As we can observe, learning about Elder Law is something that is not so interesting for younger individuals – at least, for now – as this practically does not apply to them personally. And you might be thinking the same way. But the thing is, we should realize that we will age in time and that should be enough reason why it makes sense to have some knowledge about this area of the law – all of us, young and old. It can help us when we get old. Aside from that, we can also offer some help for seniors by imparting what we learn as early as today.In our attempt to learn about this thing, Elder Law Attorneys play an important role. They are legal professional who specialize in the area of law that focuses on representing, counseling, and assisting seniors or aged people in a variety of legal issues. Generally, they help seniors in addressing legal, medical, financial, social, and family issues, with emphasis on promoting the highest quality of life for them.Below are some specific issues that Elder Law Attorneys address:
Estate and Gift Tax Planning – they provide this particular service with the purpose of assisting clients to adequately provide liquidity for their estates; provide for continuation of the business and to minimize gift, estate and generation-skipping transfer taxes.
Medicaid – seniors are also assisted whether they are qualified for Medicaid, a government medical program for certain people and families with low income.
Retirement Benefits – this is one of the most important areas that senior individuals should be knowledgeable about and a lawyer who is expert in Elder Law can help to get the most benefits they can possibly get.
Estate Planning and Probate – estate planning, by definition, is the process of anticipating and arranging for the disposal of an estate; probate means legal establishment of the validity of a will before a judicial authority.
Age Discrimination – a very common scenario you can see around particular in work where there is a high rate of layoffs based on age.
Long Term Care Financing – this has something to do with preparation for possible future long-term care needs, which basically rely on ‘self-insured’ resources and the donated ones. An expert Elder Law attorney helps you understand the concepts behind such program and assist you along the way to make the most out of it.
Insurance – attorneys can also help seniors to be able to enjoy insurance benefits; they assist them particularly when it comes to legalities and laws governing insurance policy benefits that are especially designed for seniors.
By learning about Elder Law, it gives us an opportunity to become better prepared for the future. Remember, all of us get old and that is inevitable.
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Life Insurance: How Much and What Type To Own?
Do you need 5 times your income? Or do you need 10 times your income?In my experience, if you ask stupid questions you tend to get stupid answers.The real question you should be asking yourself is… If I die tomorrow, what do I want financially for the loved ones I will leave behind?Will your spouse need an income? How much? For how long?If so, how much money does it take today to provide that amount of income?What assets do I have to help offset that number?Are there any debts that must be paid off?Will your kids need money to pay for college?Is there a parent or another family member that depends on you?Do you want to leave money to your church or Alma Mater?Once you know the answers to the above questions, work with a qualified, unbiased professional like a Fee-Only Certified Financial Planner who can help you determine the correct amount of life insurance you really need.Don’t use rules of thumb to plan your financial life! Here’s why:Let’s assume you die tomorrow, and you need to replace your current income of $50,000 for the next 20 years to allow your husband/wife and kids to keep their same lifestyle without having to struggle. If you used the “rule of thumb” of 10 times your income when you bought your life insurance, your surviving spouse and kids will most likely run out of money in 15 years or less. Feel free to email me and I would be happy to send you the hard data.What Type of Life Insurance Do You Need?Let’s start off with the basics. There are two main types of life insurance: Term and Permanent.Both are conceptually easy to understand. Term Life Insurance covers you for a specified period or term, like 20 years for example. Permanent Life Insurance covers you permanently or for your entire life, or at least it’s supposed to. Permanent Life can have many sub-names like whole life, variable life, universal life or single premium life which all work differently.When you purchase Term insurance, you are only paying for the cost of insurance which is usually very inexpensive. In a Permanent policy, premiums are usually substantially higher than term. Some of the premium goes towards the cost of insurance and the remainder builds in an account called the “cash value.” Cash values typically grow tax deferred.You have probably heard all the media “hubbub” about which type of life insurance you should purchase. Radio show pundits and magazine articles tell us to only purchase term, or whole life is a bad investment, or own term and investment the difference.Are those things really true? Is it really that simple? What’s the truth?Well, honestly the type of life insurance you should purchase depends on many things. Some people only need term but others may need permanent.Tell me exactly how long you will need life insurance and when you will die, and I can tell you the correct type you should own. But like most other financial planning decisions, we must make some assumptions or best guesses about the future. But it’s very difficult to know when you are 20, 30 or even 40 what your financial life will really be like at age 60.Here are some truths:
Most permanent policies are junk! But not all.
