A couple of weeks ago, someone won a nearly $600M jackpot — though it was “only” $380M if they took the lump sum cash option. And then, a few days later, the news broke that Yahoo! was buying Tumblr for cool $1.1B, making their founder fantastically wealthy. Time and again, [...]
Estate & Financial Planning
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” This page is the home of articles about setting goals and making plans for the future.
Whether it relates to big picture money management or arranging for the orderly distribution of your estate, you’ll find it here.
Topics of interest include budgeting, income and expense forecasting, preparing a will and/or trust, powers of attorney, living wills, beneficiary designations, estate tax issues, and even selecting a financial planner (if you you need one).
I admit it. I’m a GPS-watcher. Whenever we go on long roadtrips, I track our progress closely on our GPS navigator. In doing so, the main thing that I watch is our ETA. Shaving minutes off our (projected) arrival time is like a game to me. If you’ve ever done [...]
This is just a quick note to point out a potentially useful tool from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling called MyMoneyCheckUp. Developed by the NFCC in conjunction with researchers at Ohio State, the Univ of Wisconsin, and the Univ of Chicago, it’s basically an online interview covering a variety [...]
Here we go again. Every once in awhile I’ll run into an article* about a great set of dividend-paying stocks whose payout dates are lined up to ensure a monthly flow of dividends. And when I do, I can’t help but roll my eyes. If you’re interested in picking stocks, [...]
After being somewhat critical of financial planners over the past couple of weeks, here’s a bit of positive news… If you’re looking for help with your finances, you might want to check to see if there will be any “Financial Planning Days” in your area. What are “Financial Planning Days”, [...]
While we’re on the topic of financial planners, and at the risk of getting stuck in a rut… Have you ever wondered what the advice of a good financial planner or advisor is worth? In other words, what sort of benefit are you actually deriving from their planning services (and [...]
Remember when I wrote about Allan Roth’s article on the fiduciary standard and financial planners? Sure you do, it was just last week. Well… The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (a.k.a. CFP Board) has fired back. In their response, which was written by Kevin Keller (CEO of the CFP [...]
My father-in-law recently passed away and we just received a copy of his will. As it turns out, his final wishes were for his estate to be distributed to just a subset of his children (there’s no spouse in the picture). In doing this, he didn’t specifically state that he [...]