5 Signs You Aren’t Protecting Your Wealth
Smart wealth management focuses on financial growth, stability and protection.
Many financial losses are preventable with the knowledge of where your assets are vulnerable and how to safeguard yourself from these vulnerabilities.
Is your wealth subject to hidden and dangerous risks? Here are five signs it may be:
1. You Do Not Understand the Financial Risks of Key Relationships.
Numerous wealth management dangers exist with both formal/legal and informal personal and professional relationships. Money held in joint accounts with your spouse, a family member, a business partner or a friend is at risk if the other party–with which you share the account–were to file for divorce, face legal action or simply choose to remove all funds. Remember, it is possible for joint accounts to be emptied without your knowledge, notice or permission.
2. You Haven’t Created a Proper Business Structure for Companies or Rental Properties.
Businesses not registered within a legal construct such as a LLC or a corporation are considered sole proprietorships. This means if anything were to happen requiring legal action all of your personal real estate, investments, cash and other assets are at serious risk.
Similarly, if you own a rental property–and it is not a part of a LLC or a corporation–and anything was to happen with this property, or the tenants within it, your personal assets and wealth could also be in significant jeopardy.
3. You Have Developed a Game Plan but Not an Investment Strategy.
Wealth is often lost when individuals approach their investments more as a gamble than as a well-considered strategy. A proper investment strategy has definitive objectives, a plan to meet these objectives and a detailed methodology for next steps when the goals are met.
Too often, investments are made without careful consideration as to their ultimate purpose, what strategies and tactics should be employed and how to handle gains once they are achieved. Creating investment strategies with these ideas in mind is not only critical in providing a means to measure progress and to ultimately meet financial objectives but also for ensuring intellectual, and not emotional, factors are driving the decisions in regards to wealth management.
4. You Haven’t Considered Critical Insurance Options.
Inadequate or inappropriate insurance can cause significant risks to wealth in the event of an accident, illness or death. Determining proper levels of life, health, liability, long-term care, and long- and short-term disability insurance–which is especially important if you are self-employed–is essential to protecting your wealth in the near and far future.
5. You are not aware of tax law changes.
Tax laws change frequently. And if you’re not up-to-speed, you may not be taking advantage of exemptions and savings. With the enactment of the 2010 Health Care Reform Act and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, seven new income tax laws have gone into effect.
Gill Capital Partners will provide clients a 2013 income tax projection, so you can determine the impact of these new tax laws.
Is your wealth properly protected? Call Gill Capital Partners in Denver, Colorado at 800-288-3777, if you would like to discuss customized wealth protection strategies. Learn about The Capital Difference applied to private wealth management.