Any type of life insurance is usually better than NO life insurance.
Most people should buy life insurance for protection only NOT as an investment.
Most people who end up buying the wrong type of life insurance got their advice from an insurance agent, not an objective financial planner.
This issue is way to complex for me to cover every detail in a blog post. My hope here is to get you to understand the basics so you can go hire a professional to help you that isn’t a financial sales person.You most likely need Term if:
You are just starting out
Have no discretionary income and/or low net worth
It’s very easy to forecast the length of your insurance need (10 years left on a mortgage for example)
Have a very limited amount of savings left over for retirement
You simply can’t afford permanent insurance, even it were a good deal
When Permanent Life may be a fit:
Very strong, predictable cash flow
High income earner
You have exhausted all possible retirement savings vehicles (401k, Roth, etc.)
Will have Estate Planning liquidity issues
It’s very hard to predict the age you will no longer need life insurance
You just want your life insurance to be there when you die!
You have done your research! Not all life insurance policies are equal!
You understand all the workings of the policy (expenses, interest rate, etc)
Why does Permanent Life insurance get such a bad rap? I believe most people fear what they don’t understand. And Permanent insurance can be extremely difficult to understand. Also, most Permanent Life policies have too many internal expenses which can make them a terrible deal. But some companies do a pretty good job of keeping internal costs down, therefore increasing the internal rate or return on your “cash value.”Here is one concept:Most term polices never pay a death benefit because people out live them or cancel them. Let’s say you compare 2 options: 1.) invest money in a taxable investment OR 2.) buy permanent life insurance where your policy builds cash value. If the cash value of your life insurance net of expenses could earn more than your investment account net of taxes, then you would have more money inside the cash value. OR vice versa. Sounds simple, right? Not exactly!You want to make sure you are comparing apples to apples. If the cash value grows at a fixed rate, then compare it to fixed income assets in your investment account. If your investment account is invested in stock mutual funds, compare it to a comparable allocation in Variable Life. This is where the media falls short on helping you understand Permanent life insurance. They try to compare fixed rate cash value insurance to the stock market over the long-term. That’s like comparing a Porsche to a Subaru!But it’s not all about the cash value rate of return. What about the rate of return on the death benefit? Like I mentioned earlier, this issue is far too complex to cover all the points here!Here is your take away. Term Insurance is right for many Americans. Some types of Permanent policies may be a fit for others. It just depends on the unique situation of the individual. This can be a very confusing area. Seek out unbiased, objective advice from a Fee-Only Certified Financial Planner. www.jasonWqualls.com
Starting Small Businesses Has Never Been Easier
I believe that it’s easier to succeed with small businesses than ever before. There are more opportunities for entrepreneurs to start small businesses today than at any previous time.Here are some good reasons for why I believe this is true.A) With the increase in population comes an increase in opportunities for small businesses.Generally, a sparse population requires a small business owner to provide a wide variety of goods or services to survive. With a denser population, the small businesses can still survive by providing a very narrow range of products or services.For example, in a smaller population a small business which provides gardening services would probably need to offer many things. Services could include general garden maintenance, planning, tree felling, lawn cutting, vermin control, pond planning and maintenance, hard landscaping etc.With a bigger population a small business could thrive perfectly well by providing just one of these services, as there are more people who will need it.B) The costs involved in starting and running small businesses has never been so low in proportion to income.Technology has replaced many of the things which people used to do, and technology does the job a lot more cheaply.Today it’s possible to reach literally millions of potential customers around the world very cheaply.For example, only a few decades ago the cost of mailing to thousands of households was prohibitively high. Unless you had a very good product or service which sold well, a small business just wouldn’t risk it.Another example, business premises security used to involve security guards walking around checking that all was well. Now a good security system can be bought for less than 1 week’s pay for that security guard, and it will work 24 hrs per day for years, for no pay.C) Because modern life is so complex today, small businesses and individuals are open to new ideas, products and services like never before.This creates a huge market for training courses, information provision services, educational aids, specialised products and services, novelties, etc.With this great diversity come great opportunities to combine different products and technologies, thus making whole new areas of business possible.For example, you can combine a low-light camera with wireless communications and a bird box. This means a nest may be watched remotely on a television or personal computer screen.Another example would be to combine voice-chip technology with passive infrared technology to make it sound as though you have a huge dog indoors whenever anyone approaches your house.In our recent