How to Avoid Probate

In this post we are going to discuss how to avoid probate? How many people out there listening have wills out there? If you don’t have a will the state will provide one for you. Now, we work with a team of lawyers. I’m not a lawyer but I am a legal assistant. I work with a lot of attorneys out there. We work with qualified people, who specialize in the estate planning arena. So, you should have either a Will or Trust, Power of Attorney and a Living Will at the very minimal out there. So, we’re going to talk about, how to avoid probate?

Well you could avoid probate by doing joint tendencies. Every strategy we talk about has advantages, disadvantages. The advantage is of course if one person dies you can pass it to the other one, but , the second death causes probate and if it goes a full 5 years, it avoids a 5 year look back plus it avoids the inheritance taxes for Pennsylvania and of course in Ohio it’s different. They’ve an Ohio state tax of $338,334 dollars on that. So, there is advantages and disadvantages, which ever strategy. You could also use TOD- Trade Transfers on Death accounts, POD- Paid on Death accounts. There’s also what we call a poor man’s trust, we have main beneficiary of the bank account or mutual funds. But, the negative on those is, if one of your children passes on before you then both of you pass on, you could be disinheriting your grand children. That’s right, because you don’t have the proper language in here and it doesn’t get passed down to your grand children. It goes to the surviving children which is called per capita, very important on setting those designations up. But, another way is to have a living trust or Revocable Trust where you have control of it and you are grantor of the trust or the seller. You created you are the Trustor, you are the trustee and you are the beneficiary. One spouse dies; they become the Trustor, the Trustee and beneficiary. There is article one section 10 in the constitution; it’s been around a long, long time. But, the negative on those is if you have a trust and if you never put anything in the trust or you never transferred to another trust, it could be a disaster. You spent money for something like that and guess what it didn’t do any good at all. So, it is most important to fund the trust and you must work with a qualified attorney, who specializes in that arena and also they usually cost more than a standard Will. They can be anywhere from $500 dollars to $3000 dollars.

Dave Gollner discusses how to Avoid Probate

How to Avoid Probate with a Living Trust Brochure

One thing we’ve tried to show people is, if we can show you how to reduce money that you are over paying in your investments and save you money in taxes., then, you have extra money to be able to get this trust if it’s suitable, what you should do, is call our office toll free at 800-264-4963, Legacy Financial Strategies and we will send out to you a pamphlet called aLivi ng Trust. It talks about powers of attorney, talks about wills, talks about with and without a will, talks about the advantages and disadvantages. Then, you could watch this short 15-minute video, If you would like the longer hour and half version, we have that as well.  Then after you have all the facts and you sit down with a qualified licensed attorney in your state Pennsylvania or Ohio. Then, you will be in a better position to find out if that makes sense or if it doesn’t.

Remember, every strategy we talk about, if someone doesn’t talk about the negatives, you better run. There are always positives and negatives to every strategy. Although, most people find that a Living Trust is suitable based on what they are trying to accomplish. Contact our office today to learn more about how to avoid probate.

How to Protect your Assets

In this post we are going to discuss:  “How to protect your assets from catastrophic illness and Medicaid spend down.” We work with pre-retirees and retirees. We work with pre-crisis and crisis planning. Pre-crisis is before you need In-home care or assisted living care, adult day or nursing home.

Now, one way is by purchasing long term care insurance. I don’t particularly like that type of strategy because, if you have expenses and you never use it, you lose all that money even though there is about a 70% chance when you are over 65 you will need some type of care.

We like using a strategy called “asset based long term care”.  Let’s say you have about an $100,000 dollars in the bank and you transfer it to an insurance company and the bank’s only paying may be 1 to 2%, this company will pay a little bit more than your currently getting at the bank . But, one thing  unique about this is 100% liquid but if you go into a nursing home and if you qualify for this plan folks, you can get up to 300,000 dollars of long term care which you can use for In-home care, assisted living care, adult day care or nursing home. If you never use it, guess what? They have a death benefit. It will pay either the hirer of the investment bucket that’s growing or the death benefits whichever is hired. So, that’s a smart way to self insure and we have many, many other strategy on pre crisis planning. However,if you are in a situation folks and you haven’t done the planning and you are maybe in a nursing home or about to go into nursing home then we do a lot of Medicaid planning.

Dave Gollner Discusses how to protect your Assets

There’s an organization we do business with is called “NESA-Nationwide Elder Service Associates”, the founder is Hal Fliegelman. Hal is one of the country’s leading authorities on this complex subject and is frequently referred to as “Mr. Medicaid.”  More importantly, he and the others at NESA have a unique combination of compassion, knowledge and skill that has allowed them to give thousands of people peace of mind by helping them cope with the emotional and financial demands created by a loved one’s long term sickness.

