Your Money

Estate planning is not only about deciding who receives your assets. It is also about deciding which assets they receive, how they receive them, and how much may be lost to taxes along the way.

Three planning tools can play very different roles:

• Trust selection: A revocable trust offers flexibility and avoids probate, while certain irrevocable trusts may provide stronger estate-tax, creditor-protection, or charitable-planning benefits.
• Step-up in cost basis: Highly appreciated investments may be more valuable as an inheritance than as a lifetime gift. At death, their tax basis may reset to current market value, potentially eliminating decades of embedded capital gains.
• Life insurance: A properly structured policy can provide beneficiaries with income-tax-free proceeds and create liquidity when a surviving spouse may be facing lower household income and higher individual tax rates.

None of these strategies should be selected in isolation. A trust decision can affect taxes and control. An investment sale can affect both today’s tax bill and tomorrow’s inheritance. Insurance can solve a liquidity problem, but only when its costs and assumptions make sense.

That is why legacy planning works best when PWM coordinates the process with your estate attorney, tax professional, and insurance specialist, helping ensure each decision supports one integrated strategy.

3 Tax-Efficient Legacy-Building Strategies for the Wealthy
by Ashley Terrell

Your Life

The food we grow up eating rarely seems unusual until we describe it to someone from somewhere else. A New Jersey sloppy joe bears little resemblance to the version most Americans know. Minnesota has hot dish, Rhode Island has johnnycakes, and Kentucky has burgoo.

These dishes endure because food is more than taste. It is family, place, and memory served on a plate. Some regional favorites remain local secrets. Others cross state lines, shed their origins, and become so widely loved that we forget they ever belonged to one place.

We Quizzed Readers About Regional American Foods. They Told Us What We Missed.
by Adam Chandler

Complexity Simplified

Corn silk clings because each strand is attached to an individual kernel. Pulling it away by hand usually leaves a few stubborn strands behind.

The easiest fix is not another cooking trick. After removing the husk, wipe the ear with a slightly damp kitchen towel. The fabric catches the silk, while the moisture adds just enough grip to pull it free.

Microwaving or steaming can also loosen the silk, but both begin cooking the corn. The towel method leaves it raw, clean, and ready for whatever comes next.

I Tested 5 Ways to Shuck Corn. One Trick Made the Biggest Difference
by Adam Dolge

Trivia