You don’t want to fuck up a will, I wouldn’t do it yourself. You may not have assets now, but presumably you will someday. You also want to be ironclad on shit like what happens to the kids if you die (who gets them, etc.). $1500 sounds a bit on the high end for a basic will, do you live in an expensive area? Maybe shop around a bit more?
Edit: As an example, I am a lawyer, and I still paid a lawyer to do my will.
Estate planning is one area where bogleheads is actually incredibly useful. There are several top notch trust and estates attorneys posting there.
A lot of what’s important is state dependent. In California probate is a nightmare and cartoonishly expensive so you almost always want a trust (and to get your house into a trust as well). In some states probate is no big deal. Also, some states (MA comes to mind) have state estate taxes that kick in at low thresholds so you need to plan around that.
For people with real money a trust and corporate trustee is almost always the answer. It’s impossible for a knowledgeable investor not to be annoyed by the fees but there are just too many problems with individual trustees and too many horror stories / unforeseen runouts.
Finally, shit gets real quickly when one spouse dies and remarries, then dies before spouse number two, when both spouses brought kids to the marriage. Really nasty stuff.
We need to redo ours. Mine was like $1200 back about 13-14 years ago. But I was divorced and had to put stuff in there about how to provide $ to the ex without her just getting the whole insurance we had for the kids (came up with a formula that she got x up front and then y per month, so that it would diminish with time).
Now life is different. We live in a different state. All are grown. 2 have their own kids. There’s a few buck bucks in the bank.
A little afraid of cost. We live on the “main line” outside Philly where everything seems to cost more.
I feel like all the lawyer websites are hyping living trusts/etc which I understand there benefits for but right now feel like I just need to specify who my kids guardians would be/etc. Like I just want something bare bones now and once kids are no longer kids we could do something fancier
Well, I’ll say! Sounds like a rough couple years.
ugh I need a will as after I googled it I realized it would all go to people I don’t like and barely talk to. No idea what to give it to though. ASPCA? Satanic Temple? 
SPE friends?
My Dad left us each a nice gift. My two (unmarried) oldest brothers led non traditional lives and have money to invest for the first time. They’ve asked my advice. I’ve told them to invest in interest and/or dividend earning assets. Told them to save their principal— for their little brother to inherit. 
I had some option in my annual work benefits to select a MetLife legal plan. I elected for that last year and used it to hire a lawyer for Will, Living Will, etc. It probably cost around $300 for the year and paid for the lawyer.
So I got an unpleasant surprise a few days ago. The IRS, rather than checking in on billionaires, sent me a letter saying that I’d sold more than a year’s salary’s worth of stock and stockish things in 2021 without reporting them. I had indeed sold more than a year’s salary’s worth of stockish things (specifically RSUs, shares from an employee stock purchase program, and I think a small number of options, too), and I thought I had reported them on my taxes and had paid taxes on them. At the very least, my tax bill sure as hell looked like I paid enough to compensate, and there was money from RSUs, ESPP, and options listed on my W2 and entered into Turbo Tax. But what is especially confusing is that literally nothing adds up. This includes the total of what the IRS says I sold: if you add up the individual line items from their accounting of what I had sold, it doesn’t equal what they say the total is (they have the hundreds and tens digits swapped, so it’s not a huge error, but an error nonetheless). But I can also look up the transaction history on the brokerage website my company uses to administer the RSU, ESPP, and options rewards, and none of the transactions line up with what the IRS says I’d sold. The total is in the ballpark of the total amount I sold, but it’s not exactly right, and again, I reported that total and paid taxes on it. I had half a mind that the letter was some sort of bullshit scam, but it has enough information about me and what I sold and how I sold it correct that it seems legit. Bottom line, the letter says I have about 3 weeks to either respond with a full accounting of what I think I owe or to fess up and pay them.
So, do I need a CPA? A tax attorney? Something else? I’m sure those folks all have plenty of time for me when we’re a month and a half from tax day, so I want to at least know who I’m supposed to deal with before trying to get their attention away from someone much richer. Any advice?
So like, you sold $X in stock (where X is a large scary number) that you think you paid taxes on, and the IRS sent you a letter like “hey it looks like you sold [roughly] $X in stock and didn’t pay any taxes on it” and they’re looking for the taxes?
I had something similar-ish recently (maybe last year) on a much smaller scale - I have my RSUs on an autosale program, but one year the autosale program didn’t kick in until February or March, and TurboTax imported my autosale tax forms from my broker but for some dumb reason the pre-autosale sales were on a different brokerage account that TT missed, so the IRS was like “hey looks like you sold $15k of stock and we’d like the taxes on that kthx” via a letter that sounds broadly similar to what you describe. I looked up the forms and was like, oh shit, they’re right, so I just paid what they were asking for.
