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Estate planning for the wealthiest generation

On Behalf of | Dec 9, 2016 | Estate Planning

Baby boomers in Florida and throughout the country are the wealthiest generation in the country’s history, and until the millennials, they were also the most populous. As they age, they are preparing to deal with an estimated total of $30 trillion in assets. However, caution must be taken to ensure that they do not spend those assets on long-term care.

People often fail to plan for long-term care because it is a topic they do not wish to think about, or they do not purchase insurance because of its cost. However, long-term care planning should be a part of overall estate planning to ensure that those costs do not get passed on to relatives. A study found that a month in a nursing home has a median cost throughout the country of nearly $7,700 while the median monthly cost of home health care, based on a 44-hour work week, is more than $3,800.

With a long-term care plan in place, baby boomers might also want to consider whether they want to spend their assets, donate them to charity or pass them on to loved ones. This may involve setting up a trust with conditions for disbursement of assets. Baby boomers, Generation Xers and millennials may all have different ideas about how to manage money and might want different financial advisers than those used by their parents.

Creating an estate plan may also have a number of other aspects. For example, an executor or trustee must be chosen to administer the will or the trust. People may also want to consider who they want to handle their financial matters and make health care decisions in the event that they become incapacitated. Estate planning may involve looking at how they might want to preserve and pass on wealth across generations, and different kinds of trusts may be able to help them achieve this goal.

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