Impress the Guests With These Holiday Hosting Tips
The holidays are rapidly approaching, and soon,
pantry, refrigerator, and cupboards with your guests’ favorite foods and drinks. If you don’t know what they are, ask ahead of their visit! Your guests will appreciate your conscientious gesture and have a much more enjoyable time if they can eat their favorites while visiting. PREPARE A GUEST ROOM. If your guests are staying with you, you need to prepare somewhere for them to sleep. Make sure you make up the bed, have plenty of pillows and blankets on hand, and provide adequate closet space for their clothes. Even if they aren’t staying in a traditional bedroom, their sleeping area should still be ready when they arrive. Clear off a table for them to use as a nightstand and put sheets on the couch or mattress where they’ll sleep. USE REAL DISHES. When we have company over for a meal, especially a large gathering, it’s usually easier to use plastic or paper options — saves on cleanup, too! The holidays are not necessarily the time for this shortcut. Break out the fine china if you have it, or use regular dishes for your guests. It’s okay for the kids to have paper plates, but if you want to make a good impression on visiting adults, nicer dishes will dress up the table setting and meal.
we’ll share laughs while enjoying the festivities with our
loved ones. Before the celebrations begin, you must prepare your home for visitors, especially if they stay overnight. It can be stressful whether it’s your in-laws, best friends, or distant cousins coming to stay
with you. You want to leave a good impression, but how do you ensure
everyone’s needs are met, including yours? Here are three tips for setting yourself up
for a successful holiday, regardless of who stays with you. STOCK UP ON YOUR GUESTS’ FAVORITES. Have you ever stayed with someone who didn’t have extra food for their guests? Don’t put your guests in this situation. Load up your
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Legal Implications for Snowbirds
The snowbirds are quickly arriving in Florida, looking forward to another warm winter season down south. Some will be making the journey for the first time and discovering why it’s such a popular lifestyle. While making their arrangements, an estate plan is usually nowhere near these travelers’ top concerns. But living across multiple state lines can have significant implications for your estate. Some believe moving to a new state will invalidate their old estate plans. That’s false — your will, trusts, and power of attorney remain legally binding documents. But while many provisions of your estate plan won’t be affected, others may be. No state will enforce a contract that violates its own laws. So, failing to update your estate plan can have unintended consequences, and your assets may not be dispersed as intended. A carefully planned trust created in New York may have entirely different results in Florida. For example, a person may intend for their home to go to their spouse upon death. But a failure to incorporate Florida law into the plan can cause it to end up in multiple different sets of hands instead. The fallout can financially devastate the people they intended to protect and strain family relationships beyond repair.
Wording matters more than intention in legal documents, so using the correct language for your
jurisdiction is essential. In advance directive documents, the words “proxy,” “surrogate,” and “agent” may all mean different things in different states. A failure to clarify can result in your detailed plans being discarded — or at least delayed from taking effect. Also, essential tax and probate considerations come with living in two different states. You can only have residency in one state, but which one will be more advantageous to you will depend on your circumstances. Furthermore, your estate may be subject to probate in more than one state, but careful planning can reduce these problems. Some new clients don’t believe they need significant updates. Often, their original estate planner thinks they’re familiar with Florida law and advises them that their estate plan is Florida-compliant. But being licensed in Florida is entirely different from practicing here every day. A full-time Florida estate planning attorney should review every detail to get your plan right. Otherwise, all your hard work could go as south as the Keys.
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