Hal graduated from Brown University with High Honors and from Harvard Law School and Widener Law School, magna cum laude, where he was an Editor of the Law Review.  He is frequently consulted about Medicaid Planning by other lawyers around the country and has been recognized for his Medicaid Planning achievements.  He publishes widely and often on a variety of Medicaid-related subjects.

We have an online proposal to all pages that we can do for you at no charge, showing you how much money we can protect. Now, everybody’s heard about the 5 year look back, the deficit reduction, Title 19, it took back in February, 2006. Now, we have a lady that’s 500,000 dollars of assets and guess what folks, we are all here to protect all but 95,000. Even though, her husband who is 81, who has Alzheimer’s and is currently in a nursing home. So, we have strategies in place.

How to protect your assets with Legacy Financial

We can’t protect all the money if you are in a crisis. But as I mentioned, in one of my previous videos between the veterans 8 and 10 program and Medicaid program. We have strategies to help you. We work with experts throughout the country both Pennsylvania, Ohio and all 50 state. So, if you like more information on that or like a DVD on that, you call toll free at 800-264-4963 and I have a the video , oh, it’s actually an audio where I interview Hal Fliegelman and talks all about to get… about Medicaid spending  and crisis planning. Contact us today to learn how we can help you protect your assets.

47 Secret Veteran’s Benefits

In this post we are going to talk about a unique way of protecting your assets from catastrophic illness. This has to do with crisis planning. We also handle pre-crisis planning and we work for pre-retirees and retirees. Look folks, if you are a veteran out there, or if you know someone who is a veteran this is a very important topic. In fact, there is a book out there titled “47 Secret Veterans’ Benefits for seniors” and the lady who wrote it is elder law attorney Victoria Collier. In fact, she was on one our radio programs.  If you click on the Radio Archives at the top you can listen to the interview. If you are over 65 years of age and you spent at least 90 days in the military or you are a widow of a veteran who spent 90 days in military. One of those 90 days our country had to be in a combat zone. The veteran did not have to been in a combat zone. But, our country had to be. Now most of the time United States has been at some type of conflict but there’s periods of time we call the “doughnut period” like from 1955 to 1964 that the person wouldn’t be eligible. But, if you are over 65 and you meet those eligibility requirments you can get up to almost 24,000 dollars a year tax free for husband and wife. And veteran if you are single about 20,000 approximately and if you are a widow about up to 12,000, tax free. So, here is how you have to do it.

Veteran’s Benefits Eligibility

Number 1: you have to be over 65. You have to meet two of the six ADL’s. Now what does ADL’s mean? ADL stands for “Activity of daily living”. You have trouble eating, bathing, dressing, transfer from bed to chair, chair to chair, walking, or may be Alzheimer’s disease. If you meet two of those ADL’s you may be eligible. Who decides that?  Your doctor decides that you could be eligible to receive that money for “In-home care”. That’s right, In-home care, assisted living care, adult day care or nursing home. Now, if you went to your veteran service organization in the county, each county has one and if you don’t do the proper planning, you might become disqualified because you’ve too much assets and too much income. Those are the next qualifications. They go by your assets “how much they assess?”  It depends on your age but usually no more than 80,000 if you are in your 70’s or 80’s, may be you can only keep 20-25,000 plus your home, plus the car. The second criteria, is you have to meet the income qualification but you know you can actually pay a relative to take care of you at home and there has been an agreement draw up. There has been a transaction but you can get up to again 24,000 for a married couple, 20,000 for a single and may be up to 12,000 dollars for a widow.

David Gollner Discusses Veteran’s Benefits.

A very powerful program that a lot of people are not familiar is called “Aid in attendance program”, that’s a veteran program. It’s been around a long time. If, you’d like more information tune in to our radio program, it’s posted under the Radio Archives or if you like you can get a copy of this book explains a lot about it, Letters in big print, easy to read. You can call our office toll free at 800-264-4963.  That’s Legacy Financial Strategies and we’ll tell you how to get a copy of this book called “47 Secret Veterans’ Benefits for seniors” at absolutely no charge. So, if you have a relative, if you have a family member, this is very, very important. So, please call our office today to discuss your Veteran’s Benefits.

Income Planning for your Retirement

My name is Sheri Marini. I’m from Legacy Financial Strategies. I am a certified Estate Planner and a registered Investment Advisor Representative. Legacy Financial Strategies is a firm that works with people who are retired or about to be retired, so people primarily 60 and older but we do have some people who are still working. Our firm specializes in four areas. We show people how to avoid probate, how to reduce taxes, how to get a competitive rate of return on your money without risking your principle and how to avoid the Medicare spend down process that can happen because of a catastrophic illness.

