April 17, 2019 | Resources by Dennis Williams Jr.
Financial Legacy
by Dennis Williams Jr
A Legacy is simply leaving an amount of money, or property to someone or an organization in a will? It’s usually described as an endowment inheritance or bequest.
In this session we learned the definitions and processes for the following.
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Primary investment vehicles such as retirement (401k/IRAs) and non retirement (individual/ joint/ brokerage/ 529) accounts.
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Common investment instruments or asset classes are CDs, bonds, stocks, etf/ mutual funds, real estate and annuities. How we can utilize them all to diversify and reduce risk. Also, how they all are important but each more so at certain times. For example, stocks are associated with a growth focus and bonds and real estate may be associated with income. These assets are what fuel the investment vehicles above.
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Methods of protecting the vehicles and assets above are: updating beneficiaries (for qualified or retirement accounts) and transfer on death (for non retirement accounts like banking or brokerage accounts) information, utilizing revocable living trusts to streamline asset transfer upon death and avoid probate, having an updated will and pour over will to include things not in trust, having adequate insurance coverage (term/whole/ long term care insurance) to protect you so that the assets you’ve worked so hard for aren’t depleted due to the unexpected.
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Legacy planning in ESSENTIAL. We must utilize tools to transfer assets efficiently and impactfully. We must protect as stated above but why utilize tools like Charitable Remainder Trusts that allow the owner to benefit from the assets and income while living but designate entities, like NBCF, as beneficiaries upon death. Another powerful tool is the Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust or ILIT that allows us to gift monies to the trust which will then purchase life insurance policies in which proceeds will directly go to beneficiaries upon death. The ILIT can be used to pass on tax free money, to pay estate taxes if any and to generally magnify the financial impact we are able to have on generations to come. And as Ray mentioned, there is no limit to the number of policies you can have which can be listed in trust. If we can afford to amplify our financial legacy, why not?
