Estate planning and finances

[waverly]

I want to get some things checked off the to do list the beginning of this year. Please let me know what I might be missing.

1. I think we need a will because we don’t have a document that says who gets the kids if we both pass away.
2. We do have a trust for the kids which includes their regular savings and 529 college savings.
Do we need any other trusts? Anything else to suggest for estate planning?

For financial planning we have a budget and track our money, We have retirement accounts, kids college fund, and emergency savings. We have bought a house and starting to get equity there. We do have some cc debt and student loans so I think we need to look at our goals and repayment options for those again. Anything else we are missing? We now have a tax guy and a financial advisor as well.

[oswin]

When we did our wills, we also did at the same time (with the same lawyer) Power of Attorney, Medical Power of Attorney, and Advance Directives (I think that's what it was called? the don't let me be a vegetable forever one). We've never needed to use any of them, but good to have in place before you need them.

Our wills are set up to make a trust for the kids with whatever assets there are. So you get to pick the person(s) who get guardianship and also the person(s) controlling the money (it can be the same person).

IIRC, you don't really need to describe all of your assets in your will, but it is a good idea to have an accounting of your assets stored near where you store your will, e.g. in your safe. So that whoever has to deal with the estate can easily find everything. This might include usernames/passwords written on paper.

[whitemerlot]

Do you have life insurance?

[dr.girlfriend]

Nov 25, 2018 12:31:41 GMT -5 waverly said:

I want to get some things checked off the to do list the beginning of this year. Please let me know what I might be missing.

1. I think we need a will because we don’t have a document that says who gets the kids if we both pass away.
2. We do have a trust for the kids which includes their regular savings and 529 college savings.
Do we need any other trusts? Anything else to suggest for estate planning?

For financial planning we have a budget and track our money, We have retirement accounts, kids college fund, and emergency savings. We have bought a house and starting to get equity there. We do have some cc debt and student loans so I think we need to look at our goals and repayment options for those again. Anything else we are missing? We now have a tax guy and a financial advisor as well.

IDK how common this is, but my work has a legal plan.  You can join for just a year.  I joined before our son was born to do our initial will / trusts / POAs, etc.  Then when a family member passed away and I wanted to change the arrangements for who would have custody of our son, I rejoined for a year and we updated everything.  I think we did:

Will, which establishes trust for the kid and establishes who has physical guardianship and who has financial guardianship (they say it's best for these to be different people), where our assets would go if all of us died, and then the medical and legal power of attorneys and advanced directives.

[ssmjlm]

We just did all this before we went on vacation and our daughter stayed with my parents. We did a will, a trust, and medical POA plus directive.

We did both a will and a trust because, despite not feeling like we have a lot of assets, between our house, cars, retirement, and life insurance, it ends up adding up. I realized that between my retirement and life insurance we were over $1M with only those 2 items. So we wanted to set up things to have that separate from just the will and be disbursed/managed separate.

[waverly]

We do have insurance. Good idea on the trust. I feel the same way that really I don't have that much, but our assets and equity will keep growing.

I think there is a way for me to sign up for legal through my work plan. dr.girlfriend, what did they end up charging you in addition to the annual fee?

[dr.girlfriend]

Nov 27, 2018 10:05:20 GMT -5 waverly said:

We do have insurance. Good idea on the trust. I feel the same way that really I don't have that much, but our assets and equity will keep growing.

I think there is a way for me to sign up for legal through my work plan. dr.girlfriend , what did they end up charging you in addition to the annual fee?

It was all free...all considered part of their basic services covered 100% under the plan. I think the plan worked out to about $200 for the year so it was definitely a bargain.

[waverly]

dr.girlfriend, that is a huge bargain!