Retirement planning

[brutal]

To tag onto Foxtrots irrevocable trusts post, I strongly urge everyone to consider it, and to do it early.

If you own your home and require nursing home care, it gets very expensive. If you have to rely on Medicare/Medicaid to supplement the costs, they can and will take your home. Last I heard, the property has to have been in a Trust for 7 years prior to using those programs. Talk was that it was going up to 10 years. This also applies if you sell the home. Only by planning early can you protect your assets. My wifes parents put their home in a Living Trust before they passed. At the time the law said 3 years. Before that period passed it went to 5 years and the Trust was not grandfathered. Before the 5 year period passed it went to 7 years. My MIL passed during this time and my FIL needed to go into a nursing home. His car was already also in my wifes name too. Their home just made the grandfathering of the 7 year requirement by 1 month. The only way his bank assets were protected is that all money in the account was used to purchase items for my FIL's care. His life insurance was protected because my wife went to a family friend/funeral home owner and locked his life insurance in to cover his eventual funeral/burial costs (essentially making the funeral home the beneficiary of the insurance).

Additionally, each state and the feds love to take a huge inheritance tax cut of your assets/net worth. This can serverely reduce anything you hope to pass down to your kids. If a Trust owns those assets, and your kids are secondaries on the Trust until your death, inheritance tax doesn't apply as the Trust owns the items.

As Foxtrot always adds, this is just my personal advice and should not be construed as legal advice. Seek competent legal counselling for advice that will hold up in the courts.

My understanding is that Fed Inheritance tax kicks in at $5M and CO doesn't tax. Who here has those kinds of assets? Not me.

The advice I generally see does not recommend living trusts for those without dynasty assets, but I was not aware of the medicare thing.

[kidicarus13]

If I would have put the money I spent on silver and into my 401k into Bitcoin the last few years, I could probably retire by now. But that's a real crap shoot isn't it?

Hindsight is always 20/20...
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latim...ndroid-verizon

[Irving]

I find that article funny, because I bought all my Bitcoins when they were $11 a piece, and started selling them when they were around $124 a piece. Mt.Gox got hacked (robbed) and then went bankrupt without paying out the money that people (me) had in their "bank." I would have loved to have held on to them all, even at the bottom price mentioned in the article of only $600 a piece.

[encorehunter]

My understanding is that Fed Inheritance tax kicks in at $5M and CO doesn't tax. Who here has those kinds of assets? Not me.

The advice I generally see does not recommend living trusts for those without dynasty assets, but I was not aware of the medicare thing.

Have you ever heard of the saying "Land rich, money poor." I have several ranching friends who almost lost their ranches or did loos a big part of them because of the inheritance tax. The properties had been in their family for generations, with a lot bb's of the land being purchased at $.10-.25 an acre. The drought made them sell off the cattle, then when their parents passed, there was little money to pay the taxes. The government taxes the land at current value. 10,000 acres to them could be worth $7.5 to $10 million easily.

[CS1983]

Inheritance tax is utterly immoral. Then again, so is the income tax.

[Madeinhb]

I added this to funny pictures on accident. Fits here.

[Irving]

Inheritance tax is utterly immoral. Then again, so is the income tax.

In my heart I agree, but without it, all the private land would have been bought up and passed down to families that aren't mine our yours by the time you and I were born.

[CS1983]

In my heart I agree, but without it, all the private land would have been bought up and passed down to families that aren't mine our yours by the time you and I were born.

No, because someone would decide they didn't want it and sell it just like my wife's grandmother did with their family ranch off of Henry Lynch rd in Santa Fe.. the street named after her grandmother's father.

[encorehunter]

A couple years ago I changed my from my money market account and used it to purchase years of service credits. I feel this protects me better in case of another major market fluctuation. For the new year, I decided to start putting away another $50 per check into a 457. It is only $1300 per year, but over 19 years it should add up to a nice little bonus for retirement. Hopefully I will be able to increase the monthly contribution yearly.
Living within your means is a big step in retirment to me. It is very difficult when you have gun and ammo addictions. Having all bills paid off well before retirement is another major step. I am working on having at least 10 years of out of debt before I retire. I don't look at all guns as costs. There are a lot I look at as investments.

[Irving]

This is where my studies for self-employed retirement planning have led me, so far.

I've spent a few hours looking into this, and this was the best explanation of the main self-employment retirement accounts I could find.

Solo 401(k) vs SIMPLE IRA vs SEP IRA
http://www.obliviousinvestor.com/sep...-vs-solo-401k/

You can even do a Solo Roth 401(k) which will allow you to have both pre-tax, and post-tax funds, for those of you who aren't sure if you'll be in a higher, or lower tax bracket when you retire. Best of both worlds? Worst of both worlds? I don't know, I haven't researched that position yet.

Anyway, with a possible max annual contribution of $54,000 for a both a Solo 401(k) and a SEP IRA, (but easier to do with Solo 401(k)), those both look way more useful than the standard IRA or Roth IRA with a max annual contribution of $5,500. I think for me, the above two mentioned are the way I'll go.