Credit Card habit

Why do you need a fistful of credit cards? They are heavy. They make your wallet bulge. They cost money.  You can’t remember how much you have charged on them. Now that even the hoi polloi carry gold cards, prestige lies in flashing a plain vanilla card. For an even bigger thrill, pay cash.

As a status symbol, the credit card is finished. It is now just a transactions workhorse and having too many of them says you are dumb. Assuming, as I do, that you want to get out of debt and build some saving, plastic ought to serve a single purpose: convenience. You put it down instead of writing a check or paying cash. At the end of the month, you pay the bill.

Not that you are perfect. You will still stretch the occasional bill over two or three months; maybe at Christmas or after a vacation. But your goal is never to charge any more than you can easily repay. For the twenty-first century, debt is out.

How to get rid of consumer debt;

It is so simple that I am almost embarrassed to mention it. Don’t borrow anymore. That is all there is to it. Say to yourself, “Today, I am not going to put down a charge card for anything.” When you buy something, pay cash or write a check.

Tomorrow, say the same thing: “I am not going to put down a charge card for anything. I am not even going to borrow $10 from a friend.” Take it slowly, one day at a time. It is like stopping smoking. You will be nervous at first; you won’t see how it is possible to live; you will suffer relapses and sneak a new debt or two. But when you get up every morning, renew your pledge. To make it easier, quit carrying credit cards.

I hear you saying, “I can’t get along without a credit card.” Of course, you can. You can pay by check or debit card. On trips, you can use traveler’s check. You may have to show a credit card to rent a car. But when you bring the car back, pay the bill by personal check or travelers check.  (If the rental agent won’t take your personal check, pay by card and immediately make out a check to the credit card issuer; pay this bill the moment it arrives.)

The executor or, in many states, personal representative sees that your will is carried out. It is tiresome, detailed, time-consuming, thankless job. You are doing no favors for the person you name. All the property has to be tracked down and assembled (no easy job if you did not keep good records). Creditors notified. Heirs dealt with tactfully. Arguments settled. Bills and taxes paid. Property appraised and distributed or sold. Life insurance claimed if it is payable to the estate. Investments managed until they can be distributed to their new owners. Final accounting to be made, to the heirs and, perhaps, to the courts.

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The executor usually works with a lawyer, so you do not need an expert in estate law or high finance. You need virtues that are much harder to find. An executor has to be willing, reliable, well organized, honest, responsible about money, fair-minded, and sensitive to the worries of the heirs. The usual practice is to ask able heirs (or friend) to do the job. If you name a professional executor a bank or a lawyer include a family member as co-executor, just to keep things moving along. Get permission before putting down someone’s name. If money is misspent or errors made, the executor can be held personally responsible.

A friend or family member usually doesn’t ask for compensation. But you should specify this in the will; otherwise, they may claim the commission allowed by law, even though you expected them to serve for nothing. (In large estates, it may be cheaper for a family member to take a commission than to take the same amount of money as an inheritance. The income tax on the commission may be lower than the death tax on the net estate.)

When banks or attorneys are executors, however, they may charge, and charge, and charge sometimes by the hour, sometimes a fixed fee, sometimes a percentage of the assets in the estate that goes to probate. Your estate will pay less if you keep the executorship at home and let your family hire a lawyer by the hour or by the job. (Executors should shop lawyers, asking more than one what they will charge; like any other business people, lawyers cut fees for jobs they want and that they know are up for bid. Your family may not even need an attorney.

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Trust facts

The states have different title loans rules and taxes affecting trusts, so see a lawyer if you move. Your trust document should specifically allow for a change of state so the laws that govern the trust can change, too. Otherwise, the laws (and taxes) of your former state apply unless you get a court order allowing a change.

There’s a lot of legwork involved in transferring property into a trust. Your lawyer will prepare the new deed for your real property, as well as transfer letters for assets held by your bank, broker, and other financial connections. But you will have to follow up.

Don’t make the trust the beneficiary of your 401(k) or Individual Retirement Account. If you died, that whole sum of money would go into the trust and be taxed right away. By contrast, a spouse or other individual beneficiary can roll the 401(k) into an IRA and take payments over many years. That spreads the taxes out.

You can name the trust beneficiary of your life insurance policy. The proceeds would then go into the trust to be distributed as you directed. Before doing this, however, married people should ensure that a surviving spouse will have plenty of ready cash in case there is a delay in getting the trust paid out.

Your trust should define what it means to be disabled, requiring a successor trustee to handle your affairs. For example, “I shall be deemed to be disabled when two physicians licensed to practice medicine in my state sign a paper stating that I am disabled and unable to handle my financial affairs.” The same language can be used to determine when your disability has passed.

To change the terms of a living trust, you prepare a written amendment. Don’t scratch in the changes on the trust document; they won’t be accepted. In some states, the amendment has to be signed and, maybe, witnessed just like a will. But in most states, a notarized signature will do.

A married couple should ask an experienced estate-planning lawyer (not a lawyer or insurance agent who is hard-selling trusts) whether they need one trust or two. In community property states, it is common to have a single trust document for all the property; each spouse’s separate property interests are segregated within the trust; at the death of the first spouse, the trust divides into multiple trusts include the title loans.