Shortcuts: Planning for a Needed Break From Work

JOSEPH BUBMAN took six months off his job as a management consultant two years ago to work with a charity in Kenya and Guatemala. It was something he had dreamed of doing and he spent almost a year planning it.

“It exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I was able to have a unique life experience and it afforded me opportunities I wouldn’t have once I returned to my employer. I would absolutely do it again if I could.”

It may seem unwise, in these economically shaky times, to request time off, even without pay. Some people fear that the mere act of asking will make them look less committed than their colleagues. Or send a signal that they are thinking of leaving their current job. Or hurt their chances for promotion or a raise.

While none of that is necessarily so, it’s more important than ever to plan how you will approach your employer and to think in terms of a mini-sabbatical — a month or two to do something you have always dreamed of doing — rather than six months to a year.

First, find out if your company has a sabbatical program and what kind. According to an overview of employee benefits this year by the Society for Human Resource Management, 5 percent of about 500 companies surveyed offered paid sabbatical programs in 2009. That dropped to 4 percent in 2013. But unpaid sabbatical leave grew to 16 percent from 12 percent during that time period.

That reflects a trend that Barbara Pagano, co-founder of YourSabbatical, which helps companies and individuals develop sabbatical programs, has observed.

“Companies are slowing down the activation” of such programs, she said, while “I see more employees trying to create their own sabbaticals.”

If your workplace has a program, you are in luck. If not, start researching.

First of all, said Pat Katepoo, founder of WorkOptions, which is aimed at helping employees negotiate for flexible work time, you would be wise to not even ask for a sabbatical unless you have been at a place four or five years.

“A one- or two-year employee is not in a strong negotiating position,” she said.

And make sure you are considered a valuable employee, as well as have some sense of how supportive your boss might be.

“How does she react if you say you need to pick up your kid or bring your mother to an appointment?” Ms. Katepoo said. That might indicate how receptive she is to the concept of a mini-sabbatical.

Six weeks is a good time period to keep in mind for a mini or short-term sabbatical because it allows a full month to go overseas or immerse yourself in a program, with one week at either end to get ready and decompress.

But don’t just shoot off an email to your supervisor asking her to consider the idea. It takes a lot more work than that.

“A sabbatical takes a good deal of research,” Ms. Pagano said. “I would suggest a year to prepare.”

Mr. Bubman would agree. He started working for Vantage Partners, a management consulting company, in 2007 and in 2011 took a six-month sabbatical doing conflict-management work in Guatemala and Kenya with a nonprofit.

He laid the groundwork for his proposal early, first by letting it be known he had an interest in international work and “that if I didn’t have the opportunity to do it, I wouldn’t be around much longer.”

This might not work for everyone. First of all, Mr. Bubman was in his 20s, without a family or a mortgage, and could afford to be flexible. More important, he said, he worked for a company “with a unique culture where being transparent about long-term plans is valued.”

Nonetheless, he knew just expressing an interest wasn’t enough. He tried to be a model employee, even going so far as to volunteer for less glamorous assignments. Once he proposed the sabbatical in March 2010, he agreed not to leave until the following year.

Mr. Bubman’s sabbatical had some unusual aspects. His company had a relationship with Mercy Corps, the international development charity he worked for during his sabbatical, and it donated money to the nonprofit to help pay his stipend.

DealBook: Banks Fall Short of Planning for the Worst, Fed Finds

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Your Money: Aiming to Bring Financial Planning to the Masses

If Alexa von Tobel has her way, however, financial advice will be as widely available — and affordable — as any other mass-produced consumer product or service. Think gym memberships. It will become the perfect wedding gift for your best friend, or for adult children after they have their first baby.

As the founder of LearnVest, an online financial advisory that she started four years ago, Ms. von Tobel, 29, repeats these themes several times over the course of a recent meeting to underscore what she has set out to do: deliver comprehensive and conflict-free financial advice to the middle class.

