Legacy Planning Partners

02/02/2022

Why would someone steal your page? I have no idea but it happened to us twice. The first time they were successful in taking my wife Jan's account and blocking her out. The second, someone from Bangladesh tried to log in to this account and I was notified and the false log in was stopped. The problem with both is that you lose access to your account. In Jan's case she had to create a new account, in mine I have been blocked by Facebook for two weeks.
Beware of Bait and Click! You may get a message that looks like Facebook but is a hacker. You mat lose your account and they even change the security log in features. I suppose that taking someone's account provides access to all of your "friends". For me, it is another reason to never store financial information in your computer or programs. You would think that Facebook would be safe, think again!

12/05/2019

There is always confusion regarding whether a family has to repay Medicaid after the death of a Medicaid recipient. While there are only guidelines, no set procedure that happens in every instance, our friends at Lavelle & Finn have provided us some starting points for planning. Medicaid is serious and difficult to understand. We suggest no one undertakes Medicaid planning without the help of a qualified Elder Law attorney. This information is provided to help start you in your thinking process. Please call us with your questions.

Federal law requires the state to attempt to recover the long-term care benefits from a Medicaid recipient's estate after the recipient's death. If steps aren't taken to protect the Medicaid recipient's house, it may need to be sold to settle the claim. 

12/03/2019

So, who do you love? Usually we love our kids. We may also love, or at least like a lot, the people they choose to love, their spouses. My experience, though, is that we don't love those sons-and daughters in-law enough to want them to be our beneficiaries. So, God forbid, if our children die before us we want our stuff to go to our grandchildren. It's called, "per stirpes".
So here is the problem. Like most ordinary folks we name our spouse and then our kids as the beneficiaries of our stuff, our life insurance, our IRA's, our investment accounts. We then add those two words, "per stirpes" and forget about it for years. This is no problem until we die and someone realizes that one of your children, a beneficiary, has died before you. Opps! We forgot to update our stuff and now have to scramble to get legal things to prove who should inherit what. Trust me, it is much simpler to just review your named beneficiaries now than try to sort things out at the end. A good time to do this is during your annual review. We do it automatically, give a call for a review.

11/15/2018

Don't Panic!! Okay, your statements were down this month. Yes the stock market is in a correction and bonds are seeing a decline in price. It had to happen. You can't go for years without a pullback and anytime interest rates go up, bond prices go down. The folks at LPL and elsewhere see this as similar to the correction that happened in 2015. It is not a Black Swan event. There is no sub-prime mortgage crisis, the economy is humming along, job growth is good and corporations are making money. The best thing to do is as always...do nothing! I don't know when this correction will end but it typically takes four to six months from the bottom. Remember that unless you make a mistake and sell.. you won't lose. Your statements have always just been a reflection of market price on a given day. You still have all of the shares you did before! The person with the most shares at the end wins! If you have some cash, this might be a good time to buy!

10/02/2018

Got hit with a credit card phone scam this morning. A call to my business line and a recorded message said that my card ending with ###X had been frozen due to fraudulent activity. I was instructed to call a toll free number. Naturally I didn't. Instead I called the customer service number on my card. There were no problems with my account. Just for the heck of it I called the bogus number. The listing on my caller ID showed Chase Visa Credit Card services and the automated receptionist answered as Chase VISA Fraud division and asked for the last four numbers of the card I was calling about. I ended the call at that point and called Chase VISA's real fraud department.
The lesson: it would be very unlikely to receive a recorded message from your credit card company. Trust nothing your receive over the phone or internet. Do not give out personal information to anyone you are not 100% sure about. Phishing and scams are routine and don't be caught no matter how legitimate the message sounds. It is always good to hang up and verify the sources before you act. Be wise..Verify!!

02/12/2018

So here we are again! It has been a nice respite from the market jitters of 2008. We all were lulled into thinking the numbers we saw on our statements were really gains. We forgot that they were just a picture in time. If you didn't sell you continue to have the same number of shares, units, or whatever nomenclature defines your investments. After 34 years the most important thing that I know about investing is that the person with the most shares at the end wins! Also, in most cases, if you don't sell, you don't lose! So, if I am right, isn't a market correction an opportunity to buy low? It certainly isn't a good time to bail out.

