Our panel of Certified Financial Planners for Monday, May 7th includes:
Ted Sarenski, Blue Ocean Strategic Capital, 471-2672
Grace Ghezzi, Benefit Consulting Group, 474-1707, ext 460
Sue Hansen, Hansen's Advisory, 637-5153
Some 'confusing' financial terms we defined included:
~Annuities: These are essentially an insurance product that will pay a guaranteed monthly amount.
There are fairly high charges involved, so the longer you hold one, the more advantageous the return (If you're older, you might question this as an investment instrument for yourself). Also, the 'income' from annuities are generally taxed as ordinary income, not lower bracket gains.
~ETFs. Exchanged Traded Funds are a fairly new financial instrument, traded daily similarly to stocks, that can be sold anytime during normal trading hours (unlike mutual funds which can only be traded at end of day). They are like mutual funds in that they include groups of stocks, and you can spedify target areas, like clean energy or a specific technical area.
Downsides--because they're so new, it may be hard to get good information on them, and the volume of shares is not great, yet...
~Personal planning. You may have a will, to dictate what happens to your estate. But what about you, if you're still living?
~A Durable Power of Attorney designates someone to make decisions for you if you're incapacitated, or otherwise unavailable.
~A living will spells out what you do and do not want done, if you are not able to say---a DNR (do not resuscitate order) can be part of this, but only covers part of the many medical issues
~A health proxy will let you designate who makes your healthcare decisions (kind of like a power of attorney for health issues)
You might also want to add a beneficiary list to this cache of 'must have' papers for any age.
www.agingwithdignity.org is a good source for sample forms, to get you started.
Insurances
~Term: this is the insurance you buy for specifics, like to cover a mortgage or education. It expires
~Whole: this is the most expensive, but it guarantees coverage, at a named sum
~Universal: Lower premiums, and good for covering a specific, smaller amount (like a death benefit)
~Variable: The investor controls how the money in here is invested--it requires the most policyholder'management'
Next Monday, our generic topic is credit, and credit issues. You can email questions in advance to money@cnycentral.com
