Author Archives: Jay Butchko
What Can Go Wrong If You Don’t Update Your Estate Plan When You Divorce?
This feeling that there is little standing between you and what you always wanted, but that you feel completely lost about making the first move toward a feeling of stability or relief is familiar. You felt this early in your marriage. You looked forward to meeting your special someone, and when you met your… Read More »
Saving for Retirement Beyond the 401(k) Account
Estate planning lawyers often tell clients during their initial consultations, or even proclaim on their websites, that if you have a retirement account at all, you are doing better than most, and that the worst mistake you can make is not saving anything for retirement. This can create an excessive sense of complacency or… Read More »
New York Disinterment Laws
The term interment refers to the conveyance of human remains to their final resting place. When you learned the word as a vocabulary word in middle school English class, your textbook probably said that it was a synonym for burial. As a legal term, interment has a slightly broader meaning. It is a synonym… Read More »
Meet the Seniors Who Don’t Tell Their Spouses the Whole Truth About Their Finances
Dishonesty about money has ruined many marriages. When you think of financial infidelity, you might imagine young couples who spend impulsively and then, out of embarrassment or conflict avoidance, don’t tell their spouses, and then when the other spouse finds out about the secret debts, a sense of betrayal compounds the financial stress, putting… Read More »
By Practicing Delayed Gratification, You Can Get an Increase in Income After Age 65
Retirement can give you a feeling of freedom, because once you retire, it means that you never have to work again. It can also have the opposite effect, because it also means that you will never get a paycheck or a work bonus again. Having total control over your time sounds fabulous, but living… Read More »
Family Togetherness at What Cost?
Your children’s financial situation is unlikely to improve miraculously. You must first realize this before you can make progress on your estate plan. Many seniors who are fortunate enough to be able to think about their estate plans, who have not been living hand to mouth their entire lives, are in a more secure… Read More »
Credit Insurance as an Estate Planning Tactic?
Debt is a source of worry for almost everyone, and once you reach a certain age, you start to worry about how your outstanding debts will affect your family after you die. If you do a Google search for ways to protect your estate from creditor claims, the first results will be about establishing… Read More »
Do You Have to Withdraw Money From Your Retirement Account as Soon as You Retire?
If you are worrying about when to start withdrawing money from your retirement account, this is a good problem to have, because it means that you have a retirement account, and it means that there is money in it. Agonizing over when to retire is more of a fun rite of passage than it… Read More »
Estate Planning for Physicians
Medical doctors are in the habit of assessing risk; they do it at every appointment with every patient, sometimes without even realizing it. Everyone needs an estate plan, but getting started on yours is an especially urgent matter if you fit into one of the major risk categories. Financial advisors quickly swoop down on… Read More »
Are You Too Bougie for Medicaid?
If you have read the news anytime in the past few years, you can easily get the impression that the only people who qualify for Medicaid are desperately poor. Even in blue states like New York, the number of people who are too poor to pay for healthcare and other necessities, but not poor… Read More »