So, I would guess that this is probably legit, except this time they messed up?
Yes.
Hmmmm. My company did recently change brokerages, but I thought it was in 2022, not 2021, and the sale dates the IRS said were in 2021, and the IRS said the sales were in the old brokerage, and there were stock sales in the old brokerage in 2021 around the times the IRS said. Still, I guess I should check the transaction history of the new brokerage to see if that clears anything up. I guess there is a nonzero chance my dumb ass didn’t report the sales from the new place, even though the IRS says they were from the old.
Based on your description and the amounts involved (like, particularly the fact that it’s not just a piece of the sales like my situation but basically everything) I’m still inclined to think they messed up, but yeah you might as well do a full accounting.
I would be inclined not to hire an accountant or lawyer because 1) fuck that, 2) I would think if you both lay out all your records you can figure out what you really owe, criminal penalties seem unlikely, and civil penalties are probably less than the cost of professional help, and 3) I like to think IRS auditors would prefer working with professionals who speak the same language and would get supremely annoyed if they need to ELI5 everything to you and go through records you haven’t prepared to GAAP standards or whatever and the more we can discourage the IRS from going after turbo tax filers the better.
This may be horrible advice but I encourage you to take it and report back for science.
I’d do one on your own reply. Layout out everything you earned or sold with documentation. Total it up. Compare it to what your 1040 says vs what they say.
Declare victory. If they come back, then hire a professional.
My parents gifted the grandkids stock as minors with me as the conservator (???) with my SS also attached.
When we sold we claimed on the now adult kids return. Every damn time the IRS sent me a notice that I hadn’t claimed the proceeds. Everytime I sent them my own reply letter. I think it happened about a half dozen times. I was perfect on my success rate.
Send it writing. Send it certified mail.
Good luck.
What does the top of the letter say? Is it one of those new automated things? Starts with like AUR or something in the code/number of the incident?
If so, I had one, they were wrong, I did not use an accountant and I got it cleared up. After trading letters back and forth twice, I called them and got it cleared up in 5-10 minutes on the phone. Better customer service than any American corporation.
They seem to be systematically going after upper middle class earners with these automated things, especially income that’s not on a W2. So far I haven’t heard of anyone getting caught actually underpaying, but I have heard of a few people getting the letters and having to waste time sorting it out and proving that they correctly paid. I wonder how many people get scared and just pay? Has to be a pretty significant amount that the IRS is just stealing from the middle class since our politicians would rather reach in the upper middle class/middle class’s pocket than actually make billionaires and decamillionaires pay taxes.
Just curious, does this sort of letter tell you specifically how much they think you need to pay? Or it just say it’s wrong and send us the right amount?
Funny you mention this. I’ve been calling lawbros and nobody getting back to me but turns out I may have this benefit but didn’t even realize it. Going to ask HR
The ones I got did. I think a lot of people just pay.
Alright, I’m making some sense of this now. So, all the sales of ESPP stock, RSUs, and stock options was reported on my W-2. There were 3 line items for these in Box 14 “other,” and they were added to my base salary plus annual bonus in box 1 for wages. That much had seemed fine to me, as all these were short term capital gains that were to be taxed at ordinary income rates (I just sold the awards a few days after vesting or the award date, so as to avoid tying my financial fate to my company any more than normal). But, there was a big number in that box, and my tax bill at the end seemed consistent with paying taxes on that full number, not on some much smaller number that was just my salary and bonus without paying taxes on all the stonk stuff.
Because I had reported this income on my W-2, I didn’t enter a separate 1099-B into Turbo Tax for the stonk stuff. But, that form got reported to the IRS, and they say I didn’t pay any taxes on it. If I do enter in the information from the 1099-B, then my “income” skyrockets because I"m now reporting the same stonk sales twice, and my tax bill ends up being the majority of the money I actually took home due to paying taxes twice on what was the biggest part of my income.
So, I’m not sure how to fix this, both right now, and should this happen in the future. Like, how do I tell Turbo Tax that these two identical numbers are the same income, not two separate chunks of money? And I’m not really sure what to give to the IRS to explain this. I have the transaction history from the brokerage clearly showing that I only sold $X in stonks, but it doesn’t line up suuuuper exactly with the numbers reported on my W-2.
This part doesn’t make sense to me, shouldn’t your 1099-B account for the cost basis of the stock when your company gave it to you?
Like if the process is
that should look like $10k on your W-2 and net proceeds of +$500 on your 1099-B, I think. (not an expert but this is how my stock stuff has looked in TurboTax)