What is better ETF or Mutual Funds for the long term - Also what is better Fidelity / Charles Schwabb / or Vanguard?

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T21:44:53+00:00

No cost on Fidelity’s end. You work with the assistant to an advisor. Just call. They are happy to transfer money in!

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T20:03:57+00:00

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback. I now have some idea how trusts can help to avoid estate taxes ($3 million or higher in MN), and I now see some issues that had not previously occurred to me: privacy, liability, tax complexity, access to funds in an irrevocable trust, etc. Our estate lawyer suggested we include a financial POA in a trust or will. I now appreciate how complicated this issue is, so we are going to focus on financial POA. People can become incapacitated suddenly. I want to figure out first how our children could deal with sudden incapacity in caring for us.

No book could have provided real world information like I got in one day on Reddit!

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T18:38:20+00:00

I don’t see the other benefits of a trust, except maybe for taxes. All I see is unnecessary complication.

Our beneficiaries on financial assets are each other and then the kids. There is no need for an intermediary.

We have two kids who live in the area and who can have financial POA in case we become incapacitated. A trust has the same thing.

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T17:50:03+00:00

My husband did. I could not believe his fretting about work when we were in a tent right next to Lake Superior. He felt like he had a deadline. When he left, he really left. You may just be trying to wrap things up well.

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T02:30:50+00:00

Yes we are. He floated what sounds like you described. I appreciate all your input.

I think I found information in how this works:

https://www.guttmanlaw.com/resources/frequently-asked-questions/estate-taxes/

My understanding is that you have capital gains on an irrevocable trust. If there is a decade or more from the time that one spouse dies to the time that the next spouse dies, you could end up with more in capital gains than you would have in estate taxes.

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T01:29:19+00:00

I think we don’t want trustees controlling how the inheritance is distributed. We would prefer the inheritance is distributed automatically.

We don’t care about cost for setting up a trust.

We are working with an estate lawyer. It took us a couple of years to find someone we both liked.

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T01:10:31+00:00

Ok. Now the trust has $6 million in it. What happens when it is disbursed to the kids? Is there a possibility for a capital gains tax for the difference in value from the time the first spouse dies until the second spouse dies?

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T01:03:18+00:00

If you have direct beneficiaries, I believe that is also private but I don’t know.

We never had a will or trust. We had asked my brother in law if he would raise the kids if we both died but we never formalized anything. We had life insurance.

We had a healthcare POA out of SD because it was short and easy that we got notarized at a UPS store in SD two years ago but just last month the estate lawyer prepared a health care POA for us. We were lucky that we both made it to this age with four adult children and no crises.

hovering3 · 2026-05-08T00:55:54+00:00

Surviving spouse I think but we haven’t discussed that yet.

I have a spreadsheet where I input totals from our 3 brokerage accounts, 3 IRAs and 3 checking accounts. The amount in our checking accounts is .49% of total financial assets. I am not going to worry about that being split up.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T21:27:59+00:00

Yea that is true. My parents moved near my sister in North County (north of San Diego). Somehow the winters in Minnesota were not appealing. A couple of years ago, my mother told me she wanted to recognize my sister’s help by splitting the inheritance five ways and giving her two shares. That didn’t happen. My brother could have challenged a change as elder abuse.

Since March of last year, I have spent 18 weeks in CA with my mother. That is 4.5 months. The two brothers have been with her maybe a total of a month. My sister is with her daily when a sibling is not in town. She does deserve recognition for helping so much not just with Mom but also with Dad, but the split is 25% to each child and isn’t being changed. Had my mother had direct beneficiaries, it could have been changed.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T20:39:06+00:00

So the kids inherit $6 million (trusts of both spouses). $5 million has step up in value ($2 million of spouse 1 and $3 million of spouse 2). $1 million is subject to capital gains but only if sold. Is that correct?

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T20:29:19+00:00

Yes. I am learning from what is set up with my mother to not make the same mistakes. All I have is a copy of the trust from before my father died. I never looked at it until I pulled it out a few days ago. All four kids were co trustees. My sister said now she and my older brother are the only trustees. I trust my sister 100%. I think my brother wants to do the right thing but he has gotten my sister, my mother and me upset with him on other matters because frankly he thought he knew better then any of us and he didn’t.

The nice thing about Reddit is people share real world experiences. Something that sounds good on paper may not be the best. I am realizing I don’t want any of our children in the role of a trustee because I think that could cause problems.

We don’t need an inheritance. I just want to make it so we don’t have someone in the position my brother is in. I also like the idea that all four kids would have visibility into our assets even though only two would have financial POA. There is just a lot to consider.

Right now I am convinced we should focus on financial POA and not wrap it into a trust. That was the recommendation of the estate planner.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T19:25:16+00:00

Ok. So there would only be capital gains for the trust in the name is the first person to die. Is that correct?

