With so much economic and health risk in the new COVID-19 era, most people in the 50 and over category (especially those with serious pre-existing conditions) are thinking about their retirement plans, income and nest eggs as well as their Will, Trust and legacy to their next of kin.
You may be asking yourself questions such as:
Is my will and trust up to date? Is it optimized and compliant with the latest tax changes and laws?
Does it still fulfil my wishes?
Is it the optimum trust for what I want to do with my legacy?
Do I have enough insurance or the right kind of insurance. Do I have sufficient disability insurance for example? Consider these statistics from the “Association for Safe International Road Travel” for the USA. Over 37,000 people die in road crashes each year. An additional 2.35 million are injured or disabled every year!
Do you have sufficient catastrophic insurance? If you get into a car accident for example and hit someone, does your insurance policy cover serious resulting injuries? Most people do not have adequate catastrophic insurance. If such an event were to happen to you, there are teams of highly trained personal injury attorneys who know exactly how to determine how much insurance coverage you have and what other assets they can legally go after in the event you do not. Just this one oversight could cost you your entire nest egg and retirement, if such an event were to happen.
Perhaps you are thinking about retiring sooner? What will the impact of this be on your social security benefits, your nest-egg and future income. A useful resource for evaluating the impact of retiring at different ages past 62 can be found in one of our earlier blog posts. A general rule of thumb is to use the 4% rule for your nest egg distributions. That is, you can withdraw up to 4% a year of your nest egg each year after you retire. Depending on the age you retire at you may need to adjust that percentage down or up.
Most people need at least 70% of their pre-retirement income to comfortably retire. If you plan on moving to a different country where the cost of living is less, you could potentially live comfortably on 50% of your pre-retirement income. If you are thinking about retiring earlier than planed but are wondering if you can afford to do so, moving abroad or to a different state may offer you the ability to do so.
If you do not have a will or trust, be sure to get these done right away. If you were to die without a Will or Trust, your estate will be tied up in probate for 9-15 months or more with a judge presiding over how your assets are disbursed and to whom. You might be surprised how many attorneys dont have a will and trust.
Good estate planning requires an experienced team of investment, financial, legal and insurance professionals. At Hawley Advisors, we work with our clients team of professionals or can introduce our own long established and trusted relationships specializing in wills, trusts and tax planning.
Dont leave this matter to another day. We have seen too many instances where clients thought they had time and did not have their house in order with respect to having a final Will and Trust. As already mentioned, if you do not have this in place, your estate will go into probate which can cause your beneficiaries significant headaches and financial loss as they wait 9-15 months for the state to determine how the proceeds are disbursed and to whom.
Getting Your House in order and up to date asap will give you and your heirs significant peace of mind!