate matters further. Take the ever growing presence of the internet. How many websites, user IDs, and passwords can any one person endure? Especially in this world of changing passwords and identity protection. Mainly due to security reasons, the internet, which was supposed to…
Making Cents: Precautions Can Mitigate Losses In The Next Storm
Stuff happens, and there are obvious natural disasters that no one can prevent. But getting your house in order to protect what is important to you is something that you can start to fix today. What would bother me, for example, are the drawers of old photos from my childhood and then of raising a…