'While we suspect market weakness could persist in the near term, we continue to believe stocks are well supported by strong fundamentals..." John Lynch Chief Investment Strategist, LPL Financial 2/9/2018

Like you, I hated to see the market pullback! I hate the volatility and the flash trading that drives prices up or down in an instant. It is hard not to remember the great recession. But you know what? Most of you survived! We saw the recovery over a number of years and new wealth created as the economy gained ground and the credit problems were fixed.

My crystal ball tells me that I haven't a clue about the near term. I do agree with most of the investment gurus that we are on sound footing. No one can control emotion and I believe that is the biggest factor contributing to our fear!

Here is a good article by LPL Financial's Research team.

After a turbulent week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 Index officially slipped into correction territory at yesterday’s close—marking the fastest move from record levels to corre…

12/26/2017

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

11/27/2017

I was reminded that year end is coming fast! (How did that happen?) I had a call asking about deducting investment management fees from your taxes. What's that about?
If you have a managed account, you pay a fee that is usually deducted from the account to pay everyone involved in the management. Investment expenses are generally tax deductable so shouldn't a mangement fee be tax deductable?
The answer is a big maybe! My experience has been that for non- IRA accounts the management fee is generally tax deductable, for IRA accounts it is not. The answer lies with your tax professional and how the fee is paid. Is it paid from inside the IRA or paid separately? If everything is happening inside the IRA, then what effect does it have on your income that would justify an income tax deduction?
My advice is to rely on your tax professional. If you are not interested in surprises from the IRS discuss this with your accountants. After all, that's why you pay them!

11/21/2017

Thanks to everyone for the Birthday greetings! I had a great day and appreciate all of your thoughts. It is hard to believe I am celebrating 49 for the 21st time.

10/20/2017

70% OF THOSE OVER THE AGE OF 65 WILL NEED SOME FORM OF LONG TERM CARE DURING THEIR LIFETIME.*
Holy C......!!
I went to an elder care workshop sponsored by The Conkling Center. The room was packed with people of all ages but mostly over 50. I have to remark that when my book, Exit Right was reviewed by Kirkus Reviews the one negative comment I received was that I spent too much time discussing Medicaid and long term care. I thought, at the time, the reviewer must have been a young person. I see Long Term Care as one of the biggest and most costly threats to financial independance. Apparently the many attornies, care managers, administrators and attendees agree with me. With the average cost of assisted living at $4,800/ month, nursing homes at $13,000 and 24 hr home care at $16,000 it does not take very long to spend alot of money. Remember, the only way to pay for LTC is by using your own money, LTC insurance or Medicaid. Sure, no one wants to talk about this and even fewer take the time to plan for it, but with 70% of us needing some help, it really is, "Pay me Now or Pay me Later!" Plan now, Avoid Crisis!

*2015 Medicare and You. National Medicare Handbook. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. September 2015.

10/06/2017

God forbid this should happen but if it does the last thing we will have to worry about is how much money we have in our portfolios! We seem to be in inpending crisis, whether it is Korea, Harvey, or Irma and Jose ripping toward our coast. I know all of us are scared as things seem to be spinning out of control on many levels. I have no answers but do know that poor decisons are made out of fear and crisis. Perhaps it is time to remember the Serenity Prayer? Accept the things we cannot change, change the things we can and have the wisdom to know the difference. I also understand that for many of us we have lost faith in our leaders. We have become divided. There is no room for compromise, someone has to be wrong. Our Country is strong. Our economy is strong. Our leaders need to get over their selfish issues and be strong for us! We need to change the things we can and that begins here at home. We must demand that all of our leaders stop working for their party and begin to work for us. We need to get over greed and embrace compassion. I see the devisiveness growing in our country as a bigger threat to our democracy than the nuclear bomb. Our portfolios will be fine if we endeavor to build bridges instead of walls. If that sounds political, so be it!