Monday Morning Missives
Monday, April 22, 2024
I recently wrote about estate planning, and how important it is to make sure titling and beneficiaries are proper. However, I left out one item that has come up a few times in the last couple of weeks. While not technically a legal document, it is nonetheless quite important. A fellow planner once called it his "Love Letter to My Family".
The concept is to have a document that you draft that will give survivors the important information that they'll need which is NOT spelled out in your Will, Trust, etc. This could include things such as:
- Code to the safe or location of safety deposit box key.
- Location of passwords, or the master code to a password keeper.
- Where the survivor can find executed copies of all legal documents.
- Names and contact information for important people to call (Financial Advisor, Attorney, CPA, Insurance Agent, etc.)
- Special instructions around house and car maintenance, or caring for pets.
- Any final instructions for your funeral ceremony, such as readings or psalms you would like played.
- Most importantly, this document can allow you a chance to put in words anything you would want said to a surviving loved one. It's a final opportunity to speak from your heart to those left behind.
If you do a document such as this, we suggest letting the family know the location of it should the time come that they need to open it. Then seal it away with the hope that it won't be opened for a long, long time. Every once in a while, revisit it to make sure all instructions are still valid.
Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let us know. We are here to help in any way that we can. Have a great last full week of April - May is right around the corner...
UPCOMING EVENT: Please mark the morning of Saturday, June 1 on your calendar for our Shred-It event at our office. Bring any papers you would like to have destroyed and we'll do it right in front of you.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, April 15, 2024
What do Africa, Alaska, Italy and the Northern Lights have in common?
No, it isn't the beginning of a very strange joke... These represent four of the "bucket list" locations that I spoke with people about just last week, and it is what is on my mind for this Monday Morning Missive.
Do you remember the 2007 movie called The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson? In it, the two terminally ill patients leave the hospital and embark on a quest to check off as many of their to-dos as they can before they die. They race cars, go skydiving, get a tattoo and visit countless locations, including the Great Wall and the Egyptian pyramids.
The question we have asked clients for years is this. Why wait? Plan these bucket list trips now, and collect experiences throughout your life. As a firm, we have a mantra that we try to mention whenever the opportunity presents itself.
DO NOT POSTPONE JOY!
While some of the trips and experiences above may be costly and take significant planning, there are plenty of other experiences that are neither expensive or hard to accomplish. I distinctly remember the first time I drove the two hours north from Cincinnati to tour the Hocking Hills area, and I recall shaking my head at why I hadn't done it earlier. I felt the same thing last year when my wife and I had the opportunity to see Kennebunkport and Bar Harbor. And I'll never forget sharing experiences with my Dad like Reds Baseball Heaven, going to Cooperstown to see the Baseball Hall of Fame, and watching the Fighting Irish at a Notre Dame home football game.
Plan the trip. Go to the show. Eat at the restaurant you've always wanted to try. Tour the park. Watch a sunrise on the beach. And most of all - don't wait...
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week.
UPCOMING EVENT: Please mark the morning of Saturday, June 1 on your calendar for our Shred-It event at our office. Bring any papers you would like to have destroyed and we'll do it right in front of you.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, April 8, 2024
Just say no...
I woke to a text this morning from my daughter, and it was clear that stress was getting to her a bit. This is not surprising with college graduation right around the corner, recently closing on a home, readying for the launch of her nursing career at Cincinnati Children's, and planning a September wedding. I'd be surprised if she WASN'T a bit stressed.
But when she is looking for fatherly advice, the first thing that came to mind is a simple but powerful phrase. Just say no. Sometimes you have to say no to opportunities, invitations, and projects so that you maintain the capacity to say yes to the right things. There are only so many balls that we can juggle and still be effective and energized.
I ran across the following article from Forbes that discusses this topic, and I'll be sharing it with my daughter tonight. While it is specific to workplace stress, its really applicable across the board.
The irony is not lost on me that I'm providing this advice to her when I'm often guilty of saying yes more than I should. Since I'm in the advice giving business, I'm going to work to follow this advice in my own life as well.
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week.
UPCOMING EVENT: Please mark the morning of Saturday, June 1 on your calendar for our Shred-It event at our office. Bring any papers you would like to have destroyed and we'll do it right in front of you.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, April 1, 2024
What's on my mind this morning? That would be surprises in both college basketball and the stock market.
