Estate Planning: Start With "Why"
Estate planning makes good financial sense, but it's hard to get started if you don't know what you're doing (or why you're doing it). In my practice, I've found inspiration in Simon Sinek's?"Start with Why"?approach. Framing estate planning discussions with "why" is an effective tactic to simplify the process. Before we get to that, let's do a quick overview of estate planning.
Financial Planning vs. Estate Planning
Comprehensive financial planning covers various topics, including investment management, tax planning strategies, risk management and insurance, retirement income planning, financial planning and estate planning. Financial planning is about achieving financial goals like paying for college, starting a business and retirement. While estate planning is more tailored, it ties in with the general focus of financial planning. In other words, the two go hand-in-hand, but you don't want to confuse them.
Think of estate planning as outlining the who, what, when, and how of your asset distribution after you're gone. If you meet with a financial advisor about?estate planning, you might address the following key elements:
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When to Start Estate Planning
It's not uncommon to regard estate planning as some distant obligation that you'll only have to start thinking about "later in life." Unfortunately, formal estate planning typically begins much earlier than that, after being initiated by some triggering event. This trigger could be a health scare or the death of someone you care about, which then causes you to reevaluate your financial situation. Other examples include a sudden...