Make sure your advisors, lawyers or accountants are much younger than you and unlikely to pass before you. Same goes for my PCP.
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Our kids are co-executors, but weâve left everything exactly 50-50 to them. Weâve said if thereâs an extra penny, either split it in half or give it away. They also get along, have zero conflicts, good heads on their shoulders and respect each other. Then again, I guess things can always change (hopefully far) in the future. But I donât know which kid I would pick to be executor, if I was to pick one, and I trust the two people who will get everything more than anyone else to take care of business.
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50/50 here too. DH isnât in total agreement but I have dug my heels in about this. I told him if I die first, he can do whatever he wants.
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Sometimes (but not always) the heir split schemes will change with grandchildren. Iâm assuming an advantage of a trust (over the account beneficiary scheme we use) is flexibility? In other words, if accounts get designated beneficiary as trust⊠then could the trust be tweaked over time?
âIn most situations, itâs not a good idea to name co-executors.â
As long as the named Executor produces frequent reports on status of stuff and distribution amounts â which is their job â one person is just easier.
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Yes, if itâs a Revocable Trust, in most cases it can be changed at any time by the grantors. Not much different than changing your will.
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A few things to think about when setting up a trust:
If you want your heirs (kids and/or grandchildren) to have limited access to the funds set a reasonable age limit. Donât set it up as " X number of years after you die". Your kids might be age 60 when you die.
Be crystal clear as to who the trustee is. This person should be named in the trust. An heir can be his/her own trustee and that is likely to be better than having a situation where one sibling controls the other siblingâs inheritance. (unless there is a compelling reason for this such as a child who needs custodial care ).
These situations may seem far fetched , but they can/have actually happened. And it isnât pretty.
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We did wills, revocable trust, assets split 50/50 between kids, distinct roles for executor, POA, healthcare proxy, etc. Our kids are still minors but I canât wait for the day that I can put the oldest one as executor. Then once his sibling is old enough, weâll decide again who should do what based on temperament. One thing Iâve learned watching relatives go through this is that you really canât control what happens from the grave even with trusts. People are people. You just do the best you can and then let go.
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My H and his sister were co-executors of their fatherâs will, who passed away fall of 2019. The will split everything 50-50, and they get along great. Being co-executors was still a royal PITA. So many things required both their signatures and SIL lives 300 miles away (we lived half an hour from FILâs home). Coordinating signatures, including notary signatures was more complicated. Sad as it sounds, the pandemic actually helped as electronic signatures were more readily acceptable.
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Look at big picture decisions and spend the time (and utilize experts) - with the factors that apply to you and in your state.
My parents had everything pretty well worked out with a great lawyer, estate plan, and did have 2 of the 5 children as co-executors. When brother was âa riskâ - he needed to straighten out or we would remove him; he fell in line.
We would name 1 of the 2 kids as executor. DD who is currently single.
Some of you have spent a lot of time learning and following interest rates on cash on hand type of funds. We have money in no interest checking account and donât have to concern ourselves with transferring funds to pay for things. bigger ticket items (over $10K) we would transfer funds into checking account.
âBond proxyâ. I never liked the idea of bonds. For some cities, real estate can be a stabilizing asset in portfolio â but it depends on what one wants. DH never wanted to manage properties, so that was crossed off. Our home is a big portfolio asset with a climbing market price - but we have work to do to get it in top form, and we have to decide when we want to leave and where we want to go.
Through our FA, we found annuities were the stabilizing asset to our portfolio.
As with anything, get a feel for the advice given by any of the âexpertsâ, and the reasons behind their advice.
As we had built up cash in DHâs 401k (four different well performing equity groups), we spun off over 4 different years purchasing annuities since 2013 â making the choice based on a good product (they vary in years held with longest at 10 years). Since we are 66, we just have to decide at maturity what to do at that point with those assets. We have all data with FA reporting (we generate a monthly report); I/we manage DHâs 401k ourselves â his company is the âcoverâ for the plan. We import/link that information into our monthly summary report.
At this point, we have enough assets, but are careful on food and restaurants. We donât need a lot of items; we do buy grandkids clothes and some toys. I look at grocery receipt and other store receipt before leaving the store. At one grocery store, if they are wrong on a price, you get the item free. I bought a kidâs toy at Kohlâs and the scan had it priced higher than marked; you bet I got the credit. If one is handling young family and full time jobs with lots of responsibilities - one lets these things go. But I had the time to get it corrected.
