Are you in need of some Estate Planning?

The underlying question here is: What Am I worth?

Estate planning, is the process of accumulating and disposing of an estate to maximize the goals of the estate owner. The various goals of estate planning include making sure the greatest amount of the estate passes to the estate owner's intended beneficiaries, often including paying the least amount of taxes and avoiding or minimizing probate court involvement. Additional goals typically include providing for and designating guardians for minor children and planning for incapacity. (Wikipedia, The Free Encylcopedia: Estate Planning)

Here's what you do...

Add up all of the current worth of all your assets, including:

- any liquid assets: assets such as cerificates of deposit, money market funds, and bank accounts
- any fixed assets including bonds
- both stocks and mutual funds
- retirement plans such as a 401(k), any profit sharing plans, IRAs, etc.
- any personal assets. These include your home, car(s), etc.
- life insurance and the value of your business if you're self-employed. Don't forget rental property and any other real estate.

Then, what I want you to do is subtract your mortgage and other debt from the value you've just derived. If the resulting figure clearly approaches $2,000,000 (two million dollars) then some serious Estate Planning is in order here!

Here's how it works, a given amount of each estate is exempt from taxation by the federal government. The following table references the amount of the exception for the years 2001 through 2011. Any estate with a value above the referenced amount is subject to the estate tax however only for the amount equal to the portion above the exemption amount.

The 2001 tax act will repeal the estate tax for a total of one year in 2010. It will then then readjust it in 2011 to the year 2001 level.

ExclusionAmount
Year Max/Top tax rate

2001 $675,000 55%

2002 $1 million 50%

2003 $1 million 49%

2004 $1.5 million 48%

2005 $1.5 million 47%

2006 $2 million 46%

2007 $2 million 45%

2008 $2 million 45%

2009 $3.5 million 45%

2010 repealed 0%

2011 $1 million 55%

Creating wealth afterall is about maximizing tax benefit and there are several vehicles to help you achieve this.

Here at Wilshire Financial, Inc. we believe that Residential Real Estate Financing is more like a science and Commercial Real Estate Financing is an art. So what we're doing is combining science and art through a collaborative process involving Financial Planners, Accountants and Attorneys in order to help realize the goals of each and every one of our clients.