Podcast Episode 17: How to Stop Wealth Erosion from Generation to Generation through Family Legacy Planning

Hello, this is Cory Shepherd, Vice President of Sound Financial Group, and I’m excited to welcome you to Sound Financial Bites where we bring you bite-sized pieces of financial knowledge to help you design and build a good life.

Hello, and welcome to Sound Financial Bites, my name is Paul Adams President and CEO of Sound Financial Group. We’ve got a great guest on the show today that I think is going to help everybody regardless of level of wealth, or way of thinking. It’s going to help you design and build a good life. That’s the mission of these podcasts is to continue to bring you solid thinking that will shift mind sets, or help you directly, financially to help you design and build a good life. During the podcast today we’re going to talk to a gentleman named Alan Pratt of Pratt Legacy Advisers, and I’ll be introducing him more shortly. Before we get into it with Alan let me remind everybody if you’re listening to us today and you’re new to the community, let me encourage you to go to our website, www.sfgwa.com. On our website, you can engage and learn about us, you can see our other podcasts, writings from myself and our other advisers. You can request the first three chapters of my book Sound Financial Advice, and you can get subscription to our newsletter and updates that we send on things like these podcasts. More importantly, our live events that we tend to do throughout the year. Everything we do we try to aim toward helping our clients become better educated, better decision makers, which frankly make them all a better client as they have more knowledge. So that’s why we give this away freely, and we go through all the effort to bring the education to you. So, Alan Pratt is a gentleman that I met some time ago. We met at a business event, a professional event, and ended up having lunch, and during our lunch, Alan did something unique. He had this card that he set down on the table and he said “Paul, you want to know who I work with?” Very interesting, if I could describe Alan to you, Alan looks like he should be on the cover of some sort of men’s catalogue as just this dapper, well put together gentlemen, and he slaps it down on the table and says, “This is who I work with,” and he’s going to share more of that with you today, but for me what it did was the clarity that he has about the way he makes a difference for his clients in the world. What I’m going to have him speak most about today is what he does in a very analytical world. The environment that we live in is full of CPAs, and accountants, and financial folks. It can be incredibly analytical, and yet what he’s done a great job is leading with his heart and connecting with what people most care about when they’re doing planning with him. Alan is a founder of Pratt Legacy Advisers. He’s a chartered adviser in philanthropy through the American College, and a certified estate planner through the Institute of Certified Estate Planners. What he likes to do is not just charitable planning, but the family legacy planning where people get a chance to think beyond themselves. Alan, welcome to the episode today.

Thank you very much, Paul. It’s an honor to be here with you today.

To just kind of start our conversation, you talk a lot about leading with the heart in this analytical world. People are coming from all different backgrounds, some people are in the executive space, some people are business owners. Before we get into the charitable planning and the heart mindset there, what are the things that you try to do personally that as you engage people in a very analytical marketplace to lead with your heart, and to give a slight bit more context what are the things that if people, at all, feel that they’ve gotten very much above the neck? They’re in their head, inside their work every day, what are the things that you do practically every day, or you’ve seen other people do to lead with the heart and connect deeper in relationship with others in your everyday work and in their everyday work?

I would say there’s probably a couple of things that immediately come to my mind, and as we think about, and maybe frame up an initial conversation or initial meeting, where someone might be referred to me, or meeting in a coffee shop, or meeting at somebody’s office. In the business context, in the business world we often lead to what do you do? I never lead with that. I always lead with, “Paul, nice to meet you. Tell me about your story Paul.” Even though Paul might be a very busy, successful executive, it allows Paul to rethink the question, and go anywhere Paul wants to take it. So, as I say “tell me your story” I really do mean that. I mean “tell me about your life.” “Go all the way back Paul, you’re 39 years old?” “Go back to your childhood, and bring me forward and take 20 minutes, or 30 minutes.” They do, and eventually we will segway into the business context, and maybe some financial and taxal legal matters. Often times in the first meeting it never gets there because we talk about items, in most cases, are much more important. So, that’s one. Instead of saying, “Tell me about what you do,” tell me about your business, tell me your story.”

