Is There Such a Thing as It Being Too Early to Start Your Retirement and Estate Planning?
Looking ahead to the future is not always easy because you may be unsure about your goals or the various issues that could affect you when you reach retirement. However, setting a time aside to meet with experienced retirement and estate planning professionals can give you the peace of mind that your future is well protected.
Whether you’re approaching retirement yourself or helping a loved one transition out of their own home and into a retirement community, proper planning is key.
Elder Planning for Moving into a Retirement Community
Moving into a retirement community is one common trigger that allows people to think about retirement and estate planning. For many people who are contemplating leaving their home, this means going into the unknown and developing a new routine for daily activities.
There are plenty of tips to consider as you think about the best option for you. Furthermore, this is an excellent opportunity to revisit your estate planning goals, to determine whether or not you have put together the appropriate strategies and tools to pass on your assets to your loved ones in the future.
When selecting an appropriate retirement community, you want to give yourself plenty of time. Given the number of people who are likely to experience a long-term care event at some time in the future, setting aside time to sit down with a Medicaid planning specialist can help you identify your individual assets and how these may help you or require a different strategy as you approach the support of government programs.
It is best to start looking at retirement options well in advance of needing to move. This can help you figure out whether or not your retirement planning assets developed to this point will be sufficient to support you through this move. There are so many different options for retirement living that doing your research in advance can help you avoid the uncomfortable situation of trying to make a sudden decision. Evaluating the cost is vitally important.
Mixing Elder Care Assets with Estate Planning Goals
You have spent your entire life accumulating assets to help you support through retirement but you may have other worthy endeavors in mind for those assets such as passing on money or real estate to your children or grandchildren to help support them. If you do some significant estate planning at least five years before you anticipate needing to enter a nursing home, you may be able to protect many of your assets from having to be spent on your care.
An estate planning attorney and a financial advisor should be retained early on to help with some trust planning. If you take up the task of planning ahead for your future too late, then you may be disqualified from getting Medicaid benefits. The farther in advance you can consider all of the steps you could take to minimize your risk and protect your assets, the easier it will be for you to adjust to this situation. An estate planning lawyer can walk you through the various challenges and help you figure out legal ways for you to protect your assets.
Asset protection planning, estate planning and elder law planning often intersect when people are looking ahead towards retirement or towards potential nursing home care in the future. In any case, you need an attorney who is thoroughly experienced with estate planning law to assist you with the development of a plan that meets your individual needs. You deserve to have an attorney who cares about articulating an individual plan for you.