Miller Wealth Management

Don’t Assume Your Will Has The Last Word | Pillar 5 — Legacy Planning

Credit card debt doesn't automatically pass to your children when you die. It's paid from the estate — and if the estate can't cover it, it generally goes unpaid. The exceptions: co-signers, joint account holders, and spouses in community property states like Arizona.

If you are unsure of the rules, before automatically paying any credit card debt for a decedent, speak with the credit card company, your estate attorney and/or your financial advisor.

July Series: Don’t Assume Your Will Has The Last Word | Pillar 5 — Legacy Planning

Adding your adult child to the deed or to an investment account seems like a simple way to make things easier later. Often, it's the most expensive one — triggering a taxable gift, exposing the asset to their creditors, and quietly cutting other heirs out of the will.

In regard to taxes, assets your child inherits normally get a "step-up" in value for tax purposes, based on what they're worth on the day you pass away. Assets you add your child to while you're alive don't get that reset. Your child could face a much bigger tax bill when they eventually sell.

If your real goal is simply avoiding probate, ask your estate attorney about a transfer-on-death deed, a beneficiary designation, or a revocable living trust instead. Each one skips probate without any of these downsides.

July Series: Don’t Assume Your Will Has The Last Word | Pillar 5 — Legacy Planning

Here's something that surprises most people: your will does not have the final say on who inherits your 401(k), IRA, or life insurance policy. Those pass directly to whoever is named on the beneficiary form — regardless of what your will says. An outdated form (an ex-spouse, a blank field) will win every time.

It's a small detail with outsized consequences, and it's exactly why Legacy Planning is one of our Seven Pillars — not a document you sign once, but a system you maintain. Tactic #77 in our 99 Tactics has us talking about primary and contingent beneficiary designations regularly, reducing the likelihood that something falls through the cracks for your family or the next generation.

The Family CFO Protocol means Visualizing what you actually want, Strategizing the architecture to protect it, and Realizing it — with the paperwork actually matching your intent.

When did you last check your beneficiary forms? If it's been a while, that's a five-minute task worth doing this week.

July Series: Say What You Mean, While You Still Can | Pillar 5 — Legacy Planning

A serious diagnosis has a way of clarifying what actually matters. When the timeline gets short, bank balances start to feel secondary to a simpler question: does everyone I love know what I want?

We've seen it firsthand — the details families regret afterward are rarely about money. They're about not knowing which hymn Dad wanted, or who was supposed to get the piano. None of that requires an attorney. It requires a conversation, written down, before it's too late to have it.

The kindest gift you can leave your family isn't more money. It's clarity.

Want a tool to start? We offer a free Financial Letter of Instruction template — download it at

https://www.millerwm.com/downloadable-resources.

July Series: Financial Caregiving | Pillar 7 — Family Stewardship

Most of a family's financial life now lives on a phone — banking apps, two-factor codes, password managers, photos of statements, logins to accounts no one else knows exist. When someone passes away, that phone doesn't just go quiet. It seals shut, and everything behind it goes with it.

There's a simple safeguard for this that most families have never heard of: a Legacy Contact. Both Apple and Google offer a built-in way to name someone trusted who can request access to your data after you're gone — no guessing passwords, no waiting on a court order, no locked-out grief. It takes about ten minutes to set up, and it's one of the easiest things you can do this week to protect the people who'll be left sorting through it all.

Here's how:

On an iPhone — Add a Legacy Contact

1. Open Settings, then tap your name at the top.
2. Select Sign-In & Security.
3. Tap Legacy Contact, then select Add Legacy Contact.
4. Authenticate with Face ID, Touch ID, or your passcode.
5. Choose a contact — you may be able to pick someone from your Family Sharing group.
6. Share the required Access Key with them via iMessage or by printing a copy.

The Legacy Contact will need that unique Access Key and a copy of the death certificate to access the account's data.

On an Android Device — Plan a Digital Legacy
1. Go to your Google Account on a phone or web browser.
2. Tap the Data & Privacy tab.
3. Scroll to the More Options or Tools section and tap Make a plan for your digital legacy.

July Series: Financial Caregiving | Pillar 7 — Family Stewardship

The call comes at 6:30 a.m. Dad has had a heart attack in his kitchen overnight. By the time his daughter reaches the hospital, the fear for his life is already giving way to a second, quieter problem — she has no legal authority to access his accounts, talk to his doctors, or pay a single bill.

This isn't a failure of love. It's a structural gap: the space between deciding to help and having the legal authority to act. And it ends in one of two ways — either the paperwork exists before the crisis, or a family spends the crisis trying to create it.

Every family should have three things in place well before that call ever comes: a Durable Financial Power of Attorney recent enough for banks and brokerages to honor without delay, a separate Healthcare Power of Attorney and HIPAA Authorization so a devoted adult child isn't locked out of conversations with physicians, and a current, findable inventory of accounts, advisors, and important documents.

If your family hasn't had these conversations yet, the best time isn't during a hospitalization. It's now.

July Series: Talking Social Security | Pillar 1 — Investment Strategy
The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report confirmed what demographics have been signaling for years: in 1960, 5.1 workers supported every retiree. Today it's 2.7. By 2045, it's projected to fall to 2.2.

