Inheritance Planning Made 123Easy

In 1912, a former president put health insurance for the old and the sick on a national ballot. It did not become law until 1965. In between sits one of the longest arguments in American history, and a single phrase that kept winning it. Harry Truman saw the phrase coming and tried to disarm it in advance. It beat him anyway. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/the-w...

I am writing this from seat 27B. My daughter is next to me. My wife and my baby boy are somewhere else on this airplane, separated from each other, and I found out about all of it at the door. What happened next is the best explanation of cost versus value I have ever lived through. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/same-plane-same-destination/ American Retirement...

Yesterday you learned the three tax buckets. Today, the playbook. Three specific strategies sophisticated planners run with permanent life insurance, including one that can defuse the tax bill your kids would otherwise inherit along with your IRA. Part five of The Evolution of a Promise. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/three-plays-the-pros-run/ American Retiremen...

Two households, identical incomes, very different tax bills. The difference is not luck and it is not loopholes. It is which of three buckets each dollar comes out of. Part four of The Evolution of a Promise leaves the history books and lands in your kitchen. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/how-are-retirement-assets-taxed/ American Retirement Advisors helps famil...

Term, whole life, the policy your employer hands you, and a product born because the 1970s broke everything. None of them were invented to be sold. Each one was invented because a specific decade handed ordinary families a specific problem. Part three of The Evolution of a Promise. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/every-tool-was-invented-for-a-problem/ American Re...

In the 1750s, London's only life insurance society turned a man away for being too old. He happened to be one of the finest mathematicians in England, and what he did about it is the reason your premium is priced fairly today. Part two of The Evolution of a Promise. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/the-math-that-made-the-promise-fair/ American Retirement Advi...

June 18, 1583. A London salt merchant named William Gybbons becomes the first person in recorded history covered by a life insurance policy. Eleven months later he is dead, the underwriters refuse to pay, and a court has to decide whether the brand-new promise means anything. It did. It still does. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/first-life-insurance-policy/ Amer...

Some mornings I catch myself wishing I were already retired. Then I remember what I get to see every week: hundreds of people living on the other side of that wish. Retirement is not a finish line. It is a starting line, and the happiest people crossed it knowing what makes them them. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/without-the-paycheck/ American Retirement Advis...

A summer morning in Maine with my wife's parents settled a question our advisors hear every week: when is the right time to retire? The answer is that there is no single right time. There is only the one you plan for, and then actually make happen. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/doing-retirement-right/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizona...

The finale of our week on the receiving end of inheritance. After the IRA, the house, and the folder, one pattern is left standing: the inheritances that change lives are never the biggest ones. They are the planned ones. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/wtki-the-gift-of-a-plan/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizona and Nevada navigate healthcare,...

Someday your family will open a folder. What they find inside is up to you. Day four of our series: the first thirty days from your kids' side of the table, and the program we built at ARA so that month arrives organized instead of overwhelming. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/wtki-the-folder/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizona and Nevada...

Day three of our series from the heir's side of the table. The quiet tax gift buried in an inherited home, the twenty-minute deed that skips the courthouse, why Arizona and Nevada families get an advantage most articles never mention, and the three-siblings-one-house problem. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/wtki-the-house-they-grew-up-in/ American Retirement...

Your IRA statement says $900,000. Your kids will not inherit $900,000. Day two of our series sits in their chair for the one conversation that can change the number: the ten-year rule, their tax bracket, and the moves that only work while you are here. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/wtki-the-ten-year-tax-bomb/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizo...

You spent forty years building it. It will land in your kids' lap during the most expensive decade of their lives. This week we sit in their chair, because the best inheritance plans are designed from the receiving end. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/wtki-the-call-your-kids-will-get/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizona and Nevada navigate...

Part 2 of our weekend break from the serious stuff. A no-mayo roll at the end of a peninsula where they only take cash, a bench in Camden harbor where the masts sing, and a 3:30 AM alarm on Cadillac Mountain. Plus the question this whole trip is really about: what was all the saving for? Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/lobster-roll-trail-part-2/ American Retireme...

We spent all week on The Widow's Penalty, and it was heavy for a reason. This weekend we are taking a break and doing something fun: a two-day road trip up the New England coast, one lobster roll at a time. Part 1 runs from a comeback-story shack on the Plum Island Turnpike to a round bun on a bridge in Kennebunkport. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/lobster-...

She started over from zero and built a seven-figure retirement on her own. Most survivors never need to do that, because most of what goes wrong in the year after a loss is preventable with a calm list and the right order. The finale of The Widow's Penalty: the first 90 days, what can wait, and what cannot. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/what-to-do-financia...

Seven rental properties, one grieving widow, and no structure holding any of it. Part four of The Widow's Penalty is about the handoff: the inherited IRA rules that changed for your children, the tax break Arizona and Nevada families get that most of the country does not, and the refinance paperwork that quietly undid some very good estate plans. Read the full article: https://news.americanre...

Two years after a loss, a letter from Social Security can raise a widow's Medicare premium based on income from a life that no longer exists. There is a one-page form built for exactly this moment, and most people have never heard its name. Part three of The Widow's Penalty: the surcharge with a two-year memory, and what it takes to fix it. Read the full article: https://news.americanret...

The sixties are when the widow's penalty does most of its quiet work. A tax filing status with a two-year clock. A first April filing alone. And a Social Security decision with two checks on the table, where the order you claim them in can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. Part two of The Widow's Penalty. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/qualifying-...

Losing a spouse in your fifties comes with a rulebook most people never open until they need it. Survivor benefits that cannot start until 60. A remarriage rule with a hard birthday attached. A ten-year wait for Medicare. This week we walk the ages of widowhood, and we start with the hardest decade. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/social-security-survivor-benefit...

Give the kids the house now, or leave it to them later? The tax code treats those two acts completely differently, and the difference can be worth six figures. The finale of The Fourth Color: step-up in basis, the gifting rules that surprise most families, and the estate tax fear most families can retire. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/step-up-in-basis-gifting-h...

Many sellers still believe there is a special capital gains break once you turn 65. There is not, and the rule that replaced it has not grown in almost thirty years while home values have. Part two of The Fourth Color: what the sale really costs, and the Medicare surprise that follows it. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/capital-gains-home-sale-over-65/ American R...

Green, yellow, red. For years those three colors of money covered nearly everything. But for more retirees than ever, the biggest asset on the balance sheet is a house or a rental, and it plays by its own rules. Part one of a new three-part series. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/rental-income-in-retirement-fourth-color/ American Retirement Advisors helps familie...

The window, the conversions, IRMAA, the Social Security surprise: they all run on one number, your taxable income. Here is how to pull them into a single plan, and the one reason couples should not wait. The finale of The Gap Years. Read the full article: https://news.americanretirementadvisors.com/tax-efficient-withdrawal-strategy-retirement/ American Retirement Advisors helps families in Arizona...