“Financial advice shouldn’t be a luxury,” said Ms. von Tobel, a petite blonde with a big personality, in the company’s loftlike offices in New York. “We want to disrupt the industry.”

If her plan works, she would be among the first to crack the code, using both technology and bona fide certified financial planners — the gold standard among advisers — to make this sort of help more accessible to millions of Americans. Most individuals do not have terribly complex financial lives, nor should they need to spend several thousands of dollars to get the advice they need.

But for LearnVest to succeed, Ms. von Tobel will need to sell its product — one that, let’s face it, feels a little like eating your vegetables — to a vast number of customers across the country.

LearnVest, which started in 2009 as a budgeting Web site directed at women, just received another large round of financing from big-time investors, which will allow it to hire more planners and support staff as well as open a training and adviser hub in Phoenix. The company raised $16.5 million, which comes on top of the nearly $25 million raised since its inception.

The plan is to beef up its operation so it can handle the big distribution partnerships that are in the works, including a potential deal with American Express, one of its new investors. The company has broad plans to provide its newly designed product: a seven-step, customized financial plan. Ms. von Tobel, who dropped out of Harvard Business School to start the company, also said it was working with employers and financial planning firms to sell its program within 401(k)'s.

Most financial planners focus on wealthier people, whom they can charge $1,000 to $3,000 for a financial plan, or collect 1 percent of their assets, on average, to manage their money. In contrast, LearnVest charges a $399 upfront fee and $19 a month, or $608 annually. You can pay less for help on a specific goal, like paying off debt or starting a budget.

Ms. von Tobel, who is represented by William Morris Endeavor, the talent agency, has worked hard to raise the company’s profile — as well as her own — in the world of personal finance, though she has not yet reached Suze Orman status. A book by Ms. von Tobel will be released in December.

At the moment, her company does not have much direct competition, aside from the smattering of unbiased advisers that charge a flat or hourly fee. Several relatively affordable online financial firms have cropped up in recent years — including Betterment, Wealthfront, Flat Fee Portfolios and FutureAdvisor — but their focus is much narrower. These companies help assemble and manage low-cost investment portfolios. But they won’t determine how much you can afford to spend on a mortgage, what sort of life insurance you should buy and whether you should be saving more for a child’s college tuition or your own retirement.

Personal Capital, an online wealth management firm, also combines real advisers with technology, but it, too, focuses on money management and requires a minimum investment of $100,000. NestWise, a unit of LPL Financial, opened last September and probably comes closest to competing directly with LearnVest. It has 23 advisers who use technology to connect with its clients, but not all are certified financial planners. Its most expensive service costs about $825 for the first year and $575 annually thereafter, though it will manage your money for about 1 percent of your assets, in addition to the cost of the underlying investments.

So what do you get at LearnVest for $19 a month? Since the company became a registered investment adviser last year, it can now offer investment advice. Ms. von Tobel says she is ripping a page from Weight Watchers’ playbook with the most recent version of its service: a seven-step action plan, which begins with a diagnostic call that typically lasts 45 to 90 minutes. “You can be someone who is extremely sophisticated with millions of dollars or a doctor with $200,000 in debt,” said Ms. von Tobel, who became a financial adviser earlier this year. “But you should still go through this process.”

(So far, most customers are college-educated people between 25 and 55 with incomes of $70,000 or more.)

The advisers save time by leaning heavily on the company’s technology: a planner could see where you overspent on dinner the night before by viewing your online profile.

Novelties: Estate Planning Is Important for Your Online Assets, Too

But you may want to provide for your virtual goods, too. Who gets the photographs and the e-mail stored online, the contents of a Facebook account, or that digital sword won in an online game?

These things can be important to the people you leave behind.

“Digital assets have value, sometimes sentimental, and sometimes commercial, just like a boxful of jewelry,” said John M. Riccione, a lawyer at Aronberg Goldgehn Davis & Garmisa in Chicago. “There can be painful legal and emotional issues for relatives unless you decide how to handle your electronic possessions in your estate planning.”