history, these opportunities just didn’t exist.D) It may not feel like it, but many people today have a lot more leisure time and a higher disposable income than in any previous age.This spare income (and with the current attitudes to loans, a little more besides) tends to get spent on sports, games, hobbies, crafts, amusements, entertainments, holidays and weekend breaks etc.This creates many opportunities for the entrepreneur to start up small businesses to satisfy all this extra demand.E) To thrive in a modern society you need to have a lot of different skills.Nowadays people cope with a variety of complex tasks. They buy and use a wide range of consumer equipment, fill out many forms, and communicate with all kinds of people from all walks of life (often from different countries and cultures). They also do difficult transactions like house purchasing, and so on.All this is a long way from the average people who were around just a few hundred years ago. Many were farm labourers who could barely read or write and never travelled more than a few miles from home.So now, the pool of potential business people is far greater than ever before. If a person can live well in a modern society, they already have the abilities they need to start up a small business enterprise and succeed.The good news also is that if you lack a certain skill which your small business needs, then you can probably employ someone with that skill far more easily than ever before.F) More people have access to money than ever before.Until the late 1960s, most people were paid weekly and spent money as they earned it.It was normal among manual workers to run right out of money around the time of their next pay packet, which often contained notes and coins!Today most people have many bank accounts (with overdrafts) and access to credit cards, which alone have spending limits equal to a half or full year’s income.Savings and share holdings are greater than ever before. A large proportion of the population can raise money on their house and if they don’t mind paying a high interest percentage, they can borrow with no security at all.A great variety of people and institutions are now willing to lend money for good small businesses proposals.With access to credit, you can buy the product, ship it to the customer and get paid before you have to pay for the goods which you sold. This just wasn’t possible until very recently.G) Advice, courses and books about starting small businesses are within easy reach of everyone.Researching your chosen business area has never been easier with the Internet so readily available.Not so long ago, you would have needed to buy many books and read them all to get the specific information you required. Now you can ask a search engine very specific questions and get very specific answers, almost immediately.This frees up small businesses and enables them to be far more productive and enterprising.H) If you start a small business today you have an immense amount of technology available to you.Computers, printers, copiers, audio and video recording and playback equipment, telephony and the internet are all easily available to any entrepreneur wanting to get started in a new small business enterprise.Not long ago, the average multi-national company lacked the computing, communicating and printing power available to the ordinary person today.You can probably think of at least 6 different ways to get a simple message to someone on the other side of the world. 5 of those messages would typically arrive less than 1 minute after you sent them.Just 100 years ago, (and remember mankind has been around for about 3 million years) this same message would have involved horses and steam ships and would have taken months.This massive improvement in technology (especially in communications and information) has really opened up the field to the individual who wants to go ahead with a new small business venture.I) Small businesses starting up today have far more choices available to them.In previous times, it was quite common for there to be only a few companies that they could go to, to buy business supplies. Whatever business you care to name, you would not find many suppliers of the materials needed to conduct that business.Unless your business is in a very specialist area, you will now find you can source your supplies from a great many firms. This in turn drives your costs down, as you can shop around for the best deals.For example, there used to be very few ways to get your goods delivered to your customers. Nowadays you could chose from literally hundreds of different carriers.New companies can chose anywhere in the world to set up their small businesses, or indeed where to place any part of their business.I know of a successful paintball company, which operates in the UK in summer. But when the business falls off due to the cold winter, they find new customers by simply moving the company to Brazil, and then return the following spring.They also take advantage of the cheaper labour in Brazil to manufacture the paint balling equipment, and when back in the UK use the greater expertise in the UK to program their systems.Not so long ago this flexibility of operating a small business would have been totally impractical.Conclusion.There are far more opportunities to start small businesses than ever before and entrepreneurs who do start new small businesses at home are more likely to succeed.There are more potential customers, it costs less to start up and you have more choice over the kind of business to go into. Other benefits are a more skilled and educated workforce, and easy access to financial support.If you do want your own enterprise, you can also use the power of the Internet to carry out good and fast research, and to support your business in many ways. I believe there has never been a better time to start up new small businesses.