Archive for the ‘finance’ Category

Literary agents are publishers’ gatekeepers. They screen and represent the vast majority of the books publishers release. Publishing houses tend to give proposals submitted by agents more attention because their editors have a high level of confidence in their submissions. Don’t approach agents or publishers.
WHEN WRITERS TRY TO SELL THEIR BOOKS, they often feel like they’re swimming against the tide in a tsunami. For most writers, the process of trying to sell a book differs from anything that they have ever attempted. For many, it’s as if they’re entering a strange new world, and they can quickly get lost or beaten down.When they are not fully prepared, they may suddenly discover that they have to do much more than they expected and do it in a manner that may not be their strength.

Is employee performance appraisal important? Absolutely. In these tough economic times, it is even more critical. Unfortunately, companies in every industry today are faced with making difficult decisions regarding the size and makeup of their workforces. Without good performance management data, these decisions are virtually made in a vacuum. Leading performance appraisal consultants, like Grote Consulting can help your organization accurately appraise employee performance and make smart personnel choices when the time arrives.

Down-Payment: The negotiation-box reserved for determining the down-payment requirements needed to take delivery of the dealer-car, now! The selling-strategy for this “box” is for the car salesman to demand extra- high amounts of cash, many times over, before releasing the customer to his closer. Once, the closer has “control” of the customer in the office, he then will continue to demand extra down-payment cash from the customer, until they “believe” in these money-demands as required to take delivery of the dealer’s car, now. If no extra cash is available, the closer may even ask the customer to use their credit cards.
Monthly Payments: The negotiation-box reserved for setting the customer’s monthly-payment requirements to drive the dealer’s car, home. The selling-strategy for this “box” is to allow the salesman many opportunities to confuse and confound their customers by placing many figures in their heads. High monthly-payment’s figures are quoted, first, to continue “shocking” the customer. Then, the car salesman offers lower monthly-payment figures to the customer, so they “believe” a discount was offer by the dealer somewhere on the “worksheet.” Each time the salesman offers lower monthly-payments to the customer, he then asks for more down-payment cash or “takes” equity from the customer’s trade-in, in exchange. Finally, when the closer does enter, to take-over the salesman’s customer, he too continues the same monthly payment “discounting” tactic, until the customer becomes totally confused or confounded and ultimately “believes”

It’s easy to tell whether you need a bypass trust. With your spouse, do a quick addition of everything you own—any expected life insurance proceeds due on policies owned by you or your spouse, the equity in your house, your retirement accounts, additional investments, your cars, everything. Now subtract any money you owe. If, to your amazement, your assets are worth $600,000 or more, then, yes, you need a bypass trust.

Think you’re a long way from needing a bypass trust? Repeat the calculations from time to time, perhaps when you do your taxes every year. Your mortgage is closer to being paid off. Your retirement funds are growing. Maybe you inherited a little money here or there. No matter how much you have— even $10 million—your spouse will be okay if you die first; spouses, remember, can inherit billions without paying estate tax, as long as they are U.S. citizens. But once your spouse dies as well, or if the two of you happen to die together and you have more than $600,000, it’s estate tax time—unless you have this trust. The minute you’re lucky enough to hit that $600,000 mark, unless you plan to leave all your money to a charity, you need a bypass trust.

I am very serious about this. I always urge my clients who fall short of the $600,000 mark but are getting up there to set up a bypass trust. You never know when a two can become a one, so I don’t chance it. A bypass trust will cost about $1,500 in attorney’s fees to set up, unless you own a lot of real estate and have lots and lots of cash, in which case it will cost more, or unless you’re just amending a revocable living trust you already have, in which case it will cost less. But wouldn’t you rather leave your hard-earned money to your loved ones than to the IRS?

In the case of Sherry’s family, because Tim and Daniel will eventually die, Tim and Daniel should also set up a revocable living trust, setting up in turn a bypass trust; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Tim’s and Daniel’s children should not have to go through what their fathers are going to go through if Mom and Pop don’t take action. At the very least, the brothers should each have a revocable living trust that leaves the business to each other but their share of the income it generates to Sherry and Christine.

They should also think hard about what they want. Let’s say that one of the wives predeceases her husband. Maybe that brother will want his share of the business to go directly to his kids, not to his brother. If there isn’t some provision for this, the first brother to die might leave his children with nothing. I am sure that Tim and Daniel don’t intend to deny their children an inheritance, but the way their estates are set up right now, that might well be what happens.

If Sherry’s family were to set up a bypass trust now, before Mom or Pop died, the scene that would inevitably play itself out would be a much, much brighter one.

In the first place, Mom would retain control over everything she and Pop worked for without any court intervention. When she died, Tim and Daniel would inherit the shares in the company—and would not owe one penny of estate taxes for the first $1.2 million they inherited. (After that, they’d have to pay somewhere between thirty-seven and fifty-five cents for every additional dollar they inherited.) In this scenario, rather than owing $150,000 in estate taxes, they would owe nothing. Zero. And you can add in another $44,000 of savings, because neither probate fees nor court costs would be owed, either. For estates valued at more than $600,000, this is an urgent matter.

This plan will not work unless it’s put into place before one of the spouses dies. How? Simple. You amend your revocable living trust (or will, but I hope you’ll have a trust) to specify that after one or the other of you dies, the assets from his or her half of the estate will be put into a new trust, this bypass trust. In effect, you’re putting the money from a revocable trust into an irrevocable trust, because the ultimate beneficiaries have been specified by the spouse who has died, and they cannot be changed.

In the majority of states the revocable living trust is the original trust created jointly by the two spouses. It is the instrument that enables the surviving spouse, after the first one has died, to divide the estate into two shares, the survivor’s trust and the bypass trust. In the revocable living trust, set up while you’re both alive, you specify what happens when one spouse dies and the other is still living and then what happens when both spouses have died.

In some states, however—and check with your estate planning attorney on this—it is better to use two individual trusts from the beginning, one for the husband and one for the wife. It works the same way, though. The trust set up by the first person to die becomes irrevocable on death but provides that the assets are held for the benefit of the surviving spouse for his or her lifetime. The surviving spouse’s trust continues on the way it always has. After the death of the surviving spouse, it pays out, from both parts of the bypass trust, what’s promised to the beneficiaries. In community property states we start with a revoca

Be living trust, which provides for what happens when one spouse dies and when both die, and the trust specifies that the revocable living trust can be split into two trust shares upon the death of the first spouse. The trust continues on as it always has, but you must create the bypass trust at the first death.

After the first spouse dies, the surviving spouse will have to carefully value everything, all the marital assets, and divide them up, at least on paper. (In order to get the maximum benefit in capital gains treatment if you ever want to sell appreciated assets in the future, you’ll need to get a valuation on your assets sooner or later anyway.)

This will require the assistance of a good attorney. If the attorney can’t explain the plan to you in a way that you can understand completely, then go to someone else. Don’t pay the attorney until all your questions have been answered. If someone tells you it’s too technical to explain, most likely they don’t understand it, either. There are some technical points, but there is no reason you can’t understand the main terms of the trust and why it says what it does.

In the case of Sherry’s family, if Pop or Mom dies before they can be persuaded of the value of a bypass trust, it will be too late and the error will be costly.