An interesting last few weeks. With the market dropping a bunch, then inching back up and a few good pumps back up, I do tend to look at the bright side. While my portfolio high hasn't been hit yet again, I see that it's risen in the last week by $100k. A hundred grand!!! Now, my accounting is all done by hand, offline on an excel spread sheet. I do a rebalance at 5% up on either equities or bonds. I'm at 54 and about a half percent in equities (target 50 even). I won't pull the trigger early, but it feels pretty good that the portfolio's up and soon, I'll be rebalancing to make it stick even more for the near future.
DW has an inheritance that she's the executor for with an aunt. Holy cow, could old people really screw things up for people they're trying to cut corners to "in their mind" give more to. What do I mean?
US Savings bonds from the grandfather/grandmother dating back as far as 1941. This is because of that good ole old timer thought that you never tell the government anything, so it wasn't included in the estate when both grandparents were dead. So now, we had to re-open the grandfather's probate which costs lawyer money and 2 years of tax returns. The bond value in total is around $75k, split between DW and sister in law. Both get along well, so no drama. Just a ton of work.
Aunt worked for the state. There was a state life policy worth about $14k total with both sisters named as beneficiaries. Outside of probate but we're talking a 20 page, complicated form that was first rejected because the notary supposedly wrote something on the wrong line. Resubmission and finally the check is here.
Another life policy with Metlife that was pretty easy for like $1k.
While in process, DW's 87 year old father brings her a paper. Seems he and grandmother took out some kind of policy when she was 1. They were clearly sold a bill of goods as this is called something like a paid up policy. He thought she should be getting $1k. She collected $600. Why? The $1k was a death benefit on her.
The aunt put my wife on as joint on her bank accounts. The good with those thought that she could take the money outside of probate and not tell the government what's going on. In reality, one of them is over $150k, and my wife knows that the aunt meant everything to be split 50/50 with her sister, so both are being cashed into the estate account and going through probate. And of course the Aunt's estate account is going to get the remainder of the savings bond money because the aunt inherited everything from the grandparents. So their wishes to screw the government, thinking like lots of people that even if you have a small estate that the government takes something, which is 100% wrong were thwarted. And of course for DW, all this makes things much more complicated.
So while both DW and her sister would have taken home about $100k each in inheritance here, lawyer fees and all the wonderful mailings and taxes are probably cutting a third from each of them.
Time wise, DW will have at least 100 hours of her time into this. She hates doing this stuff and considered just resigning as executor and declining all the inheritance. I'm sure the old timers would roll over in their graves seeing what they did to avoid any attention by anyone in government is being completely exposed.
Topic: Race from $2M to $4M...and Beyond! (Read 1414467 times)