I was recently asked, “Over the first half of 2019, what was one thing that happened at Convergent that got you the most excited?”
With a little reflection, I was pleased to share my response. While I have clients who are children of my clients, it wasn’t until this year that I got the opportunity to help three different generations within the same family. And I’ll be first to tell you that the three ladies to whom I refer are a really neat bunch. You know how they say that women are usually better at investing? Well, it’s women like these who make that statistic true.
My tri-generational relationship started with a local young professional who is focused on how to accumulate assets even as she’s planning for her upcoming wedding. She became a client and then referred me to her mother who was living in Florida. Her mom was in a different phase of life and needed help deciding how to use her assets to generate income. The mother then referred me to her mother who was living in North Carolina. This spry, sharp grandmother needed help protecting her current assets and wanted helping make decisions on how to prepare for a future generational wealth transfer as part of her legacy.
While I keep each of their details private, it’s really satisfying to see how each of them handles their money, from accumulation to investing to spending to thinking about how they will pass it along. Usually I have the bird’s eye view of the forest and suddenly I’ve been given the view of earth from a satellite. Because of my job, the flow of money means more to me than the analytics or the math of making it all work. It’s about how a family develops a lifestyle and a methodology to make smart decisions to make dreams come true… not only for themselves but for future generations too.
Aesop wrote a fable about a goose that lays golden eggs. Remember the story? As long as the goose was fed and protected, it continued to lay a golden egg every day. But one day, the countryman decided to kill the goose and cut it open for an immediate payout. The big problem was that, being dead, the goose could no longer produce golden eggs. The countryman was then penniless because he had spent all of the previous eggs. How quickly the countryman went from having it made to having nothing!
In the next 30 years, approximately $40 trillion will pass from the baby boomers to the next generations. Do you have a retirement goose that lays eggs? If so, will your children cut open your goose? Working with a financial planner together is one way to keep your goose alive and well for years to come.
Give me a call or send me an email if you have questions or want to talk about generational planning and what that could mean for your family.
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