Beneficiary Designations

Miss these four factors and even the best retirement plan will fall apart fast. Spare yourself and your loved ones the high costs and stress that take many people by surprise. If you don’t plan for these big four elements of retirement costs, all of your hard work in planning for retirement—not to mention a…

How do you ensure that you’ll be remembered as time and generations continue after you’re gone? One way to create a legacy is through the use of life insurance. According to this article in MarketWatch, “5 ways to make a great impression after you’re dead,” life insurance is the Swiss Army knife of creating a…

People are often surprised when they learn what estate planning encompasses. It’s not just for the wealthy, and it’s more than about distributing assets on death. Even if your “estate” is a single family home, apartment or condo and your assets include a few retirement accounts and a stack of photo albums from the 1960s,…

Unlike going getting an annual check-up or renewing a driver’s license, there’s no penalty for the person who does not having a will and estate plan in place. Their spouse or children pay the price. What’s more scary about most Americans not having a will, is that only 36% of Americans with minor aged children…

Knowing when to change beneficiaries is an important part of estate planning. Your job isn’t necessarily over once you create an estate plan. This is because changes in your life should spark a fresh look at the plan. Knowing the appropriate times to do that is important, according to the Aiken Standard in “On the…

Funding is the process of transferring your assets to your living trust. Funding may also include changing the designations on certain assets like life insurance or retirement accounts to name your living trust as beneficiary. Funding is an important element to any trust based estate plan. Remember that one of the benefits of a living…