I tell DH not to use the electronic pad at restaurant table - he made a mistake one time in front of me with way too much tip based on their generated suggestions. Typically I pay when we go out together.
I guess there are people that may tip anytime they get asked. IDK. I went with a group to a casual but pricy place, and the drink I ordered was twice what I thought it cost. I would have been better paying a few dollars more for a small food item. My lesson is to first see what others ordered and paid for at the place (pay at counter when you place your order).
We occasionally have fast food coupons. DH will pick up food at some of them, but I generally will plan and use a coupon. DH goes out to breakfast, lunch, or occasional dinner with two bachelors involved in techie hobby - typically 2 to 3 times a month. We have an anniversary coming up - I like a steak at one of two places. We donât have reasonably priced prime rib around here - but when we travel, we can get that. Varying places on pizza - frozen or prepared - if we really want something, yes we can afford to purchase. I guess I want to say we are careful on some things so we can have the funds for things important to us. If a particular pizza has much better flavor, we buy it.
My parents or DHâs parents really didnât concern themselves with their kids/grandkids - one wants them to do well, but once kids were through college, they focused on themselves. However dad had health issues (died at age 64) and wanted to leave an estate for kids/grandkids, and parents did. DHâs mom wanted to be able to leave her house and some small assets to her family, and she was able to do so.
DH and I are âfarâ from being dependent in any way. Hopefully we will have things well prepared for easy management at the close of our lives.
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This is a depressing article in the FT about American life expectancy being much lower than other countries (England is used for comparison):
Thereâs a paywall but the key conclusions are given in this Twitter thread:
It includes these super-depressing charts, though the key point is that deaths are much higher in childhood and young adulthood, not after retirement (if you survive that long).
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Wowsers that top one is a stark chart. Like performance on SAT scores by income.
A first cousinâs son recently died from exposure to cold. Apparently got in an argument with his parents and slept in his truck. Suicide. Murders.
NPR piece on this topic:
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And car crashes too. A friendâs kid died in a car wreck on his way to high school a few years back (tired at 7.30am and drove off the road over a cliff). That just doesnât happen in other countries, kids take public transit to school.
I was shocked that there are more guns in the US than people, over 400 Million. The young peopleâs deaths by violence, accident, etc. here. Also the drugs/Opiods. Very young, accidental drowning and other accidents.
Back on topic - as one ages (as well as through life) it is a âminefieldâ to avoid bad accidents or head off bad health issues. Awareness and âfightingâ for oneâs health - lifestyle, eating habits, taking advantage of good medical care and monitoring oneâs health.
Sometimes one lands on a mine and survives - I had aggressive cancer and was able to get it stopped in stage III - however still have health consequences from all the treatments and cancer can occur again since it was in lymph system. Sometimes one has health limitations but can live as healthy as possible.
It takes a lot of mental energy at times!
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Thanks for positing this, @Twoin18.
All of these graphs are pretty staggering, but not ex post surprising except for the chance of a 75 year-old dying being the same in the US as Europe. If Iâm not mistaken, the US spends way more in a personâs last year of life than other countries because our rationing is done by ability to pay (and, at one level, decent employment) as opposed to various measures of cost-effectiveness or efficacy.
Iâm a lot less surprised about the survival rate of kids. Most of the other countries spend more on preventive care and poor kids get health care because the rationing mechanism is not based on ability to pay/employment. Plus, gun deaths appear to be the biggest cause of death for people up to the age of 19. See article below. In contrast, in England & Wales, gun deaths donât show up on the list but for the same age group, homicides and probable homicides are .0045% of deaths for the same age group.
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Regarding
Seems like the 75 year old Americans have been under mostly-socialized medical insurance (Medicare) for a decade by then.
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@data10, I was thinking about countries like the UK and Canada, that might ration care based upon life expectancy â e.g., we wonât give you a pacemaker at age 90 â and hence our older folks might have higher life expectancy. I believe that Medicare also spends more per capita (at least in the last year of life) than others, but the studies that popped up on my Google search suggests that the differential is not that great. But, those effects donât seem to have much of an effect on life expectancy.
My brother in law is a physician and says that if you live to an older age, and in the patients he sees, you are much more likely to have taken care of yourself throughout your life.
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Interesting article in my hometown paper today.
Also available from NYT but I donât have a subscription so canât gift a link.
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