When presenting to a group of younger families many of the questions are geared towards children, guardians and long term planning.  At my presentation on Saturday, most of the questions were related to:

1.  Can’t I just add my child’s name to my accounts?

2.  Isn’t a trust for people who have a large estate?  We don’t have much anymore as a result of the bad economy.

3.  Can we leave gifts to our grandchildren in our Wills?

These are all issues that pertain more specifically to individuals in their age range.  They are thinking about the grandchildren they already have and how a Generation Skipping Tax works.  They are thinking about the ultimate effect of having added their son or daughter to a bank account because they lost their spouse and wanted to make certain they had someone else in place to help.  They are trying to adjust their ways of living after having taken a big loss on their 401K and IRA or their home when they sold it.

Although these are questions that younger individuals may be thinking about now, they are not immediate current concerns as they are with an older, retired community.

Planning isn’t something you do once; it is an evolving plan that changes with your age, your needs, your concerns, your personal family situation and the continuous changes in federal and state tax laws.

If you have a plan in place and have not reviewed it in the last 3 years or if you don’t have a plan, contact us at (704) 843-1446 and we will guide you in making the best choices for you and your family.

Lincoln, for all that he did which inspires us today, was not a cheerful sort of fellow. In fact, if he were alive today, he would undoubtedly be diagnosed with clinical depression and treated accordingly. One historian described Lincoln’s sadness after the 1860 Illinois Republican Convention—of which he had unarguably been the star—at a moment that should have been a triumph:

Lincoln’s look at that moment—the classic image of gloom—was familiar to everyone who knew him well. Such spells were just one thread in a curious fabric of behavior and thought that his friends called his “melancholy.” He often wept in public and recited maudlin poetry. He told jokes and stories at odd times—he needed the laughs, he said, for his survival. As a young man he talked more than once of suicide, and as he grew older he said he saw the world as hard and grim, full of misery, made that way by fate and the forces of God. “No element of Mr. Lincoln’s character,” declared his colleague Henry Whitney, “was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy.” His law partner William Herndon said, “His melancholy dripped from him as he walked.”

His talk of suicide and his tendency to dwell on maudlin subjects including premonitions of his own death, makes it all the more remarkable that Lincoln had no will, no estate plan of any kind.

As financial columnist Steve Juetten notes in his article, you should do something President Lincoln didn’t.