Stites On Estates
Estate, Trust, and Tax Planning
A Non-Optional Part of Your Estate Plan: Guardians for Minor Children
Whether you're wealthy or not, and whether your estate planning issues are complicated or simple, if you have a child under age 18, you need a Will, because you should nominate a guardian for your...
Deciding to Rent or Buy Your House: A Tale of Two Cities
People often decide between renting or buying a place to live based on preferences and instinct: What do you want to do?If they are incrementally more analytical, they may explore "how much house" they can...
Should You Get a Prenuptial Agreement?
Whether or not to get a prenuptial agreement before getting married isn't an easy decision.The advisability of a prenup turns in large part on whether the default law that will govern the marriage if it...
Nonprofit Governance and the Closure of Sweet Briar College
The announcement this week of the closure of Sweet Briar College after the end of this semester was significant and sad news.Sweet Briar was pressured by declining enrollment and a deterioration in pricing power. The...
Life Cycle Estate and Financial Planning for Early Adulthood
I believe effective life cycle estate and financial planning is anchored in the Quadrant of Facts, Forecasts, Life Stages, and Unexpected Events. Over the past several weeks, ten posts covered a lot of territory about...
Protecting Your Personal Pension From Volatile Equity Markets
Our previous post explored a model of the cost of the promise you make to yourself to fund your retirement, but that model omitted a very important real-world risk: volatile equity markets.Most recently, the 200...
What Is the Funding Status of Your Personal Pension?
Pause and reflect on what a pension is: income for life after you retire, intended to replace part of all of your employment income.For retirees in the "Greatest Generation," pensions were common. For a host...
Delayed Retirement Effects of Investment Costs and Behavioral Tendencies
Most people know (at least in the abstract) that choices have consequences. Choices you make to manage your behavioral tendencies (or not) and about your investment costs may have tremendous consequences for when you can...