Naming Trusts as Beneficiaries, Keeping Your Beneficiary Form Safe This Week at Slott Report

The clean up in the Southeast and Northeast starts today after Hurricane Irene ripped up the east coast over the weekend. The build-up of Irene brings up an interesting discussion about “hype.” Flooding rains and heavy winds have left millions without power in ravaged parts of North Carolina, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.

However, the reality was never set up to live up to the hype. The Weather Channel touted Hurricane Irene as the apocalypse for days, because they are in the business of selling ad space and increasing ratings more than delivering objective weather analysis. Irene was a devastating storm that caused billions in damage and lost revenue, but it never had a chance to match its hype because of how The Weather Channel and other media outlets built it as The Storm of the Century.

The same holds true with those in the financial services industry. SALESMEN are concerned with pushing products, while ADVISORS are the objective money managers whose main focus lies in growing and protecting your retirement savings. The key is to find these ADVISORS, those who value their own education in a constantly-changing profession and provide the best service to you, the client. How do you differentiate the true ADVISORS from the SALESMEN? First, use our list of 10 Questions to Ask Your Financial Advisor, which can be found at the back of Ed Slott’s Retirement Decisions Guide: 2011 Edition. Then, search www.irahelp.com for an Ed Slott-trained advisor in your area.

This week at The Slott Report we provide a war story on naming a trust as an IRA beneficiary on Tuesday, give you analysis on keeping your beneficiary form safe this Wednesday, answer consumer questions on Thursday and finish up the workweek with an article about Required Minimum Distributions after a Roth recharacterization when you are re-converting those funds back to a Roth IRA.

If you have an article idea, email me at [email protected]. Enjoy your Labor Day weekend, and I will see you next Tuesday at The Slott Report and our YouTube page, IRAtv.