At this point in your life, your now juggling more responsibilities all while trying to balance things outside of work. You’ve likely been with your employer for a decent length of time and your income and benefits may have increased. As a result your lifestyle spending has increased and you may have moved a few times as you worked your way up the company ladder. Here are three areas to pay attention to during your 40’s.
Employee Benefit Plans & Multiple Plans
Many people in their 40’s have now worked for multiple companies, which also means multiple retirement plans. These may include: ESPP’s, Stock Options, Restricted Stock, Deferred Compensation and a 401k or 403b. It’s important to have appropriate instructions in place so these assets will transfer to the people or places you want after you pass.
As you move in to your 40’s you may have a larger family than you did in your 30’s. Or for those who choose not to have children, your goals may have changed as you’ve aged.
Regardless, it’s important to assure you have beneficiaries updated so your assets will be distributed in the manner you prefer.
Insurance Up To Date?
Upon first starting at work, we generally sign up for insurance in our benefit package and don’t revisit as life changes occur. Not fully understanding all the benefits, many just take the employer provided amounts.
This is generally your annual salary amount of term life insurance along with long-term disability insurance. But as your relationships change and new ones are started, you want to assure those you care for are taken care of.
This is where having an independent and objective needs analysis completed within the context of a financial plan can add extra peace of mind. This also allows you to evaluate your need for the amount of disability insurance and or umbrella insurance coverage.
Divorce
Estate plans can get complicated when you have ex-spouses and especially if you have children from a previous marriage along with children in your current marriage. You will want to make sure your estate plan reflects your desired distribution of assets to the intended people. Otherwise, your ex could get rich if you haven’t updated one very important document attached to your retirement accounts.
Tips
- If you already have an estate plan, but it was created in another state from where you currently reside you will want to update the documents to reflect your current situation.
- Moving to a New State? Take a Look at Your Estate Plan
- Verify how your workplace accounts would be handled after you pass.
Resources:
*As financial planners we do not create estate planning documents as these legal documents should be handled by an estate planning attorney. Our job is to provide education to our clients around estate planning issues and provide a recommendation on ways to align their finances with their estate planning goals and work with their estate planning attorney where necessary.