I look at my bracket for this years NCAA tournament and it is pretty much in shambles. My researched game plan turned out to be quite far away from what actually happened. Conversely, my daughter has a bracket that is in the top 1% of all brackets submitted to ESPN despite the fact that she hurriedly filled it out right before the first games started.
Then I look at what just happened in Q1 in the markets. We opened the year with pessimism around economic growth, but optimism that the Fed would be cutting rates aggressively to help keep stocks moving forward. What did we get? An overall economy that remains impressively strong and a Fed who now may only cut rates a few times this year (if at all - that could be another surprise).
If anyone had said on January 1 that we would have the strongest stock market quarter in the last five years, I think they would have been laughed at. Similarly, when NC State entered the ACC Tournament at 17-14 and having lost four in a row, nobody would have seen a 9-0 record since then and the #11 seed in the Final Four.
Sometimes the best advice is just to make sure you are "in the game". You never know what might happen...
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week.
UPCOMING EVENT: Please mark the morning of Saturday, June 1 on your calendar for our Shred-It event at our office. Bring any papers you would like to have destroyed and we'll do it right in front of you.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, March 24, 2024
If there's one thing that has been a constant in the twenty five years of our firm (and the more than three decades I've been in this business) it has been a common misconception about estate planning. The public has seemingly been well trained on the following phrase:
Being of sound mind and body, I hereby declare this to be my Last Will and Testament.
What is important to recognize is that the Will is often a "catch all" document that deals with items that do not pass either via TITLING or via BENEFICIARY. Those items supersede the Will, and pass outright outside of Probate.
Here are a few examples. If you have an account that is in joint name with another person, that account passes to them directly upon your death. If you have an account that has a beneficiary (like IRA accounts), they also pass directly. Life insurance is another area where you will have beneficiary language in place. In these instances, the Will does not need to come into play since titling and beneficiary language dictates where the assets transfer.
A well constructed and administered estate plan should make it where the Will does very little in the estate settlement process. The proper crossing of T's and dotting of I's will make the transfer of assets upon death fairly simple. What the Will does, however, is name the person who handles your affairs, pays your final expenses, and often deals with personal property.
Should you have any questions about how this applies in your situation, don't hesitate to reach out to us.
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, March 18, 2024
First, I apologize that the Monday Morning Missive is going out in the afternoon. I came to the realization this morning at 5:35, when my redeye flight from the west coast landed, that at my age my brain simply doesn't function without sleep. So after some much needed sleep after arriving home, my brain is back and operating on something close to all cylinders...
While on this recent trip, I was talking with friends about the upcoming start of the Cincinnati Reds season. There was frustration voiced by some that they don't have the streaming service that the Reds are on. I actually switched streaming services last year for that exact reason, as I didn't want to miss the games. And like many people, this meant yet another service that we were paying for after "cutting the cord" many years ago. What started out as a cost saver has clearly turned into an additional level of expense.
Jeff happened to send an article out to our team this morning that spoke to this creep in streaming service subscriptions, and it seemed like a great piece to send along. We figure many people may be in the same situation as my family.
5 Steps to Lower Streaming Subscription Costs
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week. If there is anything that we can be doing to be of assistance to you, don't hesitate to reach out.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, March 11, 2024
I was making dinner last night and wondering what I was going to write about this morning. I don't normally get writers block, but I hadn't yet had an "aha moment" for what the topic should be. This continued into the evening and then we happened to turn on the Academy Awards, and I thought back to something from a decade ago that would be the perfect thing to share.
Matthew McConaughey won the Best Actor Award in 2014 for his role in Dallas Buyers Club. While I had not seen the movie, I remember being absolutely captivated by his acceptance speech. I've watched it many times since, and it always brings emotions. You can view it here.
It occurs to me in our financial planning work that we are often trying to ascertain the answers to these same questions with our clients. We are trying to figure out who they look up to, what they look forward to, and what it is that they are chasing. Said differently, we are trying to figure out what makes them tick and what is most important in their lives. Only then can we best advise them on how to use their resources to move towards these goals and dreams.