Many services and programs have sprung up to help people prepare for what happens after their last login.

Google has a program called Inactive Account Manager, introduced in April, that lets those who use Google services decide exactly how they want to deal with the data they’ve stored online with the company — from Gmail and Picasa photo albums to publicly shared data like YouTube videos and blogs.

The process is straightforward. First go to google.com/settings/account. Then look for “account management” and then “control what happens to your account when you stop using Google.” Click on “Learn more and go to setup.” Then let Google know the people you want to be notified when the company deactivates the account; you’re allowed up to 10 names. You choose when you want Google to end your account — for example, after three, six or nine months of electronic silence (or even 12 months, if you’ve decided to take a yearlong trip down the Amazon).

Google has ways to make sure that your electronic pulse has really gone silent; it checks for traces of your online self, for example, by way of Android check-ins, Gmail activity and Web history. Then, a month before it pulls the plug, Google alerts you by text and e-mail, just in case you’re still there. If silence has indeed fallen, Google notifies your beneficiaries and provides links they can follow to download the photographs, videos, documents or other data left to them, said Nadja Blagojevic, a Google manager.

And if you just want to say goodbye to everything, with no bequests, you can instruct Google to delete all of the information in your account.

Naomi R. Cahn, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, says Google’s new program is a step forward in digital estate planning. “People should carefully consider the fate of their online presences once they are no longer able to manage them,” she said.

Other companies may also be of help in planning your digital legacy. Many services offer online safe deposit boxes, for example, where you can stow away the passwords to e-mail accounts and other data. Accounts like this at SecureSafe, are free for up to 50 passwords, 10 megabytes of storage and one beneficiary, said Andreas Jacob, a co-founder. Accounts can be accessed from a browser, or from free iPhone, iPad and Android apps. The company also offers premium services for those who need a larger storage space, more passwords or more beneficiaries.

There is always your sock drawer or another physical repository to store a list of your user ID’s, should you be deterred from online lockboxes by fear of cyberattacks or the risk that computer servers that may not be there in a few decades, said Alexandra Gerson, a lawyer at Helsell Fetterman in Seattle.

“Make a private list of all your user names and passwords for all the accounts in which you have a digital presence, and make sure you update the list if you change login information” Ms. Gerson said. “Don’t put user names and passwords in your will, though, as it becomes a public record when you die.”

Make sure that your executor or personal representative understands the importance of preserving these digital assets, and knows how to find them, said Laura Hoexter, a lawyer at Helsell who also works on inheritance issues. “Preferably the person should be tech-savvy,” she said, and know about your online game accounts, your PayPal account, your online presence on photo storage sites, social media accounts and blogs, and even your online shopping accounts where your credit card information is stored so that the information can be deleted.

AFTER you die, an executor or agent can contact Facebook and other social media sites, establish his or her authority to administer the estate, and request the contents of the account.

“Most accounts won’t give you the user name and password, but they will release the contents of the account such as photographs and posts” to an executor, Ms. Hoexter said.

Transfer at death can depend on the company’s terms of service, copyright law and whether the file is encrypted in ways that limit the ability to freely copy and transfer it. Rights to digital contents bought on Google Play, for example, end upon the person’s death. “There is currently no way of assigning them to others after the user’s death,” Ms. Blagojevic said.

Encryption is a common constraint, but there are exceptions. Apple’s iTunes store, for example, has long removed its anti-copying restrictions on the songs sold there, and Ms. Gerson advises people to take advantage of this in their digital planning. “Get your music backed up on your computer,” she said.

Up to five computers can be authorized to play purchases made with one iTunes account, and a company support representative advises that users make sure that their heirs have access. At Kindle, too, family members with user ID information for the account can access the digital content.

Professor Cahn in Washington says the time to prepare for the digital hereafter is now, particularly if serious illness is a factor. “If someone is terminally ill,” she said, “in addition to getting emotional and financial issues in order, you need to get your Internet house in order.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

When Career Planning, Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Attorneys reach out to legal recruiters for a variety of reasons. Some of the most common are: they don't like the people they work with, they want more money, a better quality of life or to work for only one client.

