3 Ways To Successful Estate Planning

I want to talk about something important today and these are probate, wills, trusts, death, and it’s something that’s not fun to talk about. Something that’s very needed and something that we just truly don’t as a society don’t talk much about rightfully so. But it’s something that we need to protect ourselves of and something that our real estate business is running into a lot, it’s something that is a natural part of life, unfortunately, but it’s protecting your assets, protecting those around you, your family, your friends, loved ones and the people that you’re going to be dealing with, you know, something that’s very natural, but has to be dealt with and not overlooked. Again, it’s passing on to the next life.

I want to read a couple of things. There’s an unbelievable book, “Tax-Free Wealth” by Tom Wheelwright and we use him, from their CPAs and he wrote the book on a lot of this stuff and is incredible at it. So we’re lucky and fortunate to work with them, but it’s something that everyone has the ability to plan for their inevitable demise, right. I just want to talk quickly about probate that’s getting something that we’re dealing with a lot in our businesses. I just want to read you a couple of things in here from the book and really wills and trust being the thing mainly that we need to focus on and make sure that we are having our assets go to our heirs and go to our loved ones and not to be raked over the coals by judges, government, lawyers, attorneys, etc., not having our information all spread throughout the public.

“Estate planning comes down to two things: making the financial aspects of your death is easy as possible for your family to handle and making sure that all, at least most of your assets go to your family, your charities and others you choose and not the government.”

Again, the government is – I just talked to a seller of ours, a new client, and he is talking about just another city here in Michigan that is starting to really kind of look at landlords as another way to produce income and try and have to get every landlord register with their city and just another way of producing come and more inspections to come and things like that. Then you have to pay for them. Again, the system’s not broke, but the government is broke and the government needs your money to run. The government doesn’t make any money. It doesn’t produce any money of its own. It only has you and I, me and you, our money to run. So you know how much is too much. Right? They’re doing every single thing with pensions going bust and with retirement accounts, 401Ks and all the different things that are going bust and hold the entitlement for programs. They’re going bust. They were looking for every single way that they can get their hands on your money and they will gladly take you through probate and nickel and dime you as much as possible.

So the three steps to a successful estate planning: placing assets in a trust; creating a will; avoiding the estate tax. Those are the three main things right.

Placing Assets in a Trust Fund

There is an easy way out of probate in most countries. Make sure all of your assets are titled to a trust.

Creating a Will

One other document needed in order to make your life easier for those who survive as a will. Just because you have a trust, doesn’t mean you can skip putting together a rock solid will. A trust will control your assets after your death, avoid probate and maintain your privacy. A will appoints a guardian for your children and specifies the distribution of your assets and specifies any other special requests.

Avoiding Estate Tax

The key to getting around in estate tax is to learn the rules. The first rule is that “the lower your assets valued the lawyer estate tax.” That means the fewer assets you own when you die, the lower your taxes will be. The key is to get as many assets as you can out of your estate (i.e. your ownership) during your lifetime while still maintaining control of those assets. What does that mean? It means getting entities, using entities, using LLCs, corporations to control the assets but not own them in your name.

You know, the problem with so many people is that they own their assets, their properties, their rental properties or whatever they may own. They own them in their own name. They don’t own them in a separate entity. So the rich, you know, when he’s talking about in this book, is that ‘he who has the gold makes the rules’ and we disparaged the rich so much in this country now for whatever reason, I mean it’s America for crying out loud and we disparage the rich. That’s why people come to this country to make their lives better for themselves and make their lives better for their post area and their kids. That’s what I’m trying to do it. That’s what all of us are trying to do. For some reason, we disparage that, our political leaders disparage it and they want us to become all equally at the bottom of the ladder and just leave those few elites at the top.

That’s just not America. It’s not what makes us great. Again, that’s a talk for a different day, but how can we get around that? What do the wealthy people do? What do the rich people do? Well, they follow the rules, the guidelines, these guidelines, these rules are here for all of us. They’re here for everyone to know, but most people just choose not to know them. I would rather die trying, you know, “Hey, even if I don’t get to everything in my life, well at least I die trying. I know that I gave it my all and I did as much as I could to get those things done.”

So again, it’s not an incredibly fun topic to talk about, but it’s one of those ways that the wealthy get ahead and the rich get ahead. They used the tax law, they use the estate laws, they use all the laws to get around things. The government does actually give you incentives to do all these things. So how can we better ourselves, better our future, better our children’s future, better our family’s future? It’s by understanding the tax law, understanding, having good advisors. We talked about advisors. We can be a good team of people around you. Counsel, asset attorneys, contract attorneys, CPAs, having people around you that can guide you in the right direction.

So that is the Real Estate Q and A for this week. We have the big macro part two report coming tomorrow. The Everything Bubble, that’s going to be crazy. A lot of stuff coming, but a lot of the bad things are coming. I mean there’s an unbelievable opportunity for all of us and we just have to know how to use it. Again, I don’t know everything I’m giving to you what I’ve learned and what I’m studying a ton right now and the amazing things I’m learning. If I can just get a piece of the things I’m learning and the opportunity that’s coming, I’m going to be a happy camper. I wish that for all of you as well.

So I appreciate your time and energy. It means the most to me in the world. I love this time of year. I love fall because unfortunately getting dark earlier as you can see a lot of our videos getting darker. But you can hear the high school down the road here. We got the Thursday night football. JV teams are playing, that time of year. It’s fall. Football is back. It’s a beautiful sight. So I wish you all the best in your endeavor. Let us know how we can help. Again, we put these videos out for you guys because I love sharing what I learn because it teaches me more when I’m sharing what I’m learning and let us know how we can help in any way. Any of the resources we have. Like I said, the attorneys, the CPA, the people were using. Let us know how we can help you. I love bringing this stuff to you guys and I look forward to doing it more and more and hope you have an awesome, awesome rest of the day. Go create that future that you want. It’s there for all of us. We live in America, for the vast majority who watches, we live in America, so make most of it. We hit the lottery, literally hit the lottery by living in this place. So I appreciate you guys a ton. We’ll talk to you soon.