If you're still working, here's the number that matters more than the depletion date: even if Congress took zero action and the retirement fund's reserves ran out in 2032, ongoing payroll tax revenue is still projected to cover roughly 78% of scheduled benefits — closer to 83% for the combined funds. That's a real reduction worth planning around, but it's a long way from nothing.

As your Family CFO, we don't build retirement income plans that assume Social Security vanishes — and we don't build them assuming it's untouchable either. Under Pillar 1 of the One Process, Investment Strategy, we run Tactic #13, Model Retirement Income Scenarios, stress-tested against a range of Social Security outcomes so your plan holds up regardless of how the politics shake out.

Visualize. Strategize. Realize.

To read our full article, visit https://www.millerwm.com/social-security-2026-trustee-report

Want to see how your retirement options hold up? Let's talk.

Social Security 2026 Trustee Report Every year, the government publishes a checkup on Social Security's finances. It's called the Trustees Report, and this year's version — released for 2026 — is worth a closer look. The good news: the headline depletion date barely moved. The less comfortable news: the program's long-term shortfa...

July Series: Talking Social Security | Pillar 1 — Investment Strategy

The 2026 Social Security Trustees Report is out, and the headline number didn't move — the combined retirement and disability trust fund is still projected to last until 2034. But look one layer deeper, and the 75-year funding gap grew by 16% in a single year, driven almost entirely by slower workforce growth, not politics.

If you're retired or approaching retirement, here's what actually matters: this report is not a reason to rush your claiming decision. History suggests Congress will act to protect benefits for those already retired or nearing retirement long before any reserves are exhausted. Your claiming strategy should be built around your income needs, health, and tax picture — not a headline.

This is exactly the kind of work we do as your Family CFO, under Pillar 1 of the One Process — Investment Strategy. Tactic #14, Optimize Social Security Claiming Strategy. It exists so decisions like this are modeled, not guessed at.

To read our full article, visit https://www.millerwm.com/social-security-2026-trustee-report

If this year's report has you second-guessing your claiming strategy, let's model it out together.

Social Security 2026 Trustee Report Every year, the government publishes a checkup on Social Security's finances. It's called the Trustees Report, and this year's version — released for 2026 — is worth a closer look. The good news: the headline depletion date barely moved. The less comfortable news: the program's long-term shortfa...

June Series: Your Inner Circle: The Call That Saved My Client From a $40,000 Mistake| Pillar 3 — Asset Protection

A few months ago, one of my clients noticed something unusual — a deposit had shown up in her bank account that she hadn't made.
Then came the text messages.

"This deposit was made in error. Please return the funds by clicking the link below."

It felt legitimate. The money was sitting right there. And the instructions seemed simple enough — just send it back.
What actually happened was far more sinister.

Someone had opened a fraudulent loan in her name without her knowledge. The proceeds were deposited into her account. Then the scammers sent those texts hoping she'd click the link and wire the money directly to them — leaving her holding the bag on a loan she never took out.

She called me before she did anything.

That one phone call changed everything.

Because we were able to work directly with the bank, freeze the situation, and unwind the fraudulent loan before she lost a dollar of her own money — and before her credit took a hit she didn't deserve.

This is Tactic #48 in The One Process — Cybersecurity, Identity Theft & Fraud Awareness. But more than any single instance, it's a mindset. Financial fraud has become sophisticated, targeted, and frighteningly convincing. The scammers aren't sending obvious emails anymore. They're creating fake loans. Spoofing bank numbers. Manufacturing urgency.

You need someone in your corner who can slow things down when you feel pressured to act fast.

The best thing my client did wasn't anything complicated.
She just picked up the phone and called someone she trusted.
If something ever feels off — a deposit you didn't expect, a message asking you to move money, an offer that seems too easy — call your advisor first. Before you click anything. Before you wire anything. Before you respond.

June Series: Your Inner Circle: He Already Knew What I Was Going to Say | Pillar 3 — Asset Protection

One of my clients came to me with something he'd been sitting on for months.

He'd invested in a trucking company that was buying commercial vehicles and renting them to drivers. Nearly 100% annual returns. Income hitting his account like clockwork. He knew what I would say — so he didn't tell me.

Until one day he did.

I looked into it. The returns were mathematically disconnected from the underlying business. The income payments felt more like recruitment tools than actual yield. I told him plainly — I think this is a scam, and I think you'll be lucky to get your money out.
Three months later, the payments stopped.

Today it's an active FBI investigation into a Ponzi scheme perpetuated by another financial advisor.

I tell this story because of the part that keeps me up at night — he already knew. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew it was too good to be true. But the money was coming in, it felt real, and the fear of missing out is a powerful thing.

We've all seen the advertisements. The ones promising extraordinary returns on complicated vehicles — distressed debt, alternative income streams, lease-based structures — wrapped in the language of sophistication and exclusivity. They're engineered to sound credible. They're designed to make you feel like you've finally found what everyone else has been missing.

Here's what I know after years of doing this work: if the return is extraordinary, the risk is extraordinary — whether you can see it or not. The question is never just, is this real? It's what happens when it stops?

Your financial advisor may not always be able to tell you yes. In fact, because of the rules that govern our industry, we often can't give a green light to outside investments. But a great advisor absolutely should be able to tell you when something doesn't sit right. When the math doesn't add up.

That's not a limitation of the relationship. That's the value of it.

If you have a financial advisor, you truly trust, bring them everything. Especially the things you think they'll say no to. Especially those.