Cohortskates

Not only that, the judge can also take charge of the funds you want your children to have (for private school, camps, music lessons, prom dresses) until they are eighteen years old. [or instance, if your children are underage, and all you leave them is that life insurance policy, a guardianship for those assets is created upon your death, naming the executor or someone else as the guardian for this money. Each year the guardian has to go back to court to account for the money spent on behalf of the children during the past year. When each child reaches eighteen, regardless of each one’s ability to handle the money on his or her own, each one’s share will be legally signed ovei lock, stock, and barrel. By the time they get it, too, there will not be as much as there could have been, because every year there have been guardian fees and fees to a lawyer to do the guardianship reporting.

If you die with a trust, on the other hand, while the courts still have the final say over guardianship, you at least can make the important decision of how, when, and for what purposes your children will receive the money you are leaving them. You assign a successor trustee (your chosen guardian, for example) or two or three or however many you like, specify when you want your children to receive their money, how you’d like that money to be used until that time, and poof, it’s done. The successor trustee(s) takes care of your children’s financial lives on your behalf. No yearly reporting, no fees, no nothing.
Think trusts are for old people who are likelier to die? Think again. Trusts are for people who are lucky enough to live among people they love. Trusts are for people who are responsible to those they love.

Okay, you’re thinking, this all makes great sense. But I’m only thirty-nine, and I did a will when we had children. The will says who the kids would go to if something happened. My best friend, Joe, would be the guardian; we’ve already talked aboutit. Plus I don’t really have that many assets yet, though I have a nice-size life insurance policy, just in case. That trust sounds like a good idea for when I’m older.
Not true. Particularly when you have children, the earlier you do your revocable living trust the better, even if you don’t have a lot of money. If your children are very young, should anything happen to you, they may be at much greater risk than you can imagine. Say you’re killed in an automobile accident. It happens every day. Even if you do have a will, your will does not have the power to assure that Joe, your best friend in this world, will be the legal guardian of your children. A will can only express your wishes. The court always has the last decision when it comes to who is appointed legal guardian of your children.

HAVE YOU EVER arrived at the scene of an accident on the highway and thought, Oh, God, I’ve really got to get around to doing my will? Has a friend or colleague ever had a cancer scare that made you think, I’ve got to make arrangements for my children in case anything happens to me? Does turbulence when you’re flying somewhere remind you in the pit of your stomach of all the affairs you don’t have in order? But a few minutes later the traffic starts moving, your friend’s scare turns out to be nothing, the turbulence dies down, your thoughts move on to something else, and everything is back to normal.

Steps to follow
You have taken the first steps to financial freedom by facing the memories and fears that have kept you from dealing with your money. You have also started to recover the power and strength that enable you to be in control of your money—the money you have now and the money that will come to you.
But going back to the past is in itself not enough to create the future you want. Financial freedom requires not just insights but also actions, and to carry out these actions you must learn about money and how it needs to be treated. True financial freedom is not only having money, but having power over that money as well.
You will learn how to manage your money and create more. I will talk about the numbers that follow the dollar sign—facts, figures, how it all works. Don’t let the numbers scare you. There is no financial computation you’ll need to make that can’t be done on a pocket calculator. You will soon be able to trust yourself with numbers more than you ever thought you could. You will soon see, too, that you have more than what it takes to manage your money on your own (a message, by the way, that the commissions- oriented financial industry would rather you never learn).
These three steps, as you’ll see, are “must-do’s” to ensure that the money you have now will grow, that the money you want to create will indeed come your way, and that your money will help take care of you and the people you love when you need it to.
Remember the goal you wrote down for yourself when you first picked up this book? Please pull it out now and look at it again. You are about to take the step-by-step actions to make that goal reality.