How to Achieve Asset Protection Planning

What do we mean when we say “Asset Protection Planning”? To answer that, we first need to understand to what “assets” we are actually referring.

When you are young and don’t have much to your name, you don’t spend a lot of time worrying about “asset protection.” But as you get older and start to accumulate some assets, you have to start protecting those assets from being taken away from you!

So, Asset Protection is essentially “the practice of avoiding having your assets taken away from you.” Pretty simple!

The main issue (and potential deterrent) of putting your real estate in an LLC, is that they cost money to set up and maintain and require some annual maintenance. This comes in form of state annual filings and tax payments you have to make on the LLC.

What else do I need to know about real estate LLCs and asset protection?

Here is what you should look at when deciding if this asset protection strategy is right for you.

-How much do you have in personal assets that you could lose? If your only major asset is your rental property, then it’s all you can lose anyway, right? In that case, why take on the extra expenses?

-How many properties do you have? If you only have one or two, you may do better (expense-wise) protecting your assets another way.

-What states are the properties in, and what state do you live in? If they are not the same, your entity costs could go up even more because you may need to register the entity in the state of the property, as well as in your own state, and pay double tax.

Other ways you can protect your assets using umbrella insurance!

If after asking the above questions you decide that you are not ready to start setting up entities, the next best option is umbrella insurance. Umbrella insurance is essentially lawsuit insurance (excess liability coverage) for your personal life!

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