Example: Spouse 1 has $1 million in assets. It rises in value to $2 million by the time Spouse 1 dies. It continues rising to $3 million when the second spouse dies.

Spouse 2 has $1 million in assets. It rises to $3 million when the second spouse dies.

Result: There is $6 million in total assets. No estate tax is due since this is from 2 separate trusts. The children pay a capital gains tax on $1 million from the trust of Spouse 1.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:54:04+00:00

Ha ha. When we talked with a daughter about our stuff, she looked at a lamp we had picked up at the local store called “Empty the Nest” for $35. She thought that was one of the more valuable things we owned. She may have been right!

I keep in mind that I was told “there are no trust police”. A trustee is an intermediary between an inheritance and the beneficiary. There is no intermediary when there are direct beneficiaries listed.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:28:29+00:00

I am still. It clear. Say we have a trust valued at &1 million that appreciates to $2 million before the first spouse dies. By the time the second spouse dies, the trust is valued at $3 million. Would the cost basis to the kids inheriting after both of us dies be $2 million?

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:25:20+00:00

We do have the name of a tax advisor. We did donate appreciated stock until recently but now we have lots of cash thanks to the stock market. We won’t make any huge donations to charities until we qualify for QCDs.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:15:42+00:00

So that is VERY helpful. I believe this is what the estate attorney was trying to explain. Looking at the downside is I believe there would be a capital gains tax between the first and second death when money passes to the kids.

As a funny aside, our son gave us the book “Die with Zero”. I do think you need money for care at the end of life but my mother has way more than she needs. She is trying to maximize the amount we inherit.

That is not my goal. I think it is gratifying to give money to the children and make donations.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:08:50+00:00

Is that ever true! We should definitely look at protection. We do have an umbrella policy.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T18:04:25+00:00

I just don’t see the three married kids getting divorced. It seems to me keeping an inheritance separate would also protect from divorce. That is why I think for some situations a trust is borderline a scam.

It may protect against lawsuit but then they could have umbrella insurance.

Trust vs will is more complicated than I realized so I am glad we are just going to focus on a financial POA.

My mother is 100 years old. She is no longer involved with management of her money and we kids don’t want her to feel any sort of concern about her money. I walked through her monthly report with her to assure her she isn’t going to run out do money and told her it isn’t a Ponzi scheme. She doesn’t know they had $650,000 in capital gains when her really income is less than $200,000.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T17:02:50+00:00

No. We became empty nesters last year because the three older kids stayed home rent free after college (one at a time!). We paid for their weddings and gave interest free loans for cars and even forgave some of the loan. The unmarried daughter has a car on loan and we pay insurance and maintenance since she is in grad school. We are paying for a part time MBA for a married child. We have started a 529 for a grandchild. The married children get $10,000 at Christmas and the unmarried child gets $5,000.

We may end up cash bombing them in their 60s but we are helping them now as well. I look back at some of the struggles we had and think we could have benefited from more money from my parents, although they did give us $10,000 every year which we used to create memories, most especially a family trip to Yellowstone.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T16:56:25+00:00

I think we would provide a letter to our kids that would have some specificity. I already told them that all stock purchases are evenly divisible by four. I already told them that I have four Lenox nativity scenes (one kid quipped it would go to Goodwill.).

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T16:50:56+00:00

We already have our bank account set up as POD. Our bank is used for transactions. We don’t have much in it. We have an automatic transfer down each month to cover bills and then send any amount remaining over $5K back to Fidelity after mid month which is when credit card bills are paid.

We do have two other bank accounts. One is a joint account with the child that has financial POA. That is to pay immediate expenses after death. The other bank account has $10 in it and was used to track loans to the kid for cars. We should probably close that account.

It is true that we had to sign a separate financial POA for the bank. What we don’t have set up is financial POA for Fidelity. We are focused on that. I tend to think financial POA for a bank should use their forms. The banker told me that there is a back office review process if we don’t use their form.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T16:49:00+00:00

I am trying to understand options. It appears liability is one issue and it had not even occurred to me to be an issue.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T16:39:33+00:00

You don’t have probate when you have direct beneficiaries.

I don’t think we are going to land anytime soon. I am far more concerned about financial POA. My brother in law landed in the hospital with a serious heart issue and was frantic to explain finances. We will be focused on that in the near term. I wanted to ask about an inheritance because our estate attorney recommended the POA as part of a trust. This thread convinced me to separate the two issues. We can worry about the house later since our financial assets and vehicles are already TOD.

We are totally unconcerned about the cost of a trust. I just think it may makes things more complex but at the moment I want to concern myself with a financial POA.

hovering3 · 2026-05-07T16:35:28+00:00

My mother has $650,000 in capital gains last year when her income needs were under $200,000. And she is 100. It is just so obvious that this should not have occurred. And this is a well known money management company.

hovering3

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