Monthly Tips
February 2024
TIP 1 Blast From the Past
Have you ever wondered about the days when the family gathered around a radio, rather than a TV and listened to great content? Perhaps that was before your time, but an aged loved one can still remember those “good old days” and might want to revisit them.
The Internet Archive, a charitable organization dedicated to preserving content, has some of those radio shows posted so that researchers, historians, scholars, people with print disabilities, and the general public may have access. A link to the old-time radio content can be found here.
Hopefully, you’ll spark some memories and share some stories. Many radio shows later became TV shows (Jack Benny, Dragnet, and Ozzie and Harriet, for example), so this may provide some history and context you didn’t realize existed for shows enjoyed on both platforms.
https://gstrustco.com/lebanon/
TIP 2 Famous Trusts
The vast majority of trust services are not employed by the rich and famous, but that doesn’t mean the rich and famous can’t also benefit through the use of trust services.
Learn about the benefits that might have drawn the recently passed Matthew Perry to utilize a trust in his estate planning in our newest blog, When a Living Trust is Your Friend.
https://gstrustco.com/trusts-estates/revocable-living-trusts/
TIP 3 AI Avatars
The buzzwords, Artificial Intelligence, seem as though they are growing ever more common. Apple’s new Vision Pro product may be creating digital avatars for its FaceTime feature, so more people may start getting used to the idea of having their own virtual image.
In the estate planning space, there is conflict and controversy over virtual avatars. In a recent lawsuit from the estate of George Carlin, as discussed by the AP news here, his descendants found the imitation of a deceased person inappropriate, especially since there is no license or permission to do so. On the other hand, some are embracing AI in their estate planning. William Shatner signed on with StoryFile to create an avatar that could answer questions after he passes. To some, this type of communication may be helpful in the grieving process, to others it may be a curiosity or even offensive.
At Garden State Trust Company, we help clients deal with the wealth transfer portion of estate planning, but there’s a lot more to it than that. An estate plan helps get families on the same page about many things, before it’s too late. Let us know if you’d like more information.
https://gstrustco.com/trusts-estates/executor-services/
TIP 4 Tax Facts 2024
We have posted our new Tax Facts tables to our website, and incorporated several important changes for the 2024 edition as inflation increased many of the figures.
If you’re curious about the new tax brackets and numbers for 2024, an overview is also available in our handy reference guide for 2024 on our website. Although taxes shouldn’t be the primary motivating factor in making investment decisions, once those decisions are made one should be considering the best tax-efficient way to execute them. That’s one of the things that the professionals at Garden State Trust Company could help with. Let us know if you’d like to know more.
https://gstrustco.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Garden-State-Taxes-2024E.pdf