Oh, I love that, and I heard it once said, and I wish I could remember who shared it with me, where they said something in the effect of they asked each person first, “Tell me something about you, but I want you to start the sentence with I was born.” Very similar in the way it causes people to have to think about. I think most of life, and the gift — I remember when you did it to me a couple three years ago. What it did for me was we don’t get asked that. I think often times people in life are even wishing they could tell their story, or if they’re a type A personality they may run around trying to tell their story. To be asked, and have somebody authentically listen. What a great gift, and a great opportunity to go into a relationship with somebody.

Well, my response is, Paul, anybody can do it, and the reason it’s so refreshing, or it seems refreshing, is very few people do. They go right to the obvious, or the easy, which is “tell me about your financial portfolio, tell me about your tax situation, tell me about your business challenge.” Versus “tell me about you.” Okay, and then we’ll get to those other things eventually.

Yeah, and now in hearing some of the interviews you’ve done, and speaking engagements you’ve done both nationally and locally here. One of the things I’ve loved that you’ve talked about is when other advisers, whether that’s a CPA, financial person, or attorney say “Alan, my clients aren’t charitable.” Speak to that in how you look at people’s charitable inclination versus how the rest of much of our analytical industry looks at people’s charitable inclination.

First of all, that response from that response from that other adviser, that CPA, or that attorney, or whoever that might be, could be an accurate statement keeping in mind there’s a lot of selfish wealth out there in our society where people are focused on me, me, me. “Alan, would you hurry up, I need to make another million dollars by 11:30 today.” Okay, so when I’m talking with other advisers that have a plethora of different types of clients. I will generally want to chat with them with regard to how much do they know about their client, and don’t bring up anything financial. Tax, legal, etc. Where does your client volunteer your time? What boards does your client sit on? Where do they spend their free time? I don’t want to know anything about their balance sheet, anything about their investment portfolio, nothing about their life insurance needs, nothing. I want you to describe your client, and using nothing financial. Who are they? Now, in that response they may not know. They may not know, but what it might do is give that CPA, or that attorney an opportunity, should they choose to embark upon it, to add some things to their next conversations. Okay, so when I do this for folks sometimes the attorney, CPA will say that because they don’t know. They’ve never asked. All their conversations have been tax, and legal, and financial. Okay, so they’re not charitable. How do you know that? Have you ever had a, what I call, an others centered conversation? What’s that? Anyway, I don’t want to go on. That’s a quick answer to your response when I get from other advisers that tell me that. Most of the time they say that because they haven’t had that conversation.

Yeah, it’s great, and not only maybe they haven’t had that conversation, but again thinking about our entire audience at the podcast here. Something that occurs to me is imagine if somebody listening to this podcast right now is leading a business unit of ten really competent people, and if you ask them tell me about each member of your team, but you can’t talk about where they work in the office, or what their role is in the office, or how their bonus plan works, or anything like that. You just have to talk about them as a person outside of work.

Tell me where they live, what their wife’s first name is, how many kids they have, what schools they go to of your employees.

Yeah, oh, and we had an adviser that opened up an entirely new relationship and opportunity with a client because they were just having lunch, and he says, “What do you do with your free time?” and it opened up something that she’s passionate about, and cares about in a community of people that she has brought him into to do the planning for a bunch of people. It all came out of something as simple as what do you do with your free time? So, I think that’s a great thing both for our folks that employ people, have people on their teams is what can you tell me about the people in your world that doesn’t have to do it the business you’re in with them. Oh, that’s great, that’s great. You talk a great deal about family legacy planning versus just charitable planning, and bringing families together, you were sharing with me — I don’t know if it’s a good place to start to share a little bit about a family meeting you recently had where some people had some big openings. I’m just going to open it up for you to share a little bit about the legacy planning versus the charitable only.

