My partner, Kelly Willis, wrote a poignant post last week about the loss of her husband and the estate challenges she found in her path, all during a time she struggled with her bereavement. As a private client lawyer with many years of estate planning under my belt, I wanted to share some of the more frequent issues and misconceptions I have witnessed in dealing with families who were unprepared or had inadequate estate plans.
Our own Peter Churchill Smith, Managing Director, will be the keynote speaker at the CEO Global Networks’ Annual Economic Outlook for Entrepreneurs on Thursday, February 23rd.
Peter’s plain-speaking talk, designed specifically for the business audience, will look at where we are, where we’re headed, and what you need to know to make smart decisions.
The cost is $129.00 per ticket and can be purchased on-line. Click here to register.
We have arranged for clients of Newport Private Wealth to attend as our guests. To obtain your complimentary ticket, simply contact us by email for on-line registration and the promotional code.
See event details below.
My husband passed away a year ago last month. We ought to have been prepared. Two years earlier he had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer for which there was “little predictive data”. We chose to be optimistic. When he died due to complications from surgery I was shocked and devastated.
Shock was the protection I needed to get through those first few weeks, but as reality set in grief took its place. It was in this condition that I was catapulted, like so many others in my position, into the surreal state of dealing with my husband’s estate. If there is any benefit in my experience it is to help others become better prepared.
I have to confess I was ‘fortunate’ under the circumstances. My husband had a valid and current will; our affairs were reasonably straightforward; I had been the ‘chief financial officer’ during our marriage so I was used to managing our finances; and I had the support of the professionals here at my firm whom I trusted as advisors and friends. In theory, I was well equipped to handle my responsibilities as executor.
In pursuit of investment success, it is human nature to look backward for guidance. Unfortunately, it’s also a misguided strategy that can be very costly:
A recent article by Andrew Hallam in Canadian Business magazine suggests we are “hard wired to rely on established patterns” when it comes to investing (read Your Own Worst Investing Enemy). Hallam cited the example that “the average U.S. mutual fund from 1980 to 2005 gained 10% per year. But the average investor in those funds made only 7.3% — giving up more than one third of their potential earnings each year.” That’s because investors were doing the wrong thing at the wrong time (i.e. selling funds that weren’t performing and buying those that had been doing well and prices were higher).
Now more than ever investors need to be thinking about portfolio changes that will position them for the future not the immediate past.
For those who are regular readers of our blog, the name Tourmaline Oil Corp. should be well known. We participated in Tourmaline’s initial capital raise in 2008 and continued to invest through IPO in November 2010 (see our earlier blog posts). Tourmaline is our single largest holding in the Newport Canadian Equity Fund today.
Tourmaline released their corporate overview presentation last week and it shows a continued path of impressive growth in production levels. Already this year, in the last week of January, Tourmaline achieved its 2012 average daily production target — well ahead of schedule.
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