A Discussion on Income Planning

What I’d like to talk about a little bit today is about income planning. I have a lot of people whom I work with who are on the verge of retiring and they’re wondering. Their biggest question is how much money they will need to retire. And some of these people have pensions, many have 403-Bs or 401-Ks or IRAs and they’re looking at all the pieces of what they’re going to have to work with in retirement and wondering if they’re going to have enough money to last them for a potential 30-year retirement. One of the things we specialize in doing is taking and looking at the whole picture and determining how much money is this person going to need to last throughout their entire retirement, and I find it doesn’t matter how much money a person has accumulated everyone has a universal concern of whether they’re going to have too much life left at the end of their money. Some of them knew planning techniques that we use. We can design a plan whether a person has a pension or not, to a supplement that they control. In other words, they determine when they’re going to activate this income and this income stream can last their entire retirement. And they have the flexibility and the control behind it so it’s literally something that is self directed by them. So we sit down and we tailor approach to each person’s situation.

Now this ability to control this income stream that we can design for you in your retirement is especially important if you do not have a pension but even for those who have pensions I find a lot of retirees or pre-retirees coming into my office and saying they’re concerned about whether their pension is actually going to be there in the format that it currently is today. We’ve seen a number of different pension funds get into trouble and they like the flexibility that they can have a secondary backup plan, that they have a plan that they can sit down and design for themselves and they have control over it. In fact one of the recommendations that the General Accounting Office came out with recently is suing a number of different vehicles to design a plan to supplement Social Security that is a guarantee that can last a person’s lifetime; so not necessarily relying just on Social Security or a pension. The article was just recently released.

Schedule your Income Planning Consultation Today.

So for more information about income planning for retirement or any other topic please contact Legacy Financial Strategies.

Financial Planning Strategies: Power of Annual Reset

Legacy Financial Strategy is a registered investment advisory firm.  In this post we’re going to talk about the Power Annual Reset.  We’re talking about green money, money that you cannot afford to lose.  In future posts, we’ll talk about red money, money at risk.  But in this one that we will show you how to protect your money.

• I’m going to show you how you could participate in the upside of the market with no downside risks.
•  I’m going to show you some examples how to participate in the upside of the market with no downside risk.

On the diagram you can see the red line.  This is the S&P 500.  It’s kind of like the benchmark.  And from 2000 to 2010, it’s been a rollercoaster.  Of course, 2011 has been a real rollercoaster also.  But if you put $100,000 back in 2000, at the end of 2000, the dollar, it’s been worth $69,000.  That is not good.  This strategy is showing to put money in the green money where you cannot lose your money and that’s this blue line here.  So when the market tanks like it did in 2000, 2001, 2002, you know what you get?  You get zero.  Your $100,000 is 100% protected.

David Gollner Discusses the Power of Annual Reset

Now, we could have changed it to a fixed account and you would have earned interest in that bear market, but let’s say you didn’t.  So, when the market tanks, you can’t lose anything.  Zero is your hero, so during those first 3 three years your money will stay at $100,000, and then when the market took off, it went up to $106,000, $119,000, $125,000.  Now, you folks, you didn’t get all the upside of the market, but you didn’t get any of the downside of the market, and every year your gains are locked in.  There are about 50 companies that offer this out of about 2000 out there.  And then when it tanked in the latter years, your money was locked in and then when it took off, you continue to climb.  So, during that same 10-year period your $100,000 would have grown to $136,000.  First is with S&P 69,000.  Now, I don’t have to ask if you have money under red money, I think you already have $136,000 then you would have $69,000.  So this might be a strategy where you may consider putting a portion of your money in that particular category.  So you participate in the upside with no downside and you gained you are locked in every year.  This top line is an income.  Your money is growing, but they are in the company anywhere from 5% to 8%.  This has to do with income; income that you cannot outlive.  And, folks, it’s hard to explain in 2 to 5 minutes all about this strategy.

Schedule your Financial Planning Consultation Today

If you like more information, you can call Legacy Financial Strategies at 800-264-4963, and we’ll show you how to get a copy of this DVD.  It’s about 10 minutes long to explain  a lot more in depth and absolutely no charge.  And for those who like to read, we’ll also send you a book, which says, “Growth without Risk.”  The safe and secure way to earn stock market link returns without marked risks to your principal.  So, again, if you like to have a copy of these, call our office toll free at 800-264-4963.  Thank you.

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