Protecting assets with solid wills during COVID-19 period? Draining your savings. Spending all or most of their savings on the down payment and closing costs is one of the biggest first-time homebuyer mistakes, says Ed Conarchy, a mortgage planner and investment adviser at Cherry Creek Mortgage in Gurnee, Illinois. “Some people scrape all their money together to make the 20 percent down payment so they don’t have to pay for mortgage insurance, but they are picking the wrong poison because they are left with no savings at all,” Conarchy says. How this affects you: Homebuyers who put 20 percent or more down don’t have to pay for mortgage insurance when getting a conventional mortgage. That’s usually translated into substantial savings on the monthly mortgage payment. But it’s not worth the risk of living on the edge, Conarchy says. What to do instead: Aim to have three to six months of living expenses in an emergency fund. Paying mortgage insurance isn’t ideal, but depleting your emergency or retirement savings to make a large down payment is riskier.
Everyone is on social media sites these days and Facebook is a great way to network and connect with buyers. In addition to the marketing effort your Realtor will provide, you can also use the power of networking to get the word out to as many people as possible that your home is for sale. People also love watching videos. If you grab your phone or video camera, make a video as you walk through your home and your neighborhood. Tell why you love it and then post that video on FB and YouTube. By doing so, you will help a prospective buyer visualize a great life living there also.
Regardless of the means of meeting with clients for consultations or for signing of wills and powers of attorney, the underlying factors to ensure properly and professional prepared materials remain in place. All requirements to ensure capacity to make or revoke a will or a power of attorney remain. The need to be ever vigilant to ensure that there is no undue influence being exerted against the person making the will or power of attorney remains and is even more important for clients who are vulnerable and isolated due to self-isolation during the COVID-19 period. When the only contact is by way of a video call with the client, the need to ensure that only the client is in the room is even greater than during a face to face meeting, particularly when the client is not technically savvy and someone else has had to set up the call initially. Discover extra info on protect myself during coronavirus.
However, the advice remains that wherever possible, Wills and Codicils should continue to be executed in the conventional way, ie with two independent witnesses present in person with the will-maker. It is acceptable for this to be done with the parties a short distance from each other, whether outside or in adjacent rooms, or through a window or open door of a house or vehicle. Wills and Codicils can be validly executed within existing law as long as all parties have a ‘clear line of sight’ of each other throughout the signing process.
Have Financial Goals: If you want to accomplish financial goals, you need to figure out what goals are important to you first. Having a clear goal can keep you motivated and help you come up with a plan to reach that goal even faster. Now, don’t think that you need to set outrageous goals. If this is your first time thinking about personal financial goals, start off small and work your way up from there. I’d suggest coming up with a few different goals in each of these categories: What you want to achieve in the next 3-months, In the next year, In the next five years. This way you’ll have some short-term goals to look forward too, and some long-term goals to work towards as well. Your short-term goals may even be small stepping stones towards your bigger goals. So, remember to set long-term and short-term goals, and keep track of them too! Write them down somewhere and set a day each month to track your progress.
We have seen a wide range of approaches to providing borrowers with flexibility following the occurrence of an event of default or a potential event of default, including the execution of simple consent/amendment letters effecting the amendment and restatement of loan agreements, along with reconfirmation and/or re-grant of existing security. Our borrower clients have been reluctant during these difficult times to spend significant amounts of time and money on documenting the amended terms of loan agreements, with the belt and braces approach of re-granting security. This has in certain cases caused real tension with their lenders, whose desire is to protect their position during times of uncertainty. We will closely watch this space as the crisis continues to unfold with falling valuations, changes to consumer behaviors, potential downsizing of physical store footprints, potential reduction in demand for office space and most of all more strains on lenders’ internal resources. Read more info on https://techbullion.com/wills-and-covid-19-safeguarding-your-assets-during-a-global-pandemic/.
