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Toward financial success and peace of mind

Most people go through life thinking little about their personal finances. They close their eyes, move ahead and hope for the best. Whether they succeed depends largely on luck. For people who don’t want to pin their hopes for financial success on luck, we have the answer. It’s called comprehensive financial planning. Associates of Mentor […]

Check your beneficiaries

Check your beneficiaries Improperly designating beneficiaries on a retirement account or insurance policy can be costly. That’s why we recommend checking beneficiaries on IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s and life insurance and annuity policies every five years or so. It’s simple to designate (or neglect to designate) a beneficiary, but it’s not so simple to do it […]

Don’t throw away that trust!

Now that the exemption from the federal estate tax has hit $2 million, some married clients have questioned whether they still need their trusts. After all, the trusts were made to avoid the tax, and now the tax threat for them has disappeared. Fact is there still may be reasons to retain or establish a […]

Advance Directives

With the nationwide publicity surrounding the Terri Schiavo case there has been much talk about living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, powers of attorney, etc. Documents that pertain to end-of-life issues are known collectively as Advance Directives. Typically they address medical, family and financial decisions made on behalf of somebody who is no longer capable of making […]

What’s better for your estate – a will or a trust?

You may have heard that a living trust is better for estate planning than a will. In reality, there are pros and cons to each. While the topic is too complex to cover thoroughly in a brief article and we at Mentor are not attorneys, we do periodically help our clients address this question. A revocable […]

Does your estate plan need a tune-up?

Our experience with clients shows that estate planning is typically the last piece of the financial planning puzzle that people address, if ever.  Not having an up-to-date estate plan could put you and your family at high risk.  If you die without a will, a court (not you) selects the executor and guardian for your […]

How to hide credit info from nosy lenders

Beginning in 2007, Illinois resi­dents may take advantage of a new law that allows them to place a security freeze on their credit re­ports. Unfortunately for our Georgia clients, a recent proposal to imple­ment such a law was defeated by state lawmakers. For those of you in Illinois, the new law prohibits credit bureaus from […]

Guilt: A big roadblock to financial success

The six deadly “sins” of personal finance are sins of emotion. Emotion clouds our judgment and leads us to make foolish decisions. This first in a series will explore the sin of guilt;  fear, greed, pride, sloth and envy will follow. Tormented because your spouse wants a flat-screen TV for Christmas? Feeling inadequate because you […]

Should you pay down your home mortgage?

One question that we are fre­quently asked by our clients at Mentor is whether or not it makes sense to accelerate mortgage pay-ments in order to pay off the loan sooner. This is not as simple as it may seem. Usually we need to answer this question with a few questions of our own. For […]

Get your free credit report

The Fair Credit Reporting Act was amended late in 2004 to require the three major credit reporting agencies to provide you with a free credit report upon request. It’s a good idea to take advantage of this opportunity, so you can verify the accuracy of the information being kept about you and to correct any […]