Solutions

Most people don’t think about disability insurance if they are already covered at work. Group disability policies, however, differ greatly from each other. By purchasing your own disability income policy, you can cover the gaps that may be present in your group policy. If you are not covered by a group policy, you owe it to yourself and your family to consider purchasing an individual policy. Disability due to illness or accident is challenging enough without suffering financial consequences.

The reason for purchasing life insurance is simple. What may be a bit more complex, however, is determining which type of life insurance makes the most sense for you and your family. Term
insurance offers protection for a limited period of time. Permanent insurance offers coverage that lasts your entire lifetime. What’s more, it enables you to build cash value that can be accessed when you need it to meet emergency expenses or pay for such major goals as a college education for your children. We can help you determine which type of coverage might best meet your specific needs and whether life insurance might play a role in your estate planning efforts.

Long-term care insurance was created to help people meet rising long-term care costs without jeopardizing their retirement or the legacy they hoped to leave their loved ones someday.  MassMutual has pioneered the development of a new generation of insurance products that combine long-term care coverage with whole life insurance. These hybrid products or traditional whole life policies with long-term care riders can provide policy holders with the protection they need from long-term care expenses.

Given today’s increasing life expectancies, many people will spend as much of their lives in retirement as they did at their careers. Annuities are a type of insurance contract that can help retirees protect themselves from the possibility of running out of money.  Simply put, an annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company in which you receive future income in return for current assets. Your assets are allowed to grow on a tax-deferred basis until they are withdrawn at retirement. You may then receive income in a number of ways, including guaranteed payments that will last for as long as you live.

Where are you in relation to the goals you hope to achieve someday? What do you have to do to reach those goals within your required timeframe? Is that timeframe realistic? These are the questions that comprehensive financial planning can help you answer. Your plan begins with in-depth conversations about what you hope to achieve for yourself and your family and what you fear might be standing in your way. Based on your input, we create a plan with tangible recommendations for retiring on time, meeting major expenses, leaving a meaningful legacy, and achieving other objectives that are important to you.

Whether you’re entering your prime earning years or wondering if you can really afford to retire as planned, we can help you proceed with greater confidence to the future you envision for yourself. Our comprehensive strategy integrates investing with your pension, 401(k) or other plan to which you may have access at work. If you’re self-employed, we’ll help you determine whether your current plan is truly suitable for your needs. When you change jobs, we’ll provide you with the advice you need to make the right decision about any retirement plan distribution for which you are eligible.

Our team will help you develop a customized investment strategy that is designed to meet your objectives, timeframe and risk tolerance. We implement that strategy with carefully selected solutions. And, as you would expect, we monitor your portfolio on an ongoing basis to make certain it is performing as anticipated and suggest adjustments, if warranted by prevailing market conditions or changing circumstances in your life.

For many people, estate planning is nothing more than working with their attorney to draft a will and making certain they’ve designated the right beneficiary for their insurance policy and retirement plan. For many of our clients, however, it is considerably more complex. A customized estate plan can reduce the possibility that the inheritance you hope to leave someday will be eroded by excessive taxes. It can also help your heirs avoid the conflicts that too often plague families when individual expectations are not met. We work with your attorney and accountant to create a plan that reflects your wishes and addresses your concerns.

Now what? How can you protect your company from the loss of a specialized skill, possible decline in sales or costs incurred to hire and train a new employee?

For many companies, the answer is key person insurance. This coverage pays your company a benefit in the event that the employee it insures passes away or is no longer able to work due to disability. In the event that the employee leaves your firm for another company, you can retain the policy and gain access to its cash value through loans or withdrawals.

Sadly, your partner has passed away, and now his family has inherited his shares in your company and expects income on an ongoing basis. Or perhaps you’ve tried to buy out their interests only to find that they have a different opinion from you on what the business is worth.

A buy-sell agreement obligates partners to sell their shares to other partners in the event of their death. It also obligates surviving partners to buy the shares of deceased partners at a predetermined price. The price is covered by the death benefit of a life insurance policy purchased by partners on each other’s lives. 

Buy-sell agreements may also arrange for the transfer of ownership interests in the event a partner becomes permanently disabled or terminates employment. In these cases, the agreement is funded by the cash value accumulated in the life insurance policy.

You may not be able to prevent people from leaving, but you can certainly provide them with an incentive to stay. That’s the principle behind executive bonus. 

Instead of offering key employees a cash bonus, your company pays the premiums on a permanent life insurance policy owned by the employee. The employee has access to any cash value generated by the policy and if the employee dies, his or her beneficiaries will receive the policy’s death benefit. Premiums are tax-deductible to your company and with this approach, you probably stand a better chance of retaining an employee than you would by writing a check that your employee cashes just before offering his or her resignation.

Highly compensated individuals generally have high tax bills. One way to reward these individuals without increasing their tax burden is through a non-qualified deferred compensation plan. Unlike 401(k) or other qualified plans, deferred comp plans are non-qualified and require no non-discrimination testing. As a result, businesses can reward whomever they wish.

To implement a deferred comp plan, businesses set aside funds for key employees that are not actually paid to them until they retire and may be in a lower tax bracket. To fund these payments, many businesses purchase whole life insurance policies on the life of the employee. When the employee dies, the business receives the policy’s death benefit, thereby reimbursing it for part or all of the deferred comp payments.

Whether you’re contemplating transferring your business to family members, liquidating its assets or selling your share to current management or an outside party, you have decisions to make and complex issues to address.  

Ideally, you should start planning for this major life event at least two years before it actually occurs. In addition, you should be supported by a team of financial experts who understands the business succession planning process, shares your personal vision and possesses the acumen and experience to help you achieve it. At Fifth Avenue Financial, we have helped numerous business owners develop and execute their succession planning strategy and proceed to the next chapter of their lives with greater clarity and confidence. 

Over the past several decades, the term 401(k) has become synonymous with retirement plans for millions of Americans. With 401(k) plans, employees make investment decisions, not business owners. Moreover, owners are not required to make contributions on behalf of employees every year unless they choose to match a percentage of their employees’ contributions as an incentive to participate. 401(k) plans do involve more administrative responsibilities than many other plans, but we can help you establish a plan and meet fiduciary responsibilities without diverting your attention from core business issues.

Chances are you have disability insurance that replaces your personal income if something should happen to you, but what about your business expenses? With business overhead expense insurance, you can continue to cover such fixed expenses as rent, property taxes, loans and payroll, even if you are incapacitated due to illness or an accident. We can help you choose the coverage that best meets your needs for protection and affordability.