Hey, everybody, it’s Victor Medina from the Medina Law Group, and I’m here with the first Five Fact Friday for the year 2020. And in fact, the last one that I sent you was on December 20th, and the firm has been closed for this entire last two weeks, so I’m just getting back into the office. But I wanna share with you our first video of the year. Now, I’m recording this on January 2nd, which means that if I had a crazy New Year’s Eve, I’d probably still be recovering from it. The truth is, I didn’t. My wife and I, we’re not crazy party people, so on New Year’s Eve, all we did was spend a nice evening with her cousin, his wife, their daughter, who’s about two and was gonna get up early the next day no matter what. We finished up early, went to bed. I’m sure the ball dropped. I just wasn’t there to see it. Never been my thing. But if you’d like to know how the rest of the world celebrates New Year’s, I’ve included a series of links, a link where I show you the way that other people do that. The next link will either inspire you or terrify you. Turns out that Google is trying out a driverless car system, and that system has been, being tried out in Arizona. So the link is actually to an article about that, including a video where you sit in the back of the car and see what it’s like to be driven around by a driverless car. Maybe you’re interested in that kinda thing, maybe you’re a little frightened. Check it out and see. Now, the third link is related to a New Year’s resolution that a lot of people make. You know, it turns out that people want to get better about their finances, and so one of the best ways that you can do that is to create a budget. And we do that for our clients when they’re entering retirement, and you should be doing that, too, just normally. And so if you’re interested in examining what the best apps are for creating a budget, check out the link and see what ya think of those apps. Now, I’ve got two more links for you. And now, one of them is in the legal world and one of them’s in the financial world. So let’s deal with the legal world first. You know, it turns out that there was a Medicaid planning company that ended up bilking their clients out of about $300,000 or so. They’re based right here in New Jersey. Now, it turns out that if you are doing Medicaid planning and giving legal advice, that’s actually the unauthorized practice of law. It’s a criminal act if you’re doing that. But this company wasn’t even going that far. They were just taking money. And here’s one of the biggest reasons why I think it’s important to be working with a lawyer when you need your Medicaid planning done. Turns out that only a lawyer has your best interest in mind, is obligated to be looking out for you. So their ethical obligation to be planning on your benefit. Medicaid planning services, all they need to do is just make money. They’re a profit thing. So it turns out that this company ended up stealing money from people, and that’s not good. And so what I wanna recommend for you is, and I think they’re shut down, but if you’re ever given an opportunity to work with either a Medicaid planning service or working with a lawyer, you should work with a lawyer. And, of course, I think you should work with the Medina Law Group. In fact, if you’re dealing with any long-term care issue, if you’re in a facility right now or if you know of somebody that’s in a facility, best thing they can do is reach out to us and schedule a planning session to see how we might be able to help them with their planning and save their assets. The way you do that is, you know, of course, you contact the law firm at 609-818-0068 and schedule an initial consultation. All of our initial consultations are at no charge. Now, the last link is actually a repeat of what I did in December 20th because I think it’s so important, and I’m including a link talking about the SECURE Act. Now, if you didn’t watch the last video, the SECURE Act is the newest law that allows us, that changes the way the inherited IRAs are going to be taxed going forward. So it used to be that you could leave behind your IRA, and then your kids would be able to stretch it out for their entire lifetime. The new law changes that, requires them to take that out over a 10-year period. And, in fact, they could decide to take nothing out and have to take it all out in the last year of those 10 years and be hit with all of those income taxes. What does it mean for you? Well, it means that your estate planning and your financial planning probably needs to be updated because, of course, this law didn’t exist when you first set it up. So what we’re doing is we’re creating a series of webinars, including two in-person seminars here in our offices. And those are gonna be of limited size, in other words, there’s just gonna be limited seating off of that, in later January. And we’re trying to share this information out as widely as possible. So what I’m gonna recommend for you is that you click on the link that’s included and contact us so that you can either attend the in-person seminar. Remember, it is limited seating. We don’t have a very big classroom, so it just turns out that we can only have a limited number of people. Or you can schedule one for one of the webinars, and we’ll be advertising those widely, as well. I think this is probably one of the biggest changes to the planning landscape at least in the last 10 to 15 years, so you need to stay on top of this and really learn how your plan has been affected, what you need to do to change your planning and how you can help avoid some of the negative income tax consequences of this new law. So I hope that you will join us for either the in-person seminars later in January. We’re gonna do one around the lunchtime and around dinnertime, so depending on your schedule, you can show up. We’re gonna give you some coffee and cookies to help get ya through the hour, hour 1/2 of the presentation. But depending on your schedule, you can either schedule to attend one of those two, either lunchtime or dinnertime. But either join us for the in-person seminars or plan on joining one of our webinars that we’ll be hosting in the next couple of months. I think that’s it for right now. Wanna thank you for joining us on this journey. It’s my favorite thing to do is record these videos. I love the opportunity to connect with you. I hope that you’ll take this video and share it with somebody that you love just to make sure that they have the information, as well. We’re looking forward to growing our subscriber list so that everyone has an opportunity to share in this, as well. So thanks for joining us. I’m looking forward to the next year. I hope that you are putting in place all of the steps necessary to make 2020 your best year ever. Catch ya in a couple weeks. Buh-bye.
Five Fact Friday is a bi-weekly newsletter produced by Medina Law Group containing 5 interesting or fun links. For more information, visit medinalawgroup.com or call 609-818-0068.
Reading: http://bit.ly/2tvCXFH
Watching: http://bit.ly/2s5ZsRl
Home Screen: http://bit.ly/2Q4dNp9
Legal: http://bit.ly/2sGuGOZ
Retirement: http://bit.ly/2Z6AhtK