Tag Archive for Financial Planning

Financial Windfalls – The Fantasy And Epic Fails

You have just received a windfall, and you do not know what to do.  Or maybe you have a list of things you want to do and are ready to spend that money starting tomorrow.

Hold on, not quite yet.  First, let’s define instant wealth. Instant wealth is receiving a large sum of money, larger than what you are accustomed to. That amount can range from $5,000 to millions; it’s a relative amount. What isn’t relative is that more often than not, when we are lucky enough to receive instant wealth, we often have no idea how to handle it.

There are too many stories about lottery winners who get it all, then just as quickly lose everything plus more, falling from rich to well below the poverty line.

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Written by | Posted in Financial Planning • Instant Wealth • TaxConnections

How To Become A Millionaire By 65

Money is tied to your dreams and goals, but how to make it all work out in the end? Well, once you have your goals, you make a plan. The plan is all about small steps and incremental, achievable goals. Your dream, for example, could be to have $1,000,000 in the bank by age 40. Let’s break that down:

First of all, what is a million? What does a million even look like? A million dollars is $1,000 times 1,000 – not difficult to do in your lifetime.

So how do you reach your first $1,000,000? Again, start small and start early. You can go to http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/save-million-calculator.aspx, and calculate how to reach your saving goals there are many more online calculators to help you with this goal.

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Written by | Posted in Financial Planning • Tax Advice

Financial Planning Considerations For Mixed Nationality Couples

Hugo Lesser, Tax Advisor

U.S. citizenship-based taxation has many planning repercussions for mixed-nationality families (i.e., where only one spouse is a U.S. citizen), and these are particularly acute when a mixed U.S./non-U.S. couple live and work outside of the U.S. and the family is subject to multiple countries’ tax rules.

How such a couple should proceed depends on a combination of financial and personal factors, including:

– Immigration and tax residence statuses (in the U.S. and elsewhere);
– Where the couple currently lives and where the couple plans to retire;
– The relative incomes of the couple (is one spouse sole breadwinner or are their earnings more evenly divided?);
– The relative family wealth the spouses come from; and
– Personal attitudes toward marital “sharing.”

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Written by | Posted in Financial Planning

Getting Ready For Retirement: It’s More Than Just Money!

Lisa Nason, Tax Advisor

Many of our clients talk to us about setting up retirement plans, contributing to retirement plans, and focusing on the monetary aspects of retirement. But what they don’t do is spend a lot of time thinking about and planning for the nonfinancial aspects of their retirement; they don’t realize it’s the biggest transition they’ll ever go through.

The consequences of not planning can include sitting around with growing boredom. Retirees watch TV an average of 43.5 hours a week, according to Age Wave 2012, and lack of stimulation can be associated with higher risks of alcoholism or depression. Read More

Written by | Posted in Retirement

Foreign Corporate Reorganizations and Financial Planning

Overview of Reorganizations

Reorganization is a transaction aspect of foreign corporate entry and exit activity that can have great importance in the considerations accompanying financial planning. To provide an adequate foundation to the fundamental understanding of reorganization considerations, a cursory overview of basic domestic, reorganization concepts is helpful.

These concepts can be divided into three types of reorganizing transactions. First, there are reorganizations deemed to be exiting the taxing jurisdiction of the United States. Second, reorganization transactions occur in the transnational process of the reorganization of a foreign corporation within a United States taxing jurisdiction. This would be a transaction Read More

Written by | Posted in Corporate • International

Non-Statutory Asset Protection Trusts

Introduction

In the United States, there has been a malpractice crisis for the medical profession for a number of years. It has at its roots the American Trial Lawyers who advocate a position that the medical profession is not adequately regulated for physicians whose practice causes harm to their clients. Its associations vigorously contend that victims of malpractice by physicians are inadequately compensated from injury and demand that no limits can be imposed as to the amounts mandated by the jury. The insurance underwriters of medical professionals assert that large verdicts have caused them to raise premiums where they depart from economic reality. When a physician factors in the cost of insurance in terms of doing business, the risk-reward analysis in specific Read More

Written by | Posted in Estate Planning Tax

Foreign Trusts – Legal Risks – Act of State Doctrine

Introduction –

The use of Foreign Trusts in financial planning can provide significant benefits to a client. As was discussed in Foreign Trusts and Legal Risks, (1) particularly important benefits can be derived utilizing Offshore Financial Centers whose laws are crafted to facilitate shelter from potential judgments and penal revenue assessments. But these benefits that can be so beneficial to a client also must be scrutinized for financial risks, be it credit, legal, or market risks. The ability to assert legal jurisdiction upon a Foreign Trust and the fiduciary (2) formulate an aspect of legal risk that is a part of that analysis. That legal risk embraces the implications of enforcement jurisdiction and the concept of the doctrine of comity among sovereign nations. Coupled with enforcement jurisdictional notions of one sovereign that Read More

Written by | Posted in Estate Planning Tax • International