Wealth Preservation/Estate Planning

What you value may be more important than what you own. To follow through on your commitments -- to yourself, your family, and your ideals -- you need to think ahead. A personalized estate plan is important in helping to protect your family and your legacy.

A well-constructed strategy can help address your specific estate planning needs including:

• Minimizing income and estate taxes
• Transferring wealth from one generation to the next
• Developing charitable gifting strategies
• Aligning existing portfolios and retirement accounts with your estate plan

• Growing your business
• Protecting your assets
• Ensuring the continuation and succession of your business
• Minimizing taxes
• Promoting, recruiting, retaining, and rewarding your key employees
• Maximizing your compensation benefits
• Providing for estate equalization
• Promoting family harmony

The amount you will need in retirement depends on the age you plan to retire, your desired retirement lifestyle, how long you expect to live and the rate of return that you expect to earn on your investments. Social Security and employer-sponsored pension plans will probably provide less of what you will need than they did for your parents.

Consideration should be given to one or more of the following strategies when trying to maximize your retirement income:

• Clearly prioritized retirement goals and objectives
• Retirement at a later age
• Saving more
• Spending less during retirement
• Invest to earn a potentially higher rate of return on investments while still feeling comfortable with the level of risk involved
• Liquidation of non-cash assets
• Social Security
• Maximize contributions to qualified retirement plans
• Invest in IRA

Education planning for your children can be a major financial consideration. Planning early allows you to take advantage of the time value of money and help minimize the savings requirement.

Consideration should be given to one or more of the following strategies when trying to maximize your college planning:

• Prioritize your education objective with your insurance needs, retirement needs, major purchases and current income needs
• Develop an effective savings strategy that considers asset allocation and takes advantage of education plans
• Consider the various education funding accounts -- Qualified State Tuition Plans (also known as 529 Plans^#), Uniform Transfer to Minor Accounts (UTMA) / Uniform Gifts to Minor Accounts (UGMA), Coverdell Educational savings accounts and prepaid tuition plans
• Ensure college expenses are properly planned -- include tuition, room and board and living expenses. Factor in an inflation rate for the rising cost of tuition. Should you consider planning for post-graduate studies? Do you expect your child/children to receive scholarships or financial aid?

You can now receive the same portfolio management services as many institutional investors-whether it is a separately managed account or a mutual fund wrap portfolio.

Some benefits of managed portfolios include:

• Providing access to top-tier investment management professionals
• Tailored portfolios to meet specific investment needs
• Ownership of individual securities - allowing for significant flexibility in controlling tax exposure
• Ease of pre-designed mutual fund portfolios

Every investor is unique, and investment advisory services provide you with professional investment advice and a personalized investment strategy. Whether you're seeking a tailored, professionally managed portfolio, or the convenience and simplicity of a diversified mutual fund wrap program, your investment choice should focus on meeting your financial goals. During this process, you should consider current and future growth objectives, income needs, time horizon and risk tolerance. These considerations form the blueprint for developing a portfolio management strategy. The process involves, but is not limited to, the following important stages.

• Set investment objectives
• Develop an asset allocation strategy
• Evaluate/Select investment vehicle
• Portfolio review -- Ongoing portfolio monitoring

Charitable gifting

Gifting strategies may be used as a means of distributing your estate and effectively reducing estate taxes upon death. Most taxpayers can accomplish significant estate planning objectives simply by taking advantage of lifetime giving which includes making maximum use of the annual exclusion, lifetime use of the applicable exclusion amount and lifetime taxable gifts.

Considerations should be given to one or more of the following strategies when trying to minimize estate taxes and maximize the net distributions from your estate to family, friends and charities:

• Grantor Retained Trusts - allows you to remove appreciating property from your estate thus reducing estate taxes. Once the property is transferred to the trust, the grantor (donor) retains interest in the property for the term specified. The grantor receives payments based on the value of the assets in the trust. The property, including any appreciation in value, passes to the beneficiaries without further gift or estate tax consequences.
• Charitable Remainder Trusts - allows you to donate property and assets to a trust and reserve an income stream in the trust for a specified period. The trust provides an income to you or any designated non-charitable beneficiaries with the remainder interest being transferred to a qualified charity at the end of the term.
• Charitable Lead Trusts - allows you to designate charities to receive an income stream during term of the trust. At the end of the term, the ultimate beneficiaries are your heirs.

^#Securities offered through NYLIFE Securities Inc. (member FINRA/SIPC).
*Neither Eagle Strategies LLC nor any of its affiliates provide legal, tax or accounting advice. Please contact your own advisors for more information on your particular situation.

• Life insurance is used to pay for funeral expenses, repay outstanding debts, make charitable donations and provide living expenses for surviving family members. It can also be used to cover estate taxes and probate fees to enable your estate to be liquidated in the most appropriate manner.
• Disability income insurance^§ is to help partially replace income of persons who are unable to work because of sickness or accident. In terms of its financial effect on the family, long-term disability can be just as severe as death. Disability income protection can come from several sources: social insurance programs, employer-provided benefits, and individually purchased policies.
• Long-term care has traditionally been thought of as a problem primarily for the older population suffering from conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, and lung and heart disease. Not only do the elderly need long-term care but many younger persons are unable to care for themselves because of handicaps resulting from birth defects, mental conditions, illnesses or accidents. Long-term care can be paid for by personal income and assets, family support, Medicaid/welfare programs, continuing care retirement communities, accelerated benefits in life insurance programs and long-term care insurance.

Direction

It All Starts With The Plan
Making sure you get the proper advice starts with taking an in-depth look at where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow.

And because we know your objectives may change over time, we approach financial planning as a dynamic, ongoing process that must accommodate changes in your personal circumstances, changes in the tax laws, and changes in the marketplace. We can help you design a plan that evolves with you and results in a well-coordinated series of recommendations that can be easily implemented.

^§Products available through one or more carriers not affiliated with New York Life, dependent on carrier authorization and product availability in your state or locality.