Top 10 Advantages of Estate Planning

Estate Planning

Estate planning can be a daunting task yet doing so is essential for protecting your loved ones and managing your assets after you pass away. Without an estate plan in place, your estate could be subject to excessive taxes and legal fees, or even end up in the wrong hands.

Fortunately, there are numerous advantages of estate planning that outweigh the effort and cost of creating a plan. From the peace of mind, it offers to avoiding probate costs and protecting family members, estate planning provides countless benefits that make it one of the most beneficial financial strategies possible. In this article, we’ll explore the top 10 advantages of estate planning and discuss why acting now is essential. Let’s get started!

What is Estate Planning?

Estate planning is the process of creating a plan for how your assets will be managed and transferred after you have passed. It can be as simple or complex as you want, but at its core, estate planning is about making sure your wishes are carried out and your loved ones are taken care of.

Who Needs Estate Planning?

Estate planning is not just for the wealthy. Everyone can benefit from having a plan in place for what will happen to their assets after they pass away. Without a plan, your loved ones will have to make difficult decisions about your finances and property at a time when they are already grieving. An estate plan can help you avoid probate, minimize taxes, and protect your family’s financial future.

What is Probate?

Probate is the legal process of settling an estate. If you die without a will or trust, your estate will go through probate and your assets will be distributed according to state law. This can be a long and expensive process, and it gives creditors an opportunity to make claims against your estate.

How Can I Avoid Probate?

One way to avoid probate is to create a revocable living trust. With this type of trust, you can name yourself as the trustee and transfer ownership of your assets into the trust. When you die, the trust becomes irrevocable, and your assets are distributed according to your wishes—without going through probate.

The Top 10 Advantages of Estate Planning

Avoiding probate:

Probate is the legal process of distributing a person’s assets after their death. By creating a will or trust, you can ensure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes and avoid the time-consuming and costly probate process.

Protecting your assets:

Estate planning allows you to protect your assets from creditors, lawsuits, and taxes. By creating a trust, for example, you can transfer assets to your beneficiaries without them having to go through probate or paying estate taxes.

Providing for loved ones:

Estate planning allows you to provide for your loved ones, both financially and emotionally. You can ensure that your children are taken care of if something happens to you and that your partner is provided for in the event of your death.

Planning for incapacity:

Estate planning also allows you to plan for the possibility of becoming incapacitated. By creating a power of attorney, you can appoint someone to make decisions on your behalf if you become unable to do so.

Minimizing taxes:

Estate planning can help minimize taxes on your estate. By creating a trust or taking advantage of other tax-saving strategies, you can reduce the amount of taxes that your beneficiaries will have to pay.

Charitable giving:

Estate planning allows you to make charitable donations and leave a lasting legacy. By creating a charitable trust, you can ensure that your charitable donations continue after your death.

Business Succession Planning:

If you own a business, estate planning can be used to plan for the future of your business after your death or incapacity. This includes identifying successors, transferring ownership, and providing for key employees.

Privacy:

Estate planning allows you to keep your financial affairs private. This can be important if you want to keep your assets and financial information out of the public eye.

Peace of mind:

Estate planning can provide peace of mind knowing that your loved ones and assets are taken care of in the event of your death.

Flexibility:

Estate planning is a flexible process that can be changed as your life and circumstances change. This allows you to adjust as needed to ensure that your plan continues to meet your needs.

In conclusion, Estate planning is an important part of your financial plan and can help you protect the assets that are most important to you. With a comprehensive estate plan, you can ensure that your wishes will be carried out after you pass away, provide for those who depend on you financially, make sure your family avoids costly probate fees, and more. We hope our list of the top 10 advantages of estate planning has helped to clarify why it is so important for every adult to have one in place.

To set up an Estate Plan, talk to ARM Trustees TRUST ADVISOR today.

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Don’t RUN from it

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Meet the two crazy runners

There he was again. Even in the rain, Chimdi couldn’t understand why this fellow always had to run along the same path as he almost every day. Worse, he was just totally unfriendly…never acknowledging the runner’s nod Chimdi gave him whenever they passed each other while running.

Jerome moved into the estate 4 months earlier and loved how accessible routes were to make his run a smooth affair. He also loved that he could run in peace without having to exchange pleasantries and maybe even slow down just to talk with someone. He hated going to the gym or exercising and then spending a good portion of the time he could use in putting in more energy, gisting. It just wasn’t his style.

So, whenever he ran along the estate route, he plugged his ear pod and blasted his Jamz for motivation. He often noticed this fair-skinned dude who runs at the same time nodding his head at him, but he didn’t want to start something he couldn’t finish.

