Advanced Personal Finance

This bears repeating, since a friend just informed me that despite having two young children he does not have a will.

Go get a freakin’ will already. Do it now.

If any of the following apply to you, you need a will:

1. I’m alive
2. I have at least one person that depends on me
3. I have more than $1.37 to my name

The only situation where I’d buy the ‘I don’t have a will’ line is if you’re single and don’t have any significant assets.

If you don’t get one of them Hollywood fancy-shmancy wills, they can be really inexpensive. You can also get pretty complicated ones, with trusts and all kinds of stuff. The point is you have one.

A typical will involves the following key points:

• Appoints executor and/or trustees
• Appoints guardians for your children
• How your estate will be apportioned
• Creates trusts
• Incorporates tax planning

The biggies for most people are naming guardians for your children and determining how they’ll be provided for and getting your estate into the hands of your heirs quickly. If you don’t have a will in place, state law will govern how your estate is distributed. The problem with that, besides the fact that you don’t get a say, is that it can take a long time.

In the end, you’re not getting a will for you. You’re doing it for your family.

So do it already.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 8:23 am and is filed under Records, Tax planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.