I am hosting a Financial Planning Class with my good friend Brandy Kea Robinson, from Kea Retirement Solutions. This class will be held at my shop on Friday, February 1st @ 6:30pm. If you own
a house, own a car, have children, you're married, you have parents, or you can breath air... you have to come to this FREE class!
Brandy is a financial planner. This is a class I have been wanting to host because when my grandparents died I learned so much! I have learned more things at 28 than your average 40 year old knows. Brandy helps the girls in my salon as well! She has set everyone up with a SEP-IRA, because when you work for yourself, who is matching you for your retirement? Brandy is a great financial planner and I am hoping to share this financial literacy with all of my clients.
So let me tell you what happened to me! When my Grandpa died, I was 24. My grandparents were super old school, which means my Granny paid the bills and my Gramps name was on all of the bills. So when my Grandpa died we had to switch out all bills out of my Grandpa's name into my Granny's. Do you know how hard that is?!!??!??!!! It's hard as HELL! That was my grandparent's first mistake. This mistake of not having both of their names on everything trickled down into her car title. We went to the DMV to get everything changed and, to my Granny's surprise, her name was not on the title at all! So this left my Granny with two decisions. She had to either: 1. refinance her car, or 2. pay off the rest of her car loan in full. My Granny was blessed enough to do option number 2, but do you know how many people do not have enough money lying around to pay off an entire car?!?!? I know I sure as hell don't! But all of this could have been avoided if my grandparents had all of their assets in a trust.
After my Gramps died and my Granny had to go through the headache of fixing things the hard way, my Granny called up Brandy and set up a trust for her estate. This trust explained EVERYTHING! It was a thorough guide laid out step-by-step in the event she became non-responsive or died, so when my Granny went into a coma from her stroke I called Brandy at 11:30pm and she was on the phone with me faxing over paperwork and sending me information on power of attorney and executer paperwork. I was my Grannys power of attorney, meaning I was the voice to decide what happened to her, but she also wrote in her trust what she wanted to happen in the event she became non responsive. (Now I know death is scary thing to talk about, but I've buried both of my Grandparents, who, in my eyes, are my parents. I'm not afraid to talk about death because it doesn't scare me. If it scares you I understand but these are things that need to be decided and talked about so FIND YOUR VOICE!) With my Granny's car I was her beneficiary. Having all of these things decided and worked out made it easier on us as a family to grieve and handle funeral arrangements. A trust is such a set-in-stone document that if anyone tries to object anything written in the trust they will lose their share of anything left for them. As simple as that! Now let me explain to you what all of these adult words mean.
A trust is a document that is prepared by a lawyer through your financial planner that spells out the rules that you want followed for your property and assets for your beneficiaries. The goal of a trust is to reduce the estate tax liability, to protect property in your estate, and to avoid probate. What does a trust mean for me, Acacia B.? A trust means that if I get married and then decide to get a divorce my ex-husband can NOT touch anything left for me by my grandparents involved in the trust. For example my house can not be touched in the event I get a divorce. Is a trust more powerful than a will? YES! A trust always trumps a will in the court of law!
What is life insurance? Life insurance is insurance that pays out a sum of money either on the death of the insured person or after a set period. Life insurance is SO important! I can not stress this enough. Do you know how much a funeral costs? We paid 10K for each of my grandparents! Funerals are so expensive and now I understand why people are out on the side of the road doing carwashes to raise money, because the average person does not have money set aside for this large expense! Please don't leave your family with this expense after you die, it is a very stressful situation for your loved ones to handle if there aren't proper insurances in place.