While all of these are valid reasons for seeking a change in the short term, the career planning advice that we most often give to young attorneys is straightforward: Set a career goal that fits your personality, needs and desires, and base your career choices on how much each one helps you to get closer to the goal. Or, put more simply, keep your eyes on the prize.

Think it through ... very carefully.

Being unhappy today should not be the only catalyst that moves you to your next job. I encourage every attorney to take the time to step back and think long-term about their careers. Setting a goal now can help you better evaluate every move you make, ensuring that each step along the journey is aligned with a few key indicators that have been defined before embarking on the path to future success.

I always start by asking my candidates two questions: who they are and what they want to be when they grow up. These questions are genuine and aimed at getting to the heart of a candidate's goals. The answer to these basic questions will help shape your career path and determine the choices you need to make along the way.

Of course, as you will see below, it isn't just about these two questions. The process I am recommending will help you determine, at the ultra-micro level, the type of job that will make you the happiest, and what you need to do to get there.

WHO ARE YOU?

As we often hear, each one of us is a "work in progress." Every person can benefit from regular self-assessment and self-evaluation, as well as constructive feedback from those we know and trust. While this helps us to always have an eye on personal and professional growth, it also reminds us that we are each wired a certain way that affects how we respond to different situations and circumstances. This "wiring" is important for us to understand so we know ourselves better, and thus can take a more deliberate approach to choosing the career that will be the best fit. There are various tools that can facilitate a journey of self-discovery, including books, personality tests, psychological profiles, work evaluations and other resources.

Knowing yourself better can even help you choose a practice area. For example, if you know that you don't mind dealing with moral conundrums, you might want to consider environmental, white-collar crime, products liability or insurance coverage, as opposed to real estate, IP or tax. If you prefer to analyze gray areas in the law, you may lean toward family law, litigation or trusts and estates, as opposed to those practice areas that analyze more concrete issues, such as regulatory and corporate securities.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE?

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Lawyers Say Estate Planning Is Hot Following Gas Boom

Credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Trusts and estates lawyers in Central and Western Pennsylvania said they've recently seen an uptick in inquiries from landowners with oil and gas interests who are interested in beginning the process of estate planning.

But, those lawyers added, there are several schools of thought regarding when -- and even if -- it's advisable for a landowner to consider gifting those interests.

R. Douglas DeNardo, a shareholder at Rothman Gordon in Pittsburgh and chairman of the firm's estates, trusts and taxation department, told the Delaware Law Weekly that inquiries have been "way up" recently, mostly from people who own land in the Utica Shale regions of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, where there are high concentrations of "wet" gas.

Wet gas is a combination of methane and other components such as propane, benzenes and ethane that, in the current market, is much more valuable than "dry" gas, which is almost pure methane.

Dale A. Tice, head of the gas planning group at Marshall, Parker & Associates in Williamsport, Pa., said he began receiving an influx of calls from landowners with oil and gas interests in 2010, when the estate tax was originally scheduled to revert back to a $1 million exemption at the beginning of 2011.

While a last-minute agreement between President Barack Obama and Congress stopped that from happening, Tice said his practice has continued to be busy.

"There has certainly been an increase in the amount of work I'm doing for landowners with the goal of protecting their oil and gas rights and royalty income for future generations," Tice said.

But while DeNardo called the oil and gas boom "the most exciting thing that's come along in estate planning in years," he noted that not everyone is a good candidate, explaining that there are several considerations to be made before moving forward with estate planning.

First of all, DeNardo said, not all landowners with potentially valuable oil and gas interests are necessarily wealthy.

For them, he said, it's especially important to consider whether it would be prudent to give those interests away -- and to spend money doing so -- prematurely.

