Simple Investment Strategy for Non-Savvy Surviving Spouse

(The Casserole Brigade ) Women who are looking for a new partner and if he has some money and a driver's license he's in heavy demand .
Libidos, money, driver's licenses... sounds like cooking skills are coming in a distant fourth!
 
Kind of like a widower who doesn't know how to cook and still has a healthy libido ??

been there, done that, got the T-shirt, ...regarding my 80 year old father in law and a woman half his age

fortunately, he had the good sense to put the condo in the kids names (just be careful of the tax consequences of doing this..there is a good way and a bad way to do this)

once she found out, she moved on
 
do you really think that will stop a determined con artist who is in her bed?

or a parasitic offspring or nephew....who is the only one looking in on her when she is 85?
Yes, I do. BTDT myself with "interested parties", interested in how much life insurance, interested in how did I get to FIRE at age 48, interested in stuff that was none of their darn business. :cool:
My late MIL2b has BTDT with wanna-be parasitic relatives. She was 82 and partially blind when widowed. She especially loved :LOL: saying the 3 words. I loaned her the expression as a stop-all.
 
I have a letter in our safe in an unsealed envelope to my wife. It explains what money is where, and a few people I might trust to give her advice if this is overwhelming.

The assets in my name are much larger (If we have 200k invested, about 150k of it is in my name). I started investing younger, and my contributions have been maxed for some time. I pretty much explained to her what an "in kind" transfer means and told her to contact T Rowe Price and they would tell her the forms to fill out to transfer all my accounts to her name, keeping the same investoments in the same mutual funds I have already picked.

I then told her she would need to stop investing in the funds I picked for her, and start investing in the ones I use (I use diversified funds chosen by market cap-large-mid-small-foreign; in wife's smaller account we use aggressive sector funds which would not make sense if household had only 1 person investing).
 
My instructions to DW are just to sell some of whichever fund has too much in it. It doesn't matter if everything balances out perfectly, but this avoids having to sell everything and buy something else. She has all the account info.

I hope to be around long enough to blow through all the taxable accounts so that taxes are not a big hassle. And I have term life insurance for another couple of years to buffer any problems.
 
I have a letter in our safe in an unsealed envelope to my wife. It explains what money is where, and a few people I might trust to give her advice if this is overwhelming.



Make sure you have the combination to the safe somewhere easy to find . At times like this your mind goes blank .
 
Advice I received from my estate planning session (CFP) in 2002 was to register all accounts and assets with titles as JTWROS. This saved me a lot of hassle and kept assets out of probate.
My attorney was able to file a "probate lite" for the small amounts of assets not registered as JTWROS.
Research joint tenancy options and rules for your state.
Carefully evaluate this move for your own situation.
YMMV
 
give your spouse a portion of the bills and finances to manage. Study how that goes. Adjust strategy accordingly.

consider how you would feel if your spouse remarries, predeceases the new spouse, and all the money goes to the kids or trophy wife of the new spouse.

you may wish to slice things in half, and keep half in a life estate to ensure the kids get something...depending on your spouses requirements.

the only sure way is to give the kids something right up front, hopefully be used to pay of student loans or buy a house or business, and lock everything else up in an annuity for the wife.
 
give your spouse a portion of the bills and finances to manage. Study how that goes. Adjust strategy accordingly.
Excellent idea. We've been doing this for years. The bad news is that DW "stalled out" at paying the bills, balancing the checkbook and that sort of thing. The good news is that I know and understand that and now plan accordingly.
consider how you would feel if your spouse remarries, predeceases the new spouse, and all the money goes to the kids or trophy wife of the new spouse.

you may wish to slice things in half, and keep half in a life estate to ensure the kids get something...depending on your spouses requirements.
Agreed. If I go first, my 401k goes to our son. If DW goes first, her 403b (now in a rollover IRA) goes to our son. The resulting nestegg sans these amounts still leaves a decent retirement income for the survivor.
the only sure way is to give the kids something right up front, hopefully be used to pay of student loans or buy a house or business, and lock everything else up in an annuity for the wife.
Agree on the "give the kids something up front" part but, despite DW not being very interested in financial things, am trying to avoid the annuity solution for the balance.
 
Well, 1- Tell her to marry another Guy..most do
2. You only need to invest in a Couple of Balanced Funds.. and A Gen Bond fund
Pimco just opened up one just for this Purpose for the Little Guy ( Vs $5 Mil) called PUBDX with a $1k Min.
3. Add a Global Fund like TGBAX and you and she are good to go..

If in Higher tax bracket? Ck out the Muni's> FTLMX,VWITX

and of course, you always have TIPS..

And if More than enough? Why not Just Dump it in a Target Retirement Fund... but I'd go with a HSTRX instead ..

and nothing wrong with Hiring a Firm that is good at using Bonds, Mine only charges 1/2% ( 0.05) on my total account.. $2,500 yr per $500 k is cheap IMO...

As for other Bal. Funds? OAKBX & PRPFX have ave 8% apy past 10 yrs now. Can just set up to have Divs and Gains Paid Directly to MMkt Account.
 
Back
Top Bottom