Estate Planning for Dummies
Author: Jordan Simon, Brian Caverly
List Price: $21.99
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ISBN: 0764555014
Publisher: For Dummies (24 February, 2003)
Sales Rank: 7,532
Average Customer Rating: 5 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Good Hands-On Guide
Planning your own demise is never easy, but made easier with a good, basic reference like this. While it may not substitute for an estate planner, it will give you the concepts and language. It will also give you current trends, like getting better deals through pre-planning. At www.architarium.com, we are seeing a boom in advance purchase of mausoleum spaces, which is not only a cost savings but an investment as spaces are now traded nationally. Plan the funeral you want while making financially sound decisions. Your survivors will thank you.
Rating: 5 out of 5
A Great Balancing Act
I already owned several books about estate planning when I bought Estate Planning For Dummies. The books I had were pretty comprehensive, but they went into far more detail than I really needed, and I wound up not doing as much as I should have since I was more confused than anything trying to digest all the different kinds of trusts, etc. However, this book gets right to the heart of the various topics it covers (and is pretty funny in some places, too!). It doesn't try to be an encyclopedia or a book for estate planning lawyers. But it succeeds at what it does apparently intend to do, which is help the average person like me understand just what I need to concentrate on for my estate planning and what I don't need to worry about. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett wouldn't get much out of reading it (though they might find it entertaining) but for the other 99% of us it's the perfect book to help figure out where we are in estate planning and what else we need to do. I definitely recommend it, it's very easy to read.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Extremely well organized.
I read a lot of Dummies books, and one thing I really like about them is that they are usually well organized. Estate Planning for Dummies is no exception. The authors start with relatively simple concepts like just what is your estate and how to figure out how much it's worth, and then move on to wills. There is lots I didn't know about wills, such as what they discuss about probate. Then they move into trusts, and do a good job since they get right to the heart of the matter and help you figure out whether or not trusts even make sense, depending on your particular situation. I also thought the chapters on estate taxes were well done, too. I knew about the federal estate tax, which doesn't apply to me, but I was unaware of gift taxes, state inheritance taxes, and the estate recovery act.All in all, I now have a much better idea of estate planning and even picked up a few hints to talk to my lawyer about for adjusting my will, which I already had but hadn't updated in a long time. That's another thing the authors do well, which is mention over and over how you need to regularly update your will, your insurance, and everything else that's part of your estate planning.
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