Tax Law Changes for 2023
{2 minutes to read} In the beginning of the year, we try and create a communication to all of our friends and clients, and people we know, about what changes are taking place from a tax perspective. There are lots of changes every January, and this year is no exception. Each year, the government changes the amount of money that you get from an estate planning standpoint and social security. The estate and gift tax exclusion amounts have increased in this new year. For someone who dies in [...]
Estate Planning — The Use it or Lose it Scenario
{3 minutes to read} Today, I want to reflect on some of the issues about estate planning based upon our current estate tax rules. Under the Trump Administration, the estate tax rules were changed very liberally to allow people to give away a tremendous amount of money, creating great opportunities to transfer wealth to the next generation and get the growth of these assets out of your estate. Currently, the estate tax exemption for an individual is over $12 million. Plus, if you're married, we get an additional [...]
Long-Term Care Insurance in Your Future — Whether You Want it or Not!
Long-term-Care continues to be a relevant subject matter for people who are about to retire. Recently, the state of Washington enacted legislation where the citizens of the state now have an additional 2% payroll tax without any limits. So, if you make $100,000 a year, you would have $2,000 taken out of your salary. This payroll tax goes to fund a long-term care benefit of $35,000 that will be provided by the state and would be available to pay for your long-term care claims. The states are doing [...]
Insurance Planning: a Possible Tool and Strategy to Overcome Inflation
{4 minutes to read} At the time of this blog, we are heading toward the end of 2022, and what was a financially challenging year for people, especially as inflation has reared its head. People are concerned about the ever-increasing cost of living as things have gone up quite a bit in the last year or so. So inflation is a challenging thing for people. We have lived over the last period with limited inflation, and suddenly we're into a period where inflation is very high. In this [...]
Family Love Letter – Estate Planning
{3 minutes to read} Today, I want to talk about estate planning. Recently, I was introduced to a service that we can provide, called the Family Love Letter. It struck me as being so powerful and so helpful for people that I wanted to offer it up to our clients who would benefit from it. Before you start planning and developing your estate plan, focusing much of your attention on things like trusts and wills and taxes, etc. — pause and think again. Fundamentally, estate planning is not [...]