Dealing with a Windfall

It might come as large inheritance, a bonus from work, a lottery jackpot, or a big gain on your stock options, but if you should be fortunate enough to receive a large windfall, you don’t want to let that money slip through your fingers.

Lottery winners, professional athletes, entertainers and entrepreneurs have all seen their fortunes come and go because they failed to take the proper steps to keep their fortunes in tact.

The first step you should take would be to put the money in a safe place, such as a money market account, while you sort out the options. You may also want to shift a large portion of your assets into tax-deferred retirement plans and tax-exempt investments, such as municipal bonds. Most important, though, is to talk to your tax advisor and your financial advisor to get the appropriate advise on how to keep your new found fortune growing.

How to play Sudoku – Sudoku begins with some of the grid cells already filled with numbers. The object of Sudoku is to fill the other empty cells with numbers between 1 and 9 (1 number only in each cell) according the following guidelines.

1. Number can appear only once on each row.
2. Number can appear only once on each column.
3. Number can appear only once on each region.
4. A summary of these guidelines would be, that a number should appear only once on each row, column and a region.

Here is the puzzle. Good luck!

Complete the puzzle and enter it in our drawing for a $25 Gift Card to T.G.I. Friday's by mailing it to:

Wealth Enhancement Group
c/o Matt Krekelberg
1905 East Wayzata Boulevard
Wayzata, MN 55391

There were 23 qualified Sudoko puzzles
submitted last month.

Wealth Enhancement Group has helped thousands of Minnesotans plan for a comfortable retirement. With a team of experts well-versed in financial planning, investment management, and maximizing tax strategies, Wealth Enhancement Group will help you pursue the life you imagined.

Long-Term Care Insurance

How would you take care of yourself if you suffered a significant medical ailment, such as a stroke or a heart attack? Could your spouse stay home and take care of you? Could you still pay the bills?

Difficult as those issues are to face, long-term medical problems are a part of life. If you want to avoid a financial disaster that could pillage your savings, you should look into buying long-term care insurance. Long-term care insurance comes in a variety of plans designed to cover all or part of the expenses related to your care for a long-term ailment. Generally, the younger you are when you enroll in the plan, the cheaper the coverage. You should talk to your financial advisor about the best long-term insurance plan for you.

ARM vs. Fixed Rate Mortgage

In the past several years, many people have used an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) to get lower monthly mortgage payments. Usually, these loans have a period of fixed interest rate followed by a longer period of adjusting interest rates. After the introductory period, a borrower's initial low rate will adjust to a higher level than current fixed mortgage rates. This is almost always the case, even if interest rates as a whole do not change. This is because the initial fixed rates of ARMs are set artificially low.

info@we-mtg.com
1-800-492-1222

Trusts are vehicles that can help shelter your assets from taxation and manage the property that you leave to your heirs. Simply put, you transfer property in the name of a trustee who manages it for the benefit of a third party, the beneficiary. One of the great advantages of trusts in their flexibility. They can be adapted to fit a wide variety of situations. In fact, as our attorneys at Wealth Enhancement Group say, “Trust is not the key word. Trust doesn’t tell you that much.”

What precedes the word trust tells you everything. The most important aspect of trusts is that they allow property to be managed according to the donor’s specific wishes, far into the future. Living trusts allow you to control trust assets; irrevocable trusts take away control but offer many attractive estate tax implications and more. Your advisers can help you determine which type of trust best suits your situation.

CLICK HERE to get your free copy of our 24-page retirement booklet, “Planning for Retirement – Strategies for Your Life, Your Finances, and Your Future”. In this booklet, you’ll learn more about strategies and options for your future.