Customer Reviews

60-Minute Estate Planner: Fast and Easy Plans for Saving Taxes, Avoiding Probate, and Maximizing Inheritance (Sixty Minute Estate Planner)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Required reading for those wishing to estate plan with a systematic and informed approach. Excellent step by step directions help the reader learn information needed to work efficiently with an estate planner or other professionals and achieve desired results. Unique, innovative charts, flow diagrams and planning documents clarify concepts difficult to grasp through words alone. If you have an estate plan in place this excellent volume will confirm its appropriateness and provide helpful fine-tuning tips. This book contains all the various scenarios of estate planning allowing the reader to choose the relevant ones. It is interesting, well written and a valuable reference resource.

The 60-Minute Estate Planner has been an invaluable resource. I have all three editions and continue to find this book very useful. It provides quick and accurate answers to a variety of questions. This is the best book I've seen on estate planning.

H. Thuesen

Back in 1999, I decided to do some estate planning. I decided to buy about 5 books to first learn the basics of estate planning......then see an estate planning attorney to set up my estate plan.

Of the five books that I read on estate planning, Kraemer's book was by far the best book. The main reason I liked Kraemer's book was his use of example flow charts, which show what happens to the money as each spouse dies. These flow charts also allow you to easily calculate the estate tax due at each step of the process.

The other books were very dry and boring.......and without the flow chart approach...it was not clear to me how bypass trusts work.

I highly recommend Kraemer's book as the best book on estate planning.......primarily due to the flow charts.

Kraemer also explains that the use of disclaimers can be a good thing.......and a good way to deal with the changing estate tax laws.

Kraemer's book allowed me to understand the basics of estate planning and bypass trusts. I was able to save time and money then working with an estate planning attorney to set up our bypass trusts.

In this age of full disclosure, it can be noted that I am the author and publisher of the book INDEX MUTUAL FUNDS: HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR LIFE AND BEAT THE PROS. This book is an introduction to the concept of index funds is and is sold on Amazon. I am also a contributing author to the book THE BOGLEHEADS GUIDE TO RETIREMENT PLANNING available from Amazon with an estimated release date of October 2009. I have also written 21 short stories on investing which are also available on Amazon.

Other good books on investing which may help you build a large enough estate so you get to worry about the problem of estate planning are shown below:

The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

I had delayed preparing an estate plan due to my perception that estate plans were only for the wealthiest people and my fear that creating one would be incredibly complicated. Upon the advice of a friend, I read the 60-Minute Estate Planner and was exceptionally surprised! The book is written in easily understandable language and doesn't require one to have a finance or law degree to read it. The graphics are especially useful and support the text wonderfully. I would highly recommend this book to everyone wishing to provide meaningfully to future generations.

This book does an outstanding job of taking what many consider a challenging subject and making it easily understandable to the average person. The graphics are extremely helpful in making key points as are the anecdotes and other stories. I can now tackle my estate planning needs with greater confidence.

The "60-Minute Estate planner" does the best job I've seen of being comprehensive, and yet easy to read at the same time. The graphic flow charts with their accompanying tables are a great aid to understanding. Even if you're not planning your estate this book is important to read. The book deepens your appreciation of how important it is for the Congress to repeal federal death taxes.

The legal explanations and graphs are easily under stood by a layman. The book is a treasure of practical advice with a humourous Will Rogers approach which is both entertaining and useful. It is a good read aside from its planning theme.

This book, like it's earlier volumns is a must read for anyone facing the challenges of estate planning either for themselves or their loved ones.

Very concise explanations of options set out in relatively simple to understand terms.

I think this book does a fine job of describing different estate planning strategies and vehicles...as far as a college educated layman can tell with all the legally detailed and complex descriptions provided.

The title and editorial reviews were a little misleading to me, perhaps because I was hoping to learn how to create my own estate plan without the pariticipation of a lawyer. Forget it. The legal issues and procedures are too complicated. Lawyers have once more created a situation through the law that makes it impossible for the lay person to do straight forward things such as to assure his relatives obtain his estate without having to pay lawyers a whole stack of money.

What I had hoped to do was learn how to create a living trust and get a will actuated without a lawyer, or at least with minimal advice from one. Wrong book for me. Unrealistic hope for almost anyone.

What the 60-Minute Estate Planner is intended to do is enable you to tell a lawyer what it is you want the lawyer to do for you in an hour. The lawyer will then charge you thousands of dollars to do it.

The book is alternately repetitive - each chapter seems to start with several pages of the same wordy assertions of the need for estate planning - and indecipherably detailed and opaque descriptions of different types of trusts.

You can learn what you need to know to talk to an estate planning lawyer on the Internet for free. Getting it done is going to cast you thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees, so being able to make your plan in your lawyer's office in less than an hour is pretty meaningless. Good luck.