“Wealfie” or “Wealthie”?

Look! Me in the Ferrari I got for Christmas!

Look! Me with Sissie in her Yale dorm!

Look! Me in our private jet!

Conspicuous consumption is, well, conspicuous in much of the self portraiture known as the selfie. What should we call these social-climbing graphics? Wealthies or wealfies?

Earliest known example of the genre: Look! Me with Bernie Madoff! (Just kidding, I hope.)

Dave Barry: The IRS Finally Reforms!

From Dave Barry's Review of the Year in The Washington Post:

In Washington scandal news, the Internal Revenue Service, responding to a subpoena, tells congressional investigators that it cannot produce 28 months of Lois Lerner’s e-mails because the hard drive they were stored on failed, and the hard drive was thrown away, and the backup tapes were erased, and no printed copies were saved — contrary to the IRS’s own record-keeping policy, which was eaten by the IRS’s dog. “It was just one crazy thing after another,” states the IRS, “and it got us to thinking: All these years we’ve been subjecting taxpayers to everything short of rectal probes if they can’t produce EVERY SINGLE DOCUMENT WE WANT, and here we lose YEARS’ worth of official records! So from now on, if taxpayers tell us they lost something, or just plain forgot to make a tax payment, we’ll be like, ‘Hey, whatever! Stuff happens!’ Because who are we to judge?”

Quick Quiz, Christmas Edition

Who is fiction's best known executor?

Wealth Inequality Illustrated

Don't remember what periodical's web site this screen grab came from. Wouldn't be polite to identify the source if I did. The contrast is striking: wealth survey rubs shoulders with homeless advocate.

As Beatrice Kaufman* said, “I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich. Rich is better!”

*Although the saying is associated with Sophie Tucker, the first recorded usage was by the wife of playwright George S. Kaufman.

Art in Lieu of Taxes: a Slide Show

This masterpiece by the Venetian Francesco Guardi,
 accepted in lieu of inheritance tax, now hangs in the Ashmolean.

From the estate of artist Lucien Freud,

this work by Frank Auerbach was worth 

£16.2 million in payment of tax.

Winston Churchill's paintings aren't the only ones to be used as a money substitute when paying UK death tax.

As this Telegraph slide show illustrates, many masterworks – and some not so masterly – have helped Brits and their estates meet outsize tax bills.

Could the UK "in lieu of" system work for the IRS? Would it be more workable of contemporary works of volatile or uncertain value were excluded?

Investable Assets Are National, People are Regional

Oldtimers remember when television was expected to homogenize the nation. (The oldtimers' parents had thought radio would do the trick.) Regional accents, customs and preferences were supposed to disappear, blending into a coast-to-coast "Americanism."

In reality, of course, regional differences are alive and well. Elizabeth Currid-Halkett of USC shows the significant variations in conspicuous consumption in this NY Times op ed.

For marketers of wealth management, the striking aspirational differences in  cities across the country deserve attention.

For instance, a New Yorker making a sales call in Minneapolis should not expect
his prospective client to be impressed with his Rolex. And a Dallas wealth manager wooing a Bostonian should not suggest that sending the kids to private school is a waste of money.

James Brown's Disrespected Will

James Brown performing in Hamburg, Germany, February 1973.

This idea that you can just completely disregard the testator’s wishes is fine if we are going to live in a country where people don’t have a right to say what happens with their assets when they die.

– Virginia Meeks Shuman, Charleston School of Law

When the children and grandchildren don't like the terms of a will, things can get messy. The James Brown mess, The New York Times reports, is super sized. South Carolina seized his estate and wrote Brown a new will. The South Carolina Supreme Court overruled. Now what?

Prince William's Ancestor (an American) Detested British Nobility

William and Kate, that charming young couple, created quite a stir with their visit to this country. Americans love British royalty.

Well, not all Americans. When William and Kate married, we told the story of Frank Work, who would have hated having a prospective king of England as a great-great-great grandson. See The Royal Wedding's American Connection.

How to Succeed at Investing Without Really Trying

How many articles offering basic advice to investors in stocks have been written over the last few decades? Thousands, for sure. Millions, maybe? Certainly Merrill Anderson's editors have contributed their share in our newsletters.

So how do you create yet another article on the subject and make it fresh and readable? Not easy. Morgan Housel does a notably good job in his Wall Street Journal($) column, 16 Rules for Investors to Live by.

I like Rule 1:

1. All past market crashes are viewed as opportunities, but all future market crashes are viewed as risks. 

If you can recognize the silliness in this, you are on your way to becoming a better long-term investor.

If you don't have access to the WSJ online, browse Housel's columns for The Motley Fool here. He's won the Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers twice.

Could the content on your web site and in your handouts benefit from sounding less pretentious, more like Housel?

Are Perpetual Trusts Unconstitutional?

Scene: divorce court.

Husband's lawyer: In the interests of a swift settlement, my client wants to be more than fair. He's willing to give his wife half his net worth of one billion.

Wife's lawyer: Not so fast. What about his other billion, the one he put into that out-of-state perpetual trust?

Judge: Interesting point. Since our state doesn't recognize forever trusts, I'm including the value of the trust in his net worth. That brings his total wealth to two billion. How does "One billion for her, one for him" sound to you?

•

Paul Sullivan devotes this week's Wealth Matters column to perpetual trusts. According to Robert H. Sitkoff, a professor at Harvard Law School, some may prove vulnerable to angry spouses or greedy descendants.

An amateur executor.

Maurice Sendak named as the executor of his estate a woman who had worked with him and taken care of his home for several decades.  He created a foundation which owns his royalties, and named the same woman, Lynn Caponera, as its president.  Ms. Caponera began working for Mr. Sendak at age 19, has no other work experience, and did not go to college.  However, she does have an intimate knowledge of his property, which includes rare books, and his life's work.

A controversy has broken out with the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, which had expected to be the permanent home of Sendak's papers.  Ms. Caponera instead plans to add a museum to Sendak's home, and open the grounds to the public.  Lawsuits are in progress.

Shades of Albert Barnes, who tried in vain to keep his eclectic art collection in his home and out of the museums of Philadelphia.  See "The Art of the Steal"  for the story of the 60-year effort to break the terms of his will, ultimately successful.

The comments to the NYTimes article are generally more sympathetic to Caponera than the article is.  The commentors have a charmingly naive belief that the terms of the will should be controlling, and they identify with Caponera's decades of loyalty.  Fortunately, Caponera has a committee to help back up her decisions.  But shouldn't Sendak also have named a corporate executor?

$116,273 Christmas Present

Illustration by Xavier Romero-Frias, via Wikimedia Commons

PNC has once again checked out the prices of gifts mentioned in "The Twelve Days of Christmas." This year, if you purchased each gift (one partridge, two turtle doves, etc.) each time it was mentioned in the song, you would have spent a total of $116,273.

Despite the Fed's effort to stoke inflation, that's only a 1.4 percent increase over last year.