Wealth Management Insights
Smart Ways to Take Control of a Trust
Over the years, trust law has evolved significantly. Today, there are more options than ever that allow for greater family control—options that didn’t exist or that weren’t commonly used back when many current trusts were established. By thinking and acting more like an asset owner than a trust grantor or trust beneficiary, you can potentially set yourself up for better results down the road.
It’s Time to Get Serious About Your Happiness
Taking time to examine the choices you make in your life and work each day and over the long term to make sure they are enhancing your well-being can do more than just make you happier. Working on enhancing happiness has actually been shown to have a tangible return on investment and can make you more successful.
What to Do When Your Doctor Has Bad News
You can likely guess which approach we recommend. With that in mind, we asked one of the nation’s top concierge physicians—Dr. Dan Carlin of WorldClinic—for his best advice on what to do (and not do) when the news about your health is really bad.
Five Big Mistakes Executors Make and How to Avoid Them
Being named the executor of a family member’s (or other loved one’s) estate is, in many ways, an honor. The decision shows that the person saw you as a highly trustworthy, capable person of integrity. But it’s also a major responsibility that can quickly become a burden if you aren’t set up to do your job properly. The fact is, administering an estate comes with plenty of potential pitfalls that can threaten your loved one’s wealth—and your peace of mind. That goes double if the death is unexpected and leaves you reeling emotionally as you try to take on the legally required duties of an executor.
Savvy Negotiating: To Get the Moon, Ask for the Stars
One key way to build serious wealth—whether in a business or your everyday life—is to effectively and consistently negotiate deals that are good for you and your bottom line. Ideally, everyone walks away from a negotiation feeling good about the outcome—a win-win scenario. But ultimately, to be successful you must achieve your minimum goals and preferably a whole lot more. Trouble is, it’s common for people to end up failing to get what they want due to how they approach negotiations right from the start—from the first declarations of their terms. Here’s how you can avoid that negative outcome and get the results you truly want when hashing out a deal or arrangement with another party.
Three ‘Spy Secrets’ That Can Protect You, Your Family and Your Business
Imagine yourself in a vintage tuxedo, sipping a “shaken, not stirred” martini as you make eye contact across the bar with a beautiful secret agent who is about to covertly hand you a dossier with information that will help prevent World War III. Okay—that’s almost certainly never going to happen to you. But you can use some of the same strategies employed by professional spies and operatives to prevent criminals from harming you, your family and your company. These strategies come courtesy of Jason Hanson—a former CIA officer who spent nearly a decade at the agency. He then founded a business, Spy Escape & Evasion, to teach people how to be safe using insider spy tactics and wrote The New York Times best-selling book Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life.
Want to Promote Family Entrepreneurship? Consider a Family Bank
A family bank is a formal legal entity a family sets up, with rules that govern how family members can access funds to start or support business ventures as well as how those family members are expected to pay back that money. Family banks are designed to bring a level of structure, professionalism and accountability when providing money to family members to fund initiatives. As such, they can help instill financial intelligence, financial responsibility and financial values in family members—while also helping to avoid accusations of favoritism in families with multiple children.
Stress Test Your Financial Plans
Stress testing financial plans can be a very smart way to help make certain that the plan will deliver as promised. The fact is, financial plans that might look great on paper all too often prove to be much less impactful once they are implemented. It is not uncommon for there to be unintended consequences that can even derail one’s agenda. At heart, stress testing is when you ask, “What if …?” about a variety of areas of a financial plan you have or are considering.
Identity Theft (Webinar)
In this live webinar, you will learn about identity theft: how to recognize if it happens to you, and ways to prevent or fix it.
Trusteeship for the Non-Professional (Webinar)
In this brief webinar, Dick Blakeley and Paul Erickson will take you through the basics and responsibilities of being a trustee.
