Category: Estate Planning

When a Vig Equals Ownership: The Forever-Cost of a 401k Plan

Wall Street — by which I mean the overall business behemoth that makes its money by holding investments of other people’s money and by trafficking in investments and money generally — is vigging all of us to death. I mean this pretty much literally, i.e., I mean that, from the […]

Using the California Statutory Will

No part of financial planning flummoxes and bedevils people as much as estate planning. It makes the powerful weak and the merely-average absolutely-incapable. It makes proactive folks sheepishly cower, waiting . . . waiting . . . . . . waiting. And it makes high-output folks stare vacantly into space […]

The Death Tax is Dead

Michael Kitces, presenting at the FPA of San Francisco this past week, unleashed a number that knocked my socks off. He said that the number of estates paying the estate tax in a typical year under our current estate tax regime is in the neighborhood of three to four thousand. […]

Living Trusts are All About Avoiding Men in Black Robes

This edition of Friedman’s Law of the First Thing is about living trusts — what are they, what are they good for (absolutely somethin’) and what are they not good for? *  *  * In a weird way, Dave Ramsey is my muse — I hear him say something on […]

Shame Shame Shame on the Estate Planning Industries — and Me Possibly Lending a Helping Hand

Every once in a while you hear yourself say something to someone, and then, inside your head, you immediately hear yourself saying to yourself, Never again: I must figure out a way to be able to never say that again. Years ago that happened to me when I worked at […]

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