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Wealth Matters: Planning for Health Care Costs in Retirement

Consider this example from an annual report from Fidelity Investments: For a 65-year-old couple retiring this year, the cost of health care in retirement will be $240,000, 6 percent more than that same couple retiring in 2011 would pay. The report assumes that the man will live 17 years and the woman 20.

“Most people don’t realize Medicare covers much less than traditional employer plans,” Sunit Patel, senior vice president in Fidelity’s benefits consulting group. “The $240,000 number captures the Part B premium for physician services, Part D for prescription drugs. Then there are deductibles and coinsurance, and benefits that are not covered like vision exams, hearing aids.”

Another study, this one from Nationwide Financial, found that people who were near retirement routinely and wildly overestimated the percentage of health care costs covered by Medicare. It covers only 51 percent of health care services, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Robert L. Reynolds, president and chief executive of Putnam Investments, which has its own study, bluntly summed up the situation at a recent news briefing. “It makes no sense at all to talk about retirement savings or lifetime replacement income without talking about health care expenses,” he said.

A calculator developed by Putnam, called the Lifetime Income Analysis Tool, shows people not only how much they have saved but also, starting next year, how much they need to save depending on their health (cigarette smokers with diabetes need to save the least because their life expectancy is the shortest) and where they plan to retire (Louisiana is the cheapest, Alaska the most expensive) so they can live at their same income in retirement.

Moving to cheaper and possibly warmer climates is something many retirees naturally do. But while someone may be willing to move to Florida to reduce state taxes and avoid the ice and snow of the north, most people have so little awareness about the costs of health care in retirement that those costs are probably not a driving factor.

Carol and Richard Bechtel had worked in the San Jose, Calif., area, she for Stanford University and he at various technology companies. When it came time to retire in 2006, they put a lot of thought into where they wanted to live. They picked a community in Fairfield Glade, Tenn.

Cost of living was a factor. They were able to sell their home of 37 years in San Jose, pay cash for a house on a golf course, and still have money left over to put in their retirement account. Quality of life also mattered. By their account, the Bechtels are thoroughly enjoying their new community and friends. Mr. Bechtel found a hangar close to their home for his airplane, and they are closer to their son and three granddaughters in Wisconsin.

But when it came to knowing their health care expenses in retirement, they were pretty typical: they had to check on what the exact costs were. Their premiums, between Medicare, a supplementary policy through Stanford and a dental plan, will cost them $9,058.80 this year. That is a whopping 14 percent increase from the same policies in 2011. And that number does not include any out-of-pocket medical expenses, like co-payments or the costs of over-the-counter medications.

“Health premiums are probably one of our biggest expenses,” Mrs. Bechtel said.

Yet Mrs. Bechtel was not complaining. She said her Stanford-sponsored plan was excellent and it had given them freedom to choose the doctors they wanted, particularly for her husband, who had some health problems recently.

“Our premiums are small compared to what our bills would be,” she said. “It really makes us realize how great my Stanford benefit is. It covers everything. I worry a little bit how Medicare may change.”

While most retirees pay for insurance that supplements what Medicare pays, how comprehensive and open each plan is varies. But the fear that they will not be able to choose the doctors or care they want drives some wealthier people to set up separate accounts for health costs.

Faith Xenos, chief investment officer for Singer Xenos Wealth Management near Miami, said she counseled clients to set aside 5 percent of their annual budget for health-related costs and deductibles. (If they don’t spend it, she tells clients to use the money to do something healthy.)

“Let’s all acknowledge insurance doesn’t cover everything,” she said. “We have this idea from years back that once you get your Medicare or your retirement benefits package that everything is covered.” That is not the case.

She added: “Everyone wants the best drugs, and those might not be the ones your policy covers. They might cover a drug but that might not be the one you want.”

For people wanting to retire before Medicare starts at 65, she advises buying a high-deductible plan and using a health savings account to cover some of the out-of-pocket expenses.

Then there’s the issue of long-term care insurance. Various studies estimate that the percentage of people who reach 65 and will need long-term care is 30 to 50 percent.