Okay, and I think the fundamental of where I chose to practice in the family legacy planning, which includes magnificent charitable giving is this statement. It’s a question. “Are you planning with your family, or are you planning at your family?” In the traditional estate planning practice, whether you’re an attorney, or a CPA, or you are a trained professional in state planning. Most of the time the planning is done with husband and wife, and the children who are 35, 40, 45 years old are not involved. I’m completely the opposite. I believe that the outcomes that can transpire when adult children are a part of the process are absolutely magnificent. So, if you’re planning with your family we have a set of workshop assignments, and homework that we give to generation two that they get to participate in the charitable giving, and in the wealth stewardship joy that their family is going to embark upon. That’s probably the biggest key is realizing that when we work with Mr. and Mrs. Jones I want to meet Mr. and Mrs. Jones’ children, adult children, fairly early on in the process.

Yes, oh that’s great, and why do you think most families just don’t talk about money?

Well, and again I’m 61 years old. I’ve been doing this for 25 years now, but I will just say a trend that I’ve seen since I’ve gotten into the business in the early 90s’, and I was a banker in the 80s’, is some trend sets. We just don’t talk about money, but there is tending to be a taboo about too much understanding about money that you hadn’t earned yourself can be damaging. There is some truth to that. I will tell you there is when people are all of a sudden coming into a big windfall. Call it an arrogance, call it whatever it might be, and they haven’t been trained in stewardship skills of financial assets. They will make mistakes, okay. Look what happens to lottery winners. So, because of that back thought thinking that too much, too soon, too quickly. We just won’t talk about it. So, in my world I suggest that we’re not going to talk about it right away about the fact that you’re worth $25 million, and your teenagers are going to know all this. We’re not going to tell them, but what we will do is invite them into a process that over the next five, or ten, or fifteen years of working together, we’re going to guide the maturity level of those teenagers, or twenty some odd year old children, or 35-year-old children, into ideas that they will respond to joy as the steward wealth that is part of the families and they didn’t earn it. Mom and dad earned it, but they’re going to approach it much differently when it’s a dual generational process.

If you bring the children into that over time rather than what tends to happen that I’ve seen is the adult children find out about how much money there is all at once after death, or they find out about it way too quickly maybe in the last two years of life. Rather than a slow indoctrination of awareness, and mentoring them through the ability to understand that wealth and handle it. It just happens all at once. One of my favorite things I think is in error. I’m certainly not an estate planning attorney, but it’s where we see the trust planning documents that do something as simple as when somebody is younger, and making good money. They have life insurance, and some assets, and minor children, and it will say it’ll pay for college and then release a quarter of their money at 25. A quarter of the money at 30, a quarter of the money at 35, and a quarter of the money at 40. Literally the advice from the attorneys is, “Well, the good news is even if they blow the first two chunks, they won’t blow the last two.” You know what we’ve seen? They do. When we meet those people, or we know people that know those people who that’s exact playing their parents did. They built a habit of blowing through the money. When you do it twice, it doesn’t get any easier the third and fourth time and they go right through it. Something that happened just the other day that I got exposed to that was somewhat outstanding. There wasn’t a huge amount of money. This family was left just several hundred thousand dollars, and they didn’t know how much money there was until grandma passed away. So, if grandma was generation one, generation two had already passed entirely, and grandmother was living with the only grandson. What happened was this several hundred thousand dollars was dropped in on them, and what they had been saying, the children had been saying, or, I’m sorry, in this case their grandson, had been saying repeatedly was, and his wife is, “Well, we don’t want to make any financial decisions yet because if we make any financial decisions, we don’t want to make the wrong one, we want to wait until everything settles out.” Well, here’s the problem with waiting until everything settled out. You know what they did feel comfortable doing? Buying over $100,000 worth of cars. Okay, and putting themselves in a spot where I think they also bought some other significant consumables. The thing that took me aback, again we’re not talking about a great deal of money, but had this couple been made aware of their financial decisions. They were somewhat happy with their unawareness of we just don’t know anything about this money stuff, and we want to wait and not make a financial decision, but they were super okay with making a large financial decision, which was a horrible one.

Into a consumable that’s a highly depreciated asset.

