Helpful Articles
Estate
These are articles that were written to help develop ideas for journalists that work for The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Kiplinger’s, Smart Money, AARP, newspapers, financial web sites, etc. They’ve been used as a source of quotes for these publications.
All older people should keep a death book
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/all-older-people-should-keep-a-death-book-2015-12-21
Your Death Book. The Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch published one of my articles that deals with providing major help to your survivors. Middle aged people and the elderly should be mindful of the things involved.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/to-help-your-heirs-write-a-death-book-2013-02-26
Make life easier for your survivors. Those who have had to handle the paperwork as a caregiver or survivor know how difficult it is. It’s much easier to provide this information when you or your parents are alive and know where everything is.
The Best Gift for Your Spouse-- or Executor. Anyone who has had to handle the affairs of a dying or deceased person knows that it can be a frustrating and time consuming task to get information needed for a home, finances, funeral, and settling the estate. This paper presents a way of greatly reducing the burden of a surviving spouse or heirs.
Survivor Benefits. This is a technical article that explains how to evaluate survivor benefit alternatives for those who are faced with making an immediate decision on such things as pensions, Social Security, long-term-care or life insurance. Survivor benefits may have a very important effect on future plans, so it's usually best to decide these before doing retirement forecasting. The Simplified Financial Planner is designed to help select survivor benefits and do forecasting at the same time.
Can You Trust a Trust or Its Trustee? If your will includes provisions to create a trust on your death, it may completely invalidate previous retirement projections that didn't account for the trust. In my own case, the trust can reduce the amount I can spend in the next fifteen years by almost one-third. You may have the same or a worse problem.