But the dude started it. He let go of the nodding and suddenly started trying to outrun him every morning. Jerome found that to be a challenge and he took Chimdi on. Without speaking to each other every morning, they would appear at the same time and like an imaginary gun was shot into the air to mark the start of the race, both guys would take off each intending to beat the other.

This run-play continued with no apparent winner until a golden opportunity came to know the real champion.

Chimdi heard that the ARM Run For The Future was back, this time virtually, and slated for the first week in December and he figured that this was it. He spoke to Jerome for the first time and they both agreed to run together and check who would finish first on the RFTF app’s leaderboard. So, they downloaded the app and got set for the run.

While speaking about the run, these two stubborn heads discovered they had a lot in common. Soon, they were practising together ahead of the run and Jerome even started enjoying gisting while running.

He learnt two lessons from this incident. One, having a fitness buddy can sometimes be a good motivation and secondly, he got to know about the coolest run/walk event to end the year and could win loads of great prizes if he comes out tops.

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You could win amazing prizes too, but you must download the RFTF app on Google Store to run. Go ahead and invite your fitness buddies to download the app and join the fun – the more, the merrier!

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No Retirement Regret

No Retirement Regret

Grandma Ibadan, as Mrs. Abiodun Coker was popularly called, was a very loving and generous woman who spent her retirement years giving and spreading joy to anyone and everyone who met her.

 

Mrs. Abiodun was known as a lady who lived life to the fullest. She hosted monthly parties for children on the street and the widowed. She saw these as an opportunity for her and the other ladies to be a source of comfort to each other. The women also found a level of fulfilment from hosting the kids on the streets.

 

During one of such parties, Grandma Ibadan noticed one of the widows looking sad despite all the joy that filled the room. “A penny for your thought,” she said, as she bumped into her slightly from behind. “Ah, Grandma. Good afternoon ma Mrs. Tunji replied, slightly startled.

 

“Good afternoon, my dear. How are you? You look so lost, what is the matter?”

 

Mrs. Tunji sighed deeply, “Grandma, I’m not happy. I have so much in my life to be grateful for. I enjoy coming over for these parties but, it also gets me thinking about my life. Mama, I was a successful young woman. I had cars and I could go on trips whenever I wanted. I lived the life but look at me now. I can barely afford the day-to-day running of my life. I even had to sell off the last of my cars last week just to stay afloat”, Mrs. Tunji said.

 

“Walk with me to the garden, let’s talk,” Mrs. Abiodun said.

 

“Mrs. Tunji, I’m going to ask a few uncomfortable questions and then share a bit about myself with you. I hope that’s okay?”.

 

“Yes, ma. It’s fine.”

 

In all your days as working-class lady, did you consider and prepare for retirement and old age? Did you have a pensions account or even a savings targeted towards your old age?

 

Mrs. Tunji, looking down at her feet with shame, “No ma, I didn’t.”

 

“Look at me, my dear. While I do not applaud you for your decisions, I do not judge you either. It is very easy to get carried away when we are young, we forget that we cannot be young forever. Let me tell you a bit of myself.

 

“Just like you, I lived quite the life. I travelled around the world on vacations and bought properties for myself. You know I like beautiful houses, but if there was also something I loved to do even more, and it was saving. So, while my employer opened and funded an RSA account for me, I saved quite a lot by myself.”

 

“Hmm, grandma, how did I not know to save like this? I had a pensions account but what I get paid monthly is barely enough to my needs. I did put some money aside from time-to-time, but I always ended up spending it when I wanted to take a trip or throw myself a big birthday party. I wish I had done better. I look at my son now and I worry about his future. He spends a lot of his money clubbing and buying the latest power bike. I know he has a pension account, but I fear it might not suffice in taking care of him late in retirement.”

 

“I think you should talk to your son about planning for retirement. I hear that you can make additional voluntary contribution to your RSA these days. I also heard ARM Pension has a Retirement Lifestyle Planner that helps you plan and prepare for your retirement according to your lifestyle”, Mrs. Tunji concluded.

 

“Grandma, thank you for this talk. I will in turn have a talk with my son about this. This has been such a productive conversation. Thanks again, Grandma.”

 

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Our Retirement Lifestyle Planner enables you to Walk Into Tomorrow, today to plan out your dream retirement. On this easy-to-use portal, you get a holistic view of how your retirement lifestyle would be and how much you’d need at every point in your retirement. This helps you to total up the magic number you need to save to get the retirement you desire.

 

Click here to Walk Into Tomorrow and plan your dream retirement now.

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