Author Archives: Jay Butchko
How To Disinherit A Family Member With Minimal Drama
You have the right to decide who will inherit your property after you die, and as such, you have the right to disinherit anyone you choose, but there is a wrong way to do it, and we can all imagine what it looks like. Don’t storm out of a family gathering to rewrite your… Read More »
Financial Abuse Of The Elderly Strikes Again In Central Florida
Scams against the elderly are common enough that most seniors are on their guard against the most common types. Even the loneliest people know not to fall for those brightly colored postcards that announce that you have just won a large sum of money. Likewise, when a much younger person matches with you on… Read More »
Why 55 Plus Communities Are Overrated
When you are too old for the rat race but too broke to retire, you might get to thinking that the grass is greener in a world where no one thinks about the rat race, keeping up with the Joneses, or living vicariously through their descendants; people in this alleged utopia live for the… Read More »
Can The Great Resignation Be An Estate Planning Strategy?
The motivations for joining the Great Resignation, in which you quit your job even though you do not have another one lined up and even though you do not have enough savings to be financially independent for a long period of time, are complex, but from the outside, it simply looks like you don’t… Read More »
Your Estate Plan Should Face Reality About Addiction
You are not the target audience for those estate planning sales pitches about protecting your wealth and spending your golden years walking on the beach with your spouse and going on cruises with your friends. You have nothing in common with the people who will only begin work on an estate plan if, for… Read More »
You Need A Financial First Aid Kit, Even If You Don’t Write A Will
The words “intestate succession” strike fear in some people’s hearts. They imagine the state gobbling up all of their property, or their estranged son inheriting it and spending it all on marriages and divorces from a series of gold-digging wives. You have no such fear. It doesn’t bother you in the least if your… Read More »
Revocable Trusts And Your Taxes
Financial planners and estate planning lawyers sometimes talk about revocable trusts as though they are a solution to everyone’s every problem. By this logic, a revocable trust enables you to sprout a doppelganger that owns your money and then pays it back to you, and, naturally, this is something that everyone wants. They might… Read More »
The Medicaid Child Caretaker Exemption
It is easy to idealize aging in place in a multigenerational household, but most adults who live with their parents do so out of economic necessity. The members of the household are sharing scarce resources. The house is often the only valuable asset that the older adults own. The younger adults still live paycheck… Read More »
If These Estate Planning Mistakes Can Happen To Celebrities, They Can Happen To You
It is fun to read about the foibles of people who have a lot more money than you. Tabloids and reality TV derive their entertainment value from the fact that we in the audience believe that we have much better judgment about love, money, and parenting. We think that we would never be dumb… Read More »
Are Aging In Place And Moving To More Senior-Friendly Accommodations Mutually Exclusive?
One of the best things about being retired is that your peers are no longer impressed with status symbols, so that you no longer feel compelled to spend money on purchases whose only purpose is to show off to an audience. If a red sports car didn’t give you superpowers when you were 50,… Read More »
