Welcome to the Big Picture Retirement Show.

Today, we're going to the inbox to answer questions sent in by you, our listeners.

Now, if you'd like to send us a question, just head over to big pictureretirement.com and click the Ask a Question tab in the top menu.

Oh, and just a quick reminder.

On this podcast, we provide

general information and not specific tax, legal, or financial advice. But if you're ever ready

to move from the broad education we provide here to personalized advice that's specific to you,

you can find links to our websites down in the description. Now let's jump in

to today's question. John, today's question comes from Sandy. Sandy said long-time listener here.

I never miss an episode. We just received a letter from our insurance carrier stating they'd like to

increase the rate of our umbrella policy by over 74%. It got me thinking, why did I choose a $2 million

umbrella policy? Are we overinsured? I thought because John is a lawyer, he might know a few concrete

examples illustrating how much people actually need. We're

close to retirement age. If the details make a difference, we live in New Jersey. Our house is worth

over a million dollars and not in a revocable trust because our lawyer said that New Jersey

probate is simple and inexpensive. And it's not in an irrevocable trust. Irrevocable trust. The house has gone up four

times in value from what we paid for it over the years, and we don't want to lose the stepped-up

basis to the date of death value. Beyond that, we have two cars, retirement savings, worth

about $2,000, $200,000 in a high-yield savings account. How much do we really need

for an umbrella policy? And then she goes on to say, and guess what, I'm not an engineer.

Excellent. So she had to let us know that she is one of our non-engineer listeners.

So I got a couple of things on this. So first of all, at some point, I would like to bring on to the show a plaintiff's

...