u/pembquist

I just read on another subreddit where someone was asking for advice about their father's estate. It seems they were appointed executor and the will leaves nothing to the father's long term (17 years) cohabiting girlfriend who apparently has no idea they are going to get nothing. No house, no money nothing.

Aside from the ethical or moral question this raises it made me think about the unfairness of saddling someone with the duty of executor who might be suffering from grief. I know a few families who kind of lost their minds over money after someone died. I think it can make people a little crazy.

Did any of you think about this?

Have any of you gotten an MMSI for a handheld VHF with DSC? I'm a little confused if it makes any difference if I push the panic button. I'm not sure about what the path to getting one for a handheld is, it seems like if you go via Shine Micro it isn't in an international (Canada) database and I can't really tell if doing it through the FCC requires a station license which seems to cost a lot of money.

I take it on other peoples boats and kayaking and on my own boat.

This is going to be a bit long.

We are planning on getting LTC insurance, my wifes dad used his benefit and we have no kids. I am just not sure how to think about it. I conceptualize 3 different reasons to get it:

1 you don't have enough money to pay for the medicare spend down that most assisted living places require to get one of their medicaide beds, (I don't really understand how this is legal but it seems industry standard.)

2 you probably have enough money to pay for LTC but it is maybe a little unclear and you would like to be able to spend the money you have socked away rather than hold onto it till your dead in case you have to pay LTC costs.

3 you have money to pay for LTC but you want to leave some money to someone or something so you buy the insurance so that you don't have to spend that money on LTC

We are in reason 2 and I think about it in terms of having a chunk of money that can generate an income with maybe not dipping into principal but if one of us needs LTC the money might get strained for the other. I think about how you insure a truck that you use to generate income, if the truck gets wrecked and it isn't insured you are out of business so you buy insurance.

My problem is I am not sure how much to buy. The policies we are looking at do not adjust for inflation and have a maximum benefit of 6 years. I think you should buy insurance to insure against disaster not inconvenience. If one of us goes into LTC early that is harder on the remaining spouse so the worst case is one spouse goes into LTC a year after we purchase the policies. So does that mean I price a conservative income from assets and buy enough coverage so that adding ltc costs next year does not change that income? Do I consider the much more likely prospect that the coverage won't be used for another 20 plus years where its value will be cut in half so it would be better to just get what LTC costs today and figure that is better? (that is kind of vague but my brain is a little worn out ruminating on this.)

As it stands right now my wife costs more than I do and to have 10K a month each it would take about 250K at 4% to pay 25 years of premiums. While the largest benefit the policy could pay would be a face value of 1.48 million though that would be highly unusual in my opinion.

I have tried looking at the implied odds of the defacto bet we would be making and using a payout of 360K (one of us using LTC for 3 years) the premiums indicate a really low chance at the beginning rising to 50 50 at year 22. So what do I do with that? The information on needing the insurance is somewhat vague I have seen official statistics that claim 30 percent but I also have to consider that we have no kids and whatever you say I have had experience taking care of my mom and FIL and there will be no economizing if we need to be taken care of.

Well If you read this far thank you and if you have any suggestions about what worked for you in terms of deciding this question I would appreciate any advice. My impression is that Northwestern has a reputation for actually paying, which seems like a huge issue with some of the policies that were sold in the past.

For rough numbers we have 2 mil in securities etc. and 2 mil in realestate including our home and 3.5 rental houses net of debt. I don't expect you to do my financial planning but just want to illustrate why I think we are in category 2 of the categories I outlined above.

20 years ago my wife got a 200K life insurance benefit. Several months after depositing it in her bank account she got a letter from the IRS telling her that she owed big: taxes, penalties for failure to report etc. etc. I told her to write them and tell them it was life insurance and that was the end of the matter.

She just got another benefit, is there anything you are supposed to do to forestall getting accused of tax evasion?

I wanted to get a quote for a preferred stock for T. I tried T-PA and a few other permutations. What is the proper syntax? Or is there a problem getting quotes for preferreds in ATP.