Gifts in BOX

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Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel for a Year for the Cost of Staying Home Where would your dream take you if you had a whole year to just travel? But perhaps you’re thinking, “if I only knew how to start planning my adventure!” This detailed “how-to” guide will get you moving from the dreaming to the doing in no time at all.

Included is step-by-step, real-life information on planning the trip you’ve always wanted to take — along with generous doses of humor and advice on topics such as:

* How to pay for a year away from home * How to unravel all your current commitments - to family, work, and organizations * How to plan on the fly and enjoy every day * How to pack in 3 small drawers and 24″ of closet space - for two! * How to handle the emergencies that crop up along the way * And the most asked question: How to enjoy your traveling companion on a 24/7 basis!

Once you’ve decided to “leave it all behind”, Live Your Road Trip Dream takes you along on an action-packed, whirlwind tour of the authors’ trip - just to help you visualize what months on the road might really be like, and to offer a glimpse into how decisions and discoveries are made along the way.

This is the ultimate road trip planning guide.
Customer Review: Taking the Road Less Traveled
At its core, Live Your Road Trip Dream is a book about turning a dream into a plan, and turning that plan into reality. If you are considering an extended road trip and are in the process of gathering information about how to do it - this is a good place to start.

The first half of the book focuses heavily on planning. They systematically consider the logistics of financing an extended trip, transferring important responsibilities, constructing a realistic budget, and planning an itinerary. As they dissect these topics, they share their approach and specifics about how they solved each problem.

In addition to discussing things and places, they also spend a fair amount of time exploring the “people” element such as breaking the news to family members, missing important events, and, of course, the obvious issue of getting along with a traveling companion 24-7-365.

One of the most valuable elements of the book, in my opinion, is the detailed planning worksheets in the appendix (and at http://www.roadtripdream.com). These include sample budget worksheets, to-do lists, list of supplies, and even a primer for RV systems.

The White’s make a point early in the first chapter that the purpose of the book is to help the reader build a plan for their own adventure. The second half of the book, a journal of the White’s trip, is offered as a guide to spark the imagination.

Although I appreciated the planning techniques, it was the journal I enjoyed most.

Customer Review: DISAPPOINTING - Cost $77,000 for their year long trip…
The title of this book is misleading - it says you can live on the road for the same price as staying at home - however, the authors spent about $77,000 (not including any house or mortgage payments while they were gone) - that comes out to about over $3,000 per person, per month. What a ridiculous budget - if I had that much money to spend, travelling in an rv would be a piece of cake - the rest of the book is fluff and gives no practical advice.

Well, obviously, it gives no practical advice about saving money because the authors splurged. I feel cheated by the title of this book.

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two senior IRS officials have publicly raised serious questions about the legality of a pension’s purchase of life insurance, in this case a ’second-to-die’ policy on the lives of an employee-participant and his wife.
Some financial advisors have seen merit in buying life insurance out of one’s pension plan, using tax-deductible dollars to pay the premiums. We’ve never been great fans of this strategy, arguing instead that a pension presents an extraordinary opportunity to grow wealth on a tax-favored basis. To the extent pension dollars are diverted to fund insurance costs, total investment returns are diluted and the pensions very purpose is compromised.

Now, two senior IRS officials have publicly raised serious questions about the legality of a pension’s purchase of life insurance, in this case a ’second-to-die’ policy on the lives of an employee-participant and his wife. The officials insist - as we have long held - that a pension plan is designed to provide retirement benefits. It’s not to be used as an estate planning vehicle. Thus, the purchase of insurance, particularly on the life of someone other than the employee (here, his wife), violates a fundamental requirement for such plans. What’s more, we’ve learned that the IRS position, as it is evolving, would similarly extend to profit-sharing plans.

The IRS officials, in taking their stand, have relied on the “exclusive benefit rule,” which requires that tax-qualified plans be maintained for the exclusive benefit of employees. They reason that maintaining life insurance on someone other than an employee runs afoul of that mandate.

There’s another problem, too. IRS regs require that a pension plan primarily provide systematically for the payment of “definitely determinable” benefits to employees over a period of years after retirement, typically for life. Although the Service has long allowed pensions to offer incidental death benefits which can be funded by life insurance, the IRS, citing a 30-year-old ruling, now seems to hold that maintaining life insurance on an individual other than an employee fails to satisfy the “definitely determinable” standard.

The new IRS position is not without controversy. After all, many retirement plans permitting the purchase of second-to-die policies have already received favorable determination letters from the Service.

The officials’ comments were in fact occasioned by a pending ruling request before the IRS. As it now appears, that ruling may be issued in adverse form - or the request may be voluntarily withdrawn by the taxpayer.

What seems clear is that the issue won’t go away. So those who are considering a second-to-die purchase with retirement plan money should explore the alternatives. And those whose plans have already made such purchases would be well advised to seek counsel.

About the Author

Marc Lane is a business and tax attorney, a Master Registered Financial Planner, a Registered Financial Consultant, and a Certified Investment Specialist. Marc is the author of 30 books on business organization, taxation, and personal finance. His newest book, “Advising Entrepreneurs: Dynamic Strategies for Financial Growth” draws from his experience working with those who have successfully built their businesses. Marc is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Northwestern University and an Adjunct Professor of Business at the University of Illinois. His practice areas include Individual Taxation, Corporate Tax Planning, Business Tax Planning, Estate Planning, Investments, Retirement Planning,Elder Law, International Trade, Business Law, and Wills, Trusts and Estates. Additional articles, case studies, and a free email newsletter are available at www.marcjlane.com.

Tags: Last minute gift ideas, retirement gifts, retirement article, Gift idea, Gift ideas

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Retirement Gifts.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.