"To any of us - whatever those things are. Whatever it is we look up to, whatever it is we look forward to, and whoever it is we are chasing. To that I say Amen. To that I say alright, alright, alright. And to that I say just keep living." - Matthew McConaughey
All of us at RDFA hope you have a great week. If there is anything that we can be doing to be of assistance to you, don't hesitate to reach out.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, March 4, 2024
In Cincinnati, the weather has at least temporarily turned and Spring seems to be right around the corner. That got me thinking about the inevitable spring cleaning that we tend to face around this time each year, along with a suggestion for you.
When you do your spring cleaning this year, take a hard look at the various papers that you have around the house. This could be tax returns, investment statements, insurance statements and a host of other items with PII (Personally Indentifiable Information) on them. Unless you have a requirement to keep them, you may want to do a spring purge.
Many people ask about tax returns, and how long you need to maintain them. Here's a link to an answer from the IRS website:
Period of Limitation for Tax Returns
For many of the other statements that you may have, they are easily retrievable online should you need them in the future. Consider keeping the current year and immediate past year if you are looking for quick and easy reference.
With the items that you are looking to dispose of, RDFA is once again offering a service to assist with this. We will be hosting a "Shred Event" from 9:00-12:00 on Saturday, June 1st. A shredding truck will be on site right in front of our building and they will shred items right in front of you. There's no need to burn up motors on home shredders, as you can simply bring all of those items to us and we'll get them out of your trunk and to the shred truck. Afterwards, feel free to come upstairs for coffee and donuts in our office.
Please note that this service is open to anyone - not just clients of RDFA. We would love if you would pass this email along to anyone that might have an interest, or post it on your social media accounts. For those not in Cincinnati, I'd encourage you to look for events such as this in your hometown.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, February 26, 2024
When is the last time you checked on the interest rate on your emergency reserve cash? For so many years during the time of ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) cash was earning absolutely nothing. Any money that was just "parked" could essentially be ignored because everyone was paying the exact same - zero. That's not the case any longer...
If you aren't earning at least 4% on your emergency reserve cash, you need to be looking for better alternatives. With a quick check this morning, I could see that Schwab's purchased Money Market is yielding 5.18%, and that amount has been fairly constant for months now. With the Fed now starting to telegraph slower and less frequent interest rate cuts, you should expect to see rates remaining in this range for a while.
To put this in perspective, if you have $25,000 sitting in your emergency cash you are looking at nearly $1,300 in annual interest. That's worth paying attention to.
Have a great start to the week
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715
Monday, February 19, 2024
I've long been a fan of local sports commentator and radio personality, Lance McAlister. He's always just had a way of connecting the human element of sports with the teams/athletes in a way I've enjoyed. I still remember the genuine tears when he spoke about Joe Nuxhall the day of his passing, and how I pulled off the side of the road to listen through glistening eyes.
A bit more than a year ago, Lance started writing a weekly social media post called "My Random Thoughts." The topics are all over the map, but something I always stop to read. So I thought perhaps we could expand on our email communications and social media posts to include just a random thought or two that hit us over the last week. With that introduction, here is the inaugural Monday Morning Missive.
I was struck by a comment from a local real estate agent who I was speaking with. I had remarked that first time home buyers face such a challenging environment right now due to inflated home costs, higher interest rates, and the challenge of raising enough money for the down payment. This topic has been top of mind for me as my daughter and future son-in-law have been looking for their first home. He remarked back "Studies have shown that if the bank of Mom and Dad was a real bank, it would be the 7th largest home lender in the country!" Wow - that puts it in a whole new perspective.
I then found the following article that hits on this exact topic:
Buying a House in Today's Market
We had long planned to provide our children with a "jump start" gift amount upon college graduation. But this home search made us realize that it was better to have some of the money used to make first time home ownership more approachable. We've long saved furniture for them (yes, our basement storage looks like a used furniture store...) and have kept other random items that would help them get started. But a financial gift now, rather than waiting for many years or for an ultimate inheritance a long time from now, could allow them to bypass multiple years of renting. Instead, they could start the home ownership process and equity building now.
If you find yourself in a situation where you are considering this approach, make sure you document the details and understand the risks. Everyone's situation is different, and how you would go about gifting can differ from person to person. Make sure to involve your trusted advisors so they can think this through with you so that the best decision is reached.
I'll be back with another random missive next Monday. We'll see what happens during the week to inspire the topic.
We hope you have a great week, and enjoy the Presidents Day holiday.
John Ritter
[email protected]
(513) 233-0715