The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recently published an informative article entitled .  Although the article is geared toward CPAs for counseling their clients, I recommend it as reading for all, as I see these problems everyday.  The four mistakes featured are:

1. Outdated or Unsigned Estate Planning Documents (i.e., if they have a plan at all, most people’s plans are either outdated or inadequate).
2.   Lack of Coordination between the Estate Planning Documents, Titling of Assets and Apportionment of Estate Taxes.
3.   Lack of Understanding That a Transfer of $1 Is a Gift (i.e., that transfers (typically of real property) for less than adequate consideration constitute a gift).
4.   Life Is a Movie, Not a Snapshot (i.e., that estate planning should be viewed as a process rather than a one-time transaction).

The conclusion provides a good summary of the article:  “For most of us, the crystal ball of planning does not go more than five years. Families change, health changes, tax law changes and the law changes. The goa

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says anti-Wall Street protesters are hurting their cause after they interrupted his remarks at a groundbreaking for a new solar project.

Hickenlooper allowed the chants from about a dozen protesters in Colorado Springs to go on for several minutes on Tuesday. He then told the protesters that there are a lot of people who agree that Wall Street companies got a slap on the wrist, but he says the protesters are not helping their cause.

Protester Hossein Forouzandeh told the Colorado Springs Gazette ( ) the protesters are not opposing the solar project, but they are upset that the governor has been ignoring requests to meet with them

Blogs are a great way to gain exposure for your brand, products and services. Blogs allows you to give your targeted audience information that they are interested in. Having a blog though is not about just putting up information and saying “I have a blog.” Your blog has to have value to your readership. What happens to something that has no value? You generally discard it. This can happen to your blog if it has no value to your readership. You readers will eventually discard the blog and not visit anymore. The overall goal is to increase readership; not lose it.

The Value of Social Networks

A great way to enhance the value of your blog is to harness the power of social networks. Social networks have become a catalyst to help businesses gain valuable exposure to a wide demographic. It has become a cost effective way to promote products and services to an audience that you wouldn’t normally have access to.

Social networks are platforms that are used to connect to people and to stay up-to-date on what is going on within these social structures. Peopl

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Do you know what Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley all have in common other than being U.S. Presidents?

They all worked as credit reporters at The Mercantile Agency, a predecessor to Dun and Bradstreet.

The history behind the business credit reporting giant, Dun and Bradstreet, is fascinating stemming all the way back to an American businessman and entrepreneur known as Lewis Tappan.

Tappan founded The Mercantile Agency in 1841 with a mission to provide businesses with a reliable source of credit information to help them in their decision-making process.

Five years later he turned over control to Benjamin Douglass who pioneered the development of a national network of highly trained reporters and interpreters of credit information known as “credit reporters”.

Robert Graham Dun

In 1854, Douglass brought in his brother-in-law, Robert Graham Dun, who later renamed the company R.G. Dun & Company. Dun

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