Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Life Settlements and Capital Gains



Do you meet the following criteria?

*Age 65 or older
*Have a Life Insurance Policy with a face amount of 250K or more
*There has been a change in insurability since the policy was issued
*Life expectancy of 15 years or less

If so, a life settlement may be something to consider. A life settlement is the sale of a life insurance policy for more than the surrender value while living.

Here are some circumstances that may lend themselves to a life settlement.

*You have a policy that is underperforming and you can no longer afford the premiums to keep it in force.
*You had the policy to protect a spouse who has passed away.
*You have a key employee life policy and that employee no longer is in your employ.
*You have the ability to replace this policy for a policy with the same death benefit and lower premiums.
*The policy was to cover estate tax which is no longer an issue.
*You are considering surrendering the policy or letting a convertible term policy lapse for any reason.

Before you let a policy lapse or surrender it, let over 50 companies compete to offer you significant cash for your policy. Here are a couple of examples of real policy sales.

Male, Age 79, Universal Life Policy with 3.4 million face value and 180K cash surrender value. Policy was purchased for 640K dollars.

Female, age 76, joint survivorship policy, 2 million face value, surrender value of 290K. Policy was purchased for 390K dollars.

Since some of the profits are taxed as capital gain, additional tax strategies can be applied to minimize taxes due.

Contact me if you have a policy that may qualify. We can get an estimate of what fair market value you might expect at no cost to you.

A life settlement may also be effective for exiting a poorly performing variable annuity product.

I’ll be devoting an episode of my radio show “Simply Wealth” to this topic in the near future.

Paula Straub
www.savegainstax.com
savegainstax@gmail.com
760-917-0858
Fill out a Qualification Questionnaire and see if you qualify to save capital gains tax. Go to
http://www.savegainstax.com/qq.html

Find the “Definitive Beginner’s Guide to Potentially Saving Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Capital Gains Tax” at
http://www.savegainstax.com/sales.php

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Having Trouble Selling Your Property? How About Auction?

The biggest thing affecting my clients over the last year or so is that real estate is simply not selling the way it used to.

I can’t even count the number of times that a sale is all wrapped up after months of waiting, and at the last minute it falls out of escrow.

Most times it is due to the financing of the buyer not coming through as planned. In today’s market even “preapprovals” don’t seem to hold a lot of weight.

So although the buyer may lose a deposit, the sale doesn’t happen and the property goes back on the market. It may sit there for any number of months and sometimes the seller is forced to rent it out again just to keep afloat.

If your property is just sitting there with no bites, or you need to sell it sooner rather than later, you might consider putting it up for sale through auction.

I recently devoted a weekly radio show to this topic, and if the idea appeals to you take a listen.

An archive of all of the episodes of “Simply Wealth” is now available on the following website.

http://www.savegains.com

Go to the link above and click on the “Listen to My Radio Show- Simply Wealth” link located in the right hand selection menu.

Alternately, listen to the most current show at www.webtalkradio.net and even download it as a podcast.

Paula Straub
www.savegainstax.com
savegainstax@gmail.com
760-917-0858
Fill out a Qualification Questionnaire and see if you qualify to save capital gains tax. Go to
http://www.savegainstax.com/qq.html

Find the “Definitive Beginner’s Guide to Potentially Saving Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars in Capital Gains Tax” at
http://www.savegainstax.com/sales.php