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There is a third type of inheritance: responsibility. Anyone doing estate planning or settlement work has encountered trustees who aren't trustworthy, directors who are directionless and presidents who aren't presidential. Inherited irresponsibility can be nasty for stakeholders - ask me how I...

A while back I contacted some banks about loaning the company some money that could be used to buy back my stock at a deep discount to liquidation value. Some notes: • the banks didn't seem enthusiastic about the intended purpose for the money. Business expansion: ok; stockholder buyout: not so...

Family businesses are complicated. What seems 'logical' may not fly due to years of emotional baggage and lingering resentments. The long-time employees aren't in a financial position to purchase shares. I know this because they tend to be treated like de-facto family members and share more...

Thanks for the hint. Might not be appropriate for our situation but it's nice to know the options.

(1) A fractional CEO would have to be trained and then managed. And when I micro-manage her to the point that she quits in disgust I'd be back to square one. (2) I wasn't aware that business brokers deal with minority-ownership stock in private companies. Seems unlikely. Any outsider who bought...

(1) The liquidation value of the company is high based on the disposition of a similar company I managed last year. The return on assets is low because of the nature of the business and some poor management practices I inherited that aren't easy to fix. (2) Just walking away and letting it...

Correct on all three counts! BTW: I'd like to have a smooth operator like Susie Glass (actress Kaya Scodelario) from the Netflix series The Gentlemen come in and take over the family biz. She might be able to expand our products into interesting new areas. :)

It's not a money issue. It's a time issue. Too much aggravation and 'headspace' occupied by a never-ending stream of problems. Another problem: none of my fellow stockholders have any professional business experience. Their behavior is sometimes shocking. I recently realized that when I...

They would continue to do what they do now - nothing. Therein lies my entitlement complaint: when folks are used to having everything done for them it's a real problem when their service providers quit, retire, or die and they are incapable of doing the work themselves.

The company owns a large amount of valuable land. I like to say that the company is valuable despite the management rather than because of it. :)

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. Additional info: • running a successful business means solving an endless stream of technical problems (financial, legal, IT, etc.) I'm now the only person capable of doing this. The company isn't sufficiently profitable to outsource management to a hired CEO...

I have a relative who inherited stock in a closed corporation from her deceased spouse. She’s not too good with technical matters (including finance) and made some spectacular mistakes with her stock that resulted in couple of lawsuits from an aggrieved co-investor. The anxiety associated with...

I watched the first episode of Baby Reindeer on Netflix. Good performances by the lead actor and actress. Morbid obesity is both fascinating and terrifying (to me). We'll see how the rest of the series goes. :popcorn:

FIRE = Find Interesting, Relaxing Entertainment ;D

Celebrated the end of the 2023 tax filing season for myself, a relative, and various family businesses. All 2023 tax returns have been filed and all 2023 federal & state taxes (and 2024 Q1 estimated taxes) have been paid. The ball is now in the gov't's court: lob the ball back to me or don't -...

I recently finished this series on Netflix. I haven't read the books. I've got a serious problem with the plot but to avoid spoilers I'll just leave it at that. The online reviews are more favorable than my own - I'll give it a "C+". :popcorn:

I'm currently at 36/64. I'm considering bumping up the equity portion, but not sure by how much. My inclination is toward a "have fun but sleep soundly" portfolio. When equities are booming, it's fun to watch the account value climb. When equities are crashing, I can pay attention to the income...

I seem to recall that TurboTax on Mac asks whether you'd like to encrypt the file on the first save attempt and then never asks again. :popcorn:

I went looking for old personal financial records (hardcopy or digital) and couldn't find anything before 2008. It's like financially I didn't exist before 2008 ;D. A couple of years ago I threw out old tax returns dating back into the '90s. Minimalism is great until you become curious about...

Required underwriting: YES Extremely expensive: NO Rewind the clock to 2007. My medical insurance premiums were about $80 / month (that's not a typo :)). The coverage was comparable to what I was getting from a mega-corp plan the year before. Skyrocketing premiums began (for non-subsidized...

That's great! Now that I'm "old" I appreciate good health so much more than when I was younger and could pretty much take it for granted. :)

At BMI = 19 I'm probably pretty close to my high school weight. May 2024 will be the 20-year anniversary of my May 2004 "weight loss experiment", when I dropped from BMI = 22 to 19 over five months just to see what it was like to be on the low end of what the CDC considers healthy. I liked it...

The QTIP trust agreement I'm familiar with was drafted in the '90s. I don't know what's customary / legal now. For that QTIP the surviving spouse can invade principal up to $X per year (actually, it's the trustee(s) who decide). The surviving spouse (or trustee(s), if different) can also alter...

Talk to a lawyer specializing in estate planning about a QTIP trust. A full discussion of the difference between an AB and QTIP trust is above my pay grade. ;D

Since the past convention was that a seller pays both the seller and buyer agent's commission, for a DIY buyer the new convention could result in a direct financial benefit for the seller and an indirect benefit for the buyer. A lower overall transaction cost could translate into a lower offer...