Yes. Here’s what lite up for me is this family, granted it would have been significant amounts of wealth, but if they had been taught to steward that money. It got dropped on them, and it just got left to grow. They would have actually just been able to retire one day, and now the likely path they’re on now is that may never happen. I think when we talk about money it certainly happens in the eight figure net worth realm, but also happens all the way down to the “I’m going to leave somebody a few hundred thousand dollars, and I’m not talking about it until then” where people can do it. My favorite example when you talk about the windfall errors are our clients that go through some period of time where they don’t make much money, and then they start making a lot of money. You have the physicians that are clients of ours, and the specialty physicians that what separates the ones that build their balance sheets or not are the ones that are taught about money at a young age. When they started making more money they enjoyed a little bit more, but they used that as an opportunity to save a ton as soon as their income went up versus committing it for things that they had been waiting around for.

As I’m listening to your stories here. A couple of add-ons that I would just share with our audience here is how long did it take that grandmother to build that wealth? How many decades did it take? How many decades?

Died in her 90s’. So, you can do the math.

Okay, so when we think about this, and this is a point that could be well taken by our audience here. One of the traits that I see in successful families around stewarding wealth is a long-term perspective. What I mean by that is when you earn wealth very boringly over 40 years because you’re constantly earning 4 or 5% over 40 or 50 years it happens. Okay, now we live in this little place called the Pacific Northwest, and if we turn the clock back 25 years to 1991 we had a little software company here in 1991, 92. That was throwing off 40% ROI for people that had their stock. Some of their employees, who are now millionaires and others that have lost it all, had net worths go from nothing to 10 or 15 million dollars in a very quick period of time. Less than five years.

Like lottery winners.

Very similar, now the ones that have been successful in that are the ones that have not adjusted their lifestyle because their net worth is 200 times what it used to be. Point being there’s some discipline, and there’s some process that comes into whether you’re a business owner manufacturing widgets. You understand the widget market really, really well that’s why you’re successful. Same thing with this commodity called financial wealth. How are we treating it? How are we using it wisely? How are we saving it? How are we investing it? How are we giving it away? These are skill sets that can be acquired very nicely, but it takes some time to get there, and that’s why when we see that the lottery winners, example of a large windfall to an unprepared person that’s –

As any lottery winning.

Yeah, large windfall to any unprepared person.

That is great, the distinction there. Large windfall to any unprepared person. Gosh, and I think that applies to responsibility. Money, yes, but even just like somebody’s not quite ready to take over the company yet and dad dies, and they’re unprepared. It may work out. Sometimes it does when they’re unprepared, but more often than not it doesn’t. You and I have talked in the past about a book you saw me flipping through my phone so I grabbed the author. Family: The Compact Among Generations, by James Hughes. He talks a little bit about shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. Would you mind talking about where you’ve watched that happen where we have actually this specific example I just gave.

You just described.

Is basically it, but just what that means, and what people should watch for to stop the wealth erosion between generations.

By the way, this is not just a trait that we see in the United States of America. This is a worldwide trait, worldwide. Generally, the thinking, and unfortunately it’s fairly accurate, is that the first generation that builds the wealth builds it because they are very hard workers. Their hard work of their trade, whatever it might be, and they have disciplines. They live their life on those disciplines, and as a result over several decades of living they build some net worth, and they build it very nicely. In the transition to generation two where generation two is inheriting a good size of that. What is somewhat lacking there is the skill set that generation one, i.e their parents, went through and taught with regard to continuing that on. Now, so what happens then is it’s- I don’t like the word entitlement attitude, but it can be out there. So, when it’s transferred, the desire to spend on consumables for self is quite a bit higher on G2 then it was on G1. G1 typically did not spend on self. They saved.

Okay, would that be a little bit like where I hear many people say, “I had it really tough growing up, I don’t want to be so hard on my kids” but it was the hardness of growing up that created the disciplines that created the wealth?

Absolute, absolutely, so one of the things that we suggest in our legacy planning process is how can we bring some of those disciplines, the G1, in this case used to build the wealth, bring someone of that down to G2. So, that when it is transferred over time, and at passing. They’re prepared to continue on storing wisely like G1 created it, and that’s where we see some fall back. So, from G1 to G2. So, G2 typically in the shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve scenario what we’ll spend more than they will build, and then when they get down to G3 that pot of capital has been depleted a fair amount, and G3 has had no training whatsoever. That’s why –

They’re very far away from any of the training that could have happened.

