Recent Blog Posts
Everyone Loses When Landlords of Unlicensed Properties Try to Collect Rent
Rent is prohibitively expensive these days. To be approved to rent an apartment in a building managed by a reputable company, you have to be so wealthy that, 15 years ago, your income level would have gotten you approved for a home mortgage. The safest rental agreements are the ones where the landlord and… Read More »
Yikes! Maryland Is Among the Top 5 Most Expensive States to Retire
Unless your goal is to create generational wealth or to use it as an income-generating asset, then selling your empty nest and moving somewhere more affordable makes the most financial sense. There is no reason to live inside the Beltway, where the housing prices are astronomical, once you have retired from your inside the… Read More »
Skilled Nursing Facilities and Your Maryland Estate Plan
If you have never had to think about the differences among a nursing home, an assisted living facility, a memory care facility, a skilled nursing facility, and hospice care, consider yourself lucky. It means that you are young enough and healthy enough not to have suffered a medical issue where the best-case scenario is… Read More »
The Estate Plan Backup Plan
Wishes are an effective way to start a long-term project. Watch any episode of Shark Tank or any documentary about a successful artist or innovator, and you will hear stories of how someone wished to follow the example of a particular extraordinary person or wished to invent something that did not yet exist but… Read More »
How Much Does It Cost to Retire in Maryland?
A lot of things lose their mystique as you age. When you were a child, and you saw a pint of ice cream in the supermarket, having enough money to buy the pint of ice cream and no one to stop you from eating it in one sitting seemed like the coolest thing in… Read More »
The Trouble With Unoccupied Real Estate Properties
If you own a rental property, nothing stresses you out more than the times when the property is sitting vacant. As annoying as it is when tenants complain about the property you are renting to them, as expensive at it is to repair the properties in a timely fashion, and as exhausting as it… Read More »
Collecting Outstanding Debts During Probate
The only thing more annoying than debt is all the picky rules that relate to seeking payment of debts. Debt collectors can contact you on social media, but only if the messages are not visible to others in your contacts and only if the debt collectors are transparent about their purposes; by this logic,… Read More »
Seniors Need a Plan for Dealing With the Maryland Winter
Early career professionals, as well as older folks in truly high-powered jobs, tend to come and go from the Washington, D.C. area with every change of presidential administration, but those of us who have lived here since our college days, or even longer, consider it home. The idea of retiring somewhere that is more… Read More »
What’s With Banks Unexpectedly Closing Down Small Business Accounts?
Small business owners learn early on to roll with the punches. Your shipment of crab meat didn’t come in today? Sell lobster rolls and call it a house special. Your French fry cook didn’t show up today? Put on your hair net and your apron and get to frying? The cash register doesn’t have… Read More »
Estate Planning With an Abundance Mindset
The estate planning advice that is most visible to Google is geared toward people who are much wealthier than you will ever be. The amount of money you would have to give away before maxing out your annual gift tax exclusion eligibility, and the amount of money that would still have to be in… Read More »
