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Here come the holiday’s! My kids teeth have recently rotted from the Halloween candy and now we move on to turkey & gravy (and “interesting” discussions with relatives we don’t see very often) and then fast forward to the big fella in a red track suit. Love it!
It’s this time of year when my kids and I love watching those iconic holiday movies. Movies such as; Polar Express, Nightmare Before Christmas, the Grinch (original version narrated by Boris Karloff.) And Home Alone!
I love the toy store in the Home Alone movie which was based on the original F.A.O. Schwarz in New York City (which my own Mom and Dad took me to as a kid.) I also got to eat ice cream at Rumpelmayer’s at the famed St. Moritz on that New York trip.
The Home Alone movie got me thinking about estate planning and passing assets to kids. The connection not obvious to you? I understand, so let me explain.
As I am sure you know, Macaulay Culkin was the adorable kid star of the Home Alone movies. Here is what he looked like back then:
Macaulay made a lot of money as a child actor and I was recently reading about his tumultuous relationship with his parents. His parents got divorced and then there was a fight over money and everything got ugly. The family accountant was finally put in charge of the money and the situation played out from there.
All of this got me thinking about the proper way to pass assets to kids and getting your estate planning in order. There are really efficient ways to pass assets to your beneficiaries that can prevent unnecessary taxes and guard the assets from creditors that may attack the assets.
With all of this in mind, I got together with my colleague Brent Honea and put together a brand new short video that deals with Lifetime Trusts for your kids.
Do you have kids in grammar school or high school? Have you ever heard the phrase “expected family contribution?” This is a dollar amount assigned to your family and it’s what you must pay for your child’s education after factoring in financial aid.
Your expected family contribution is based on input from you and a complicated calculation. Parents make mistakes all the time when filling out the forms for aid and then they lose out on thousands of dollars of aid.
Also, there are many valuable tools and strategies that you can implement to help reduce your expected family contribution. I got together with my colleague Kraig Strom in a brand new podcast interview so that Kraig could explain a few of the fantastic strategies parents are using to help them reduce college costs and pay for college in a tax efficient way.
This is a short podcast and highly valuable. You can click below to listen and then don’t hesitate to contact me regarding our complimentary college cost reduction assessment. During the assessment, we will tell you what your expected family contribution is right now and how you can reduce it.
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