So, that’s why they say shirt sleeve to shirt sleeve, and G3 is back to starting all over again.

Well, that’s a great point, and the thing that shows up for me, and actually just thinking of our audience since everybody’s not in the estate planning world. Whenever we’re talking about G1, G2, G3 it’s just the generations.

Generations.

First generation, second generation, third generation. Just estate planning shorthand. So, that third generation isn’t there, isn’t talking about it. You talk about having family meetings, and what that means. You’ve had some wonderful experiences with families getting them together, talking about wealth, but oftentimes until — because your average age new client is –

In sixties, maybe mid to late sixties to early seventies.

So, we have the children that are the first time, maybe ever, understanding how much wealth mom and dad have is in a meeting with you, and they’re in their mid-thirties to forties. One, what happens in those meetings? What do you see transform as they start talking about charitable planning, etc.? Just understanding how much wealth there is, is question number one. Then question number two is what do you think people could do who listen to this podcast that maybe they’re just, right now, making top 1% income and want to begin talking with their children about money. Growing that so that it’s not a shock to them in their mid-thirties when hopefully the parents have built net worth enough to do the type of planning that you do.

I response to the question that you just asked I’m going to make this quick answer before it leaves my mind. There is one book out there that I would recommend to everybody that’s interested in this area. It’s called UnHeritage. It was published roughly one year ago. There’s five authors, but if you were to Google UnHeritage, or you would find the book, which is on the website of The Center for Family Conversations. I think you’ll find UnHeritage there.

I think it is. UnHeritage: Eleven Pitfalls to Family Legacy.

Yeah, eleven pitfalls, you just found it. There it is. That is probably, in my opinion, and I know you just brought it up on the screen, is probably the finest book that describes what you can do in this area to avoid those 11 pitfalls. The conversation, the family meanings, the heritage, the values, all these things. These are the core pillars that allow the wealth to withstand decades, and decades of attacks from the outside because the pillars of values, and virtues inside the family that they withhold and withstand don’t allow those things to happen. So, anyway, for our listening audience if they really are very interested I guess that they can find it on Amazon. UnHeritage, and it’s a fairly easy read. It’s only 120 pages or so, but I think it’s one of the finest books out there.

That’s great, that’s great. Somebody could read that if they’re just a high income earner right now, and doesn’t have the wealth yet but they can prompt some conversations that wouldn’t happen otherwise.

This could also be useful for generation two, and let me give you an example. Sometimes I might be meeting with a 50-year-old son or daughter, and they have no idea what my 75 or 80-year-old parents have done. They know they’ve got some assets, but they’ve never talked to them about it because mom and dad, in 75, 80, just didn’t ever talk about money. They know someday they’re going to have to settle this estate, and they have no idea what that means. None, and they would love to be able to honor mom and dad with their desires, but mom and dad are closed mouth. So, somebody children, who are now 50 or 55, are going to get thrown into this thing called estate settlement completely unaware of what’s there. It will be very unfortunate. What I really encourage folks to do particularly if it’s G2 is to approach mom and dad and say, “Mom and dad, someday if I’m going to have to do this I would like to make sure I honor you the way that you want things to happen.” “Can we talk about it now in addition to understand what your desires are, and your legal documents.” Let’s have a conversation while G1 is alive in their 70s and 80s around desires, so that G2 can honor them when they step into that responsibility role.

For those of us who have read the book, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. I think the estate planning documents give a great what. What, right? How ones and zeros on financial accounts, or real estate values give what. Only G1, only mom and dad in this case can really give the why. They can only give that when they’re willing to talk about it while they’re alive.

So, back to your question five minutes ago. The family meeting dynamics allows those conversations to happen. I’m going to share with you about 30 minutes we just had one last weekend. It was about three and a half hours long, and G1 in this case who built the wealth in their mid-60s’, and their sons in their late 30’s with their spouses, with their wives right at the table. So, there are six family members and myself. We went into the why in such a wonderful way where we talked about values, and virtues, and heritage, and family story. There’s eight digits of wealth here, okay? That means it was more than 10 million. Less than 100 million, it was in that range. There was absolutely wonderful dialogue around the why, and the who. We got a little bit to the what now, but that will be next. We spent almost the entire three hours on the who and the why.

Wow, that’s great. That’s great, and one thing that you guys know I do my best to give on every podcast some amount of good life tip. This is something I’ve talked about before, but since we’re talking about educating kids about money. Something that we’ve done in our family that’s great is there’s a website called Prosperity4kids, and there’s a blog and some other things. Really, what I think one of the best things they have is something called the Money Mama Piggy Bank. The Money Mama Piggy Bank comes with a reading book, a big ceramic pig with three little pigs, and they’re proportionally sized that only 10% of the money can fit in each of the small pigs, and Money Mama is the spending pig. She’s 70%, and we’ve had the chance to actually open the piggy bank for the first time, and Andrew got some Legos, and the girls got some My Little Ponies. We took the giving portion, and they took that to church that Sunday, and gave that, they had all their coins in a little Glad bag they took with them. Then they have their savings, and investing little pigs. There’s a book and an audio CD, and the author of the book. Her children, actually, read the book to the kids. So, it’s very fun if you have little, little kids where you can’t really talk about how much mom and dad are putting in the 401k right now, or if you are G1 and you want to start this conversation with G2, your children, maybe you can go get the Money Mama Piggy Bank for the grandkids, and that can allow you to start the conversation.

Paul, what I like about it it’s not the size, it’s not whether the child is saving on their one dollar of allowance, versus dad saving on his $10,000 pay check. The size is not the matter, it’s the principal, and it’s the discipline. So, as the father shares, “Son, this is what we do, when I get paid, and they want to see your dollar balance, this is what I do.” We do these things, so as they get to get their allowance, and get to mow their lawns, and deliver the papers, and start to earn money. It’s a discipline that they’re going to continue on for life.

Yeah, that’s great.

Regardless of the size of the income.

I will say that what I’ve taught my children about taxes is I eat parts of their food. I tell them, “I’m going to take taxes.” So, I take a bite of their food, and after I did this for my children for well over a year, and mine are all small. They’re currently ages three, four, and five all born in 30 months. So, my wife is, I think she can be sainthood now. She’s definitely worked miracles with these children, but what they’ve done is they started to say, “Daddy, here’s your taxes, I want to give it to you.” I was able to say, “No, no, if you want to give it to me it’s charitable, but if I take it, it’s taxes, and daddy has to do the same thing.” Dad gives away some money, and daddy has to give away some taxes, and I don’t like the taxes either. It’s enclosing, but I think what would be really helpful for some of our audience to hear is we got that charity and tax thing. They’re still two parts to the same system, and the way that you’re able to work with, and certainly Alan’s available to us and our advisers here for this unique consulting work that he does with other advisers, and to all of our clients. There’s a way that you can run into somebody that maybe their current plan, or lack of plan sometimes. The default plan versus the one by design might have the family getting a pretty significant erosion of taxes getting to the next generation or two. Maybe multiple times, and how does charitable come into that to not just leave the ethos and heart legacy, but actually allow the financial capital to make it down to the next generation.

Well, first of all we are blessed to live in a country that has charitable, giving tax laws that allow us to be generous, and reward us financially for being generous. Some other countries are, as what the ladies from UK over the weekend, they don’t have this.

Really?

Some of the other western countries don’t have the incentive in their tax code to be generous the way the United States of America does.

I had no idea.

UK does not, Japan does not, okay. So, we are in a western culture that it’s still, in sense, charitable giving even though maybe that some of that has been backed off a little bit, it’s still wonderful. So, the backdrop of that I will share with our listeners that as you described in your conversation with your young son. There’s really three areas where that dollar can be utilized when the dollar comes in. It can be utilized in a giving, it can be utilized in the tax code, and the tax code says out of that dollar the tax man is going to take something. Then what’s left is for family, or for yourself. There’s the self or the family bucket, there’s the tax bucket, and the charitable bucket. Now, in my world where I’m talking with people who have been accumulating wealth for three, or four, or five decades. Without paying much attention to what that tax bucket will do when one passes, it can be a sizeable amount. I’m also talking about income taxes too. It is not uncommon that I’m talking to people, a man this afternoon at 3 o’clock he’s coming in. He’s in the 43% income tax. Okay, but that’s a side note, but the point being here. Three buckets that we can put that dollar, and we can choose the amount into each bucket. I’m going to say that again. We can choose the amount that we voluntarily want to put into that tax bucket. Now, if we don’t take some action it will automatically, and this is called withholdings, and this is called other things. The system will automatically take a piece of your wealth, and put it into the tax bucket. As we understand the flexibility what we can do with charitable giving, and without disinheriting our family members we can actually take a dollar and split it up and give two dollars away. I just want our listeners to just be aware that the distribution of wealth in the legacy planning arena can be sizeable in the charitable bucket without detracting from what I leave for family. So, it’s not charity or heirs, it’s charity and heirs. We have people that are regularly giving multiples during their lifetime, and at passing, into the charitable bucket. When they pass away if it’s their desire, the entire state stays intact i.e 100% for family.

Yes.

So, the tools are there, and this is what I share with folks. If you’re concerned that your tax piece is going to be higher than you want it, then sit down, and roll up your sleeves, and we’ll use the charitable bucket during your lifetime, and at passing using the tools available, and balance that out with a desire for what we want to go to errs, and we end up with, what I call, plan by design versus a plan by default.

That’s great, and I think if everybody could be left with, as we wrap up with Alan today, is the idea that you may be thinking that the tax thing is just the way it’s going to go, or I’m not charitable as if charity erodes wealth. In fact, there’s some studies that have been done that the more that people regularly give away, the more that people in the same income levels actually end up accumulating more wealth. There is a multiplying effect, but there’s also a very practical, mathematical side of being able to give away money, and yet help your estate still remain intact by doing it by design rather than by default. If you wanted to get in touch with Alan, you can reach him at www.prattla.com. You can certainly see that in the description and notes here. Also, feel free to reach out to us, or reach out to your adviser directly. We can certainly set up a conversation. If your family is at the point where you’re in that eight figure realm, or as Alan likes to call it, people with big balance sheets, and big hearts. Alan, I thank you for being on the show today.

Thank you Paul, I appreciate the time.

Yeah, we’ll look forward to having you back sometime soon.

For all of you don’t forget to go to our website. Look at us on Facebook, find us on LinkedIn. Send us a message, shoot us an email, fill out our contact form on our website. We would love to hear from you because we’re going to take that feedback, and make it a part of future shows. Who would you like to hear from? What would you like to hear about? We’ll do our best to try and integrate that into our material. I’m glad you could join us today, and we look forward to helping you design, and build a good life.

Hey, this is Cory again. I just wanted to say it’s been great to have you here listening to this episode. You can find out more information about us on our website, www.sfgwa.com, or you can find us on Facebook under Sound Financial Group. We’d love to hear any questions or comments from there. Who knows? You may hear one on a future episode. For our full disclosure, if you go to description of our podcast series, this episode description, or our website.

———————————————————————————————————————————

This Material is Intended for General Public Use. By providing this material, we are not undertaking to provide investment advice for any specific individual or situation, or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation.

Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group is a registered investment adviser. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group and individually licensed and appointed agents in all appropriate jurisdictions.

This podcast is meant for general informational purposes and is not to be construed as tax, legal, or investment advice. You should consult a financial professional regarding your individual situation. Guest speakers are not affiliated with Sound Financial Inc. dba Sound Financial Group unless otherwise stated, and their opinions are their own. Opinions, estimates, forecasts, and statements of financial market trends are based on current market conditions and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Each week, the Your Business Your Wealth podcast helps you Design and Build a Good Life™. No one has a Good Life by default, only by design. Visit us here for more details:

yourbusinessyourwealth.com

© 2019 Sound Financial Inc. yourbusinessyourwealth.com

———————————————————————————————————————————