A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from a Generous Giving consultant. I was invited to join a group of 11 men who were going to visit the founder of a $2 billion company to talk about his and our philosophies and practices of giving . . . and of transferring our material wealth, our values, and our philanthropic perspectives to future generations.

As it turned out, we were to meet not only with the founder (a man in his late 60s), but with his sons, and one of his grandsons. The meeting occurred about a week and a half ago over the course of an afternoon and evening and the next morning.

As I’ve tried to work through the implications of what transpired, and as I’ve attempted to explain to others what occurred, I have realized I carried at least two lessons from the experience. This post is about the first–a lesson I’ve learned before, but never applied in quite this way to my charitable giving interests.

The lesson: That we benefit from participating in peer-level mastermind groups–groups of like-minded individuals who are willing to share their insights, experiences, knowledge, etc., in order to help each other attain a definite goal or purpose. In this case, then, to help each other improve our ability to make effective and generous charitable donations.

I was talking with my sister the other day and I mentioned how valuable this particular meeting had been for me “because I was meeting with fairly wealthy people who are already giving at a high level.”

“Why would that make a difference?” she asked.

“Because they are dealing with the kinds of issues Sarita and I are dealing with as we consider our giving,” I said.

“Like what?” she asked.

What follows is more or less what I discussed with her. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I posted a proposed draft copy of an IPS (Investment Policy Statement) our legacy planners gave me. I said I didn’t feel comfortable signing the document without further input . . . from our investment advisor himself and, perhaps, one or two other similar advisors.

Today I thought I would share some of the things I wrote to our investment advisor about the document. So here’s the cover letter I sent him: Read the rest of this entry »

Our legacy planners have urged us to create an Investment Policy Statement (IPS) that would enable outside onlookers (like my wife and me and/or our legacy planners, for instance) to say, “Yes, [our investment advisor] is living up to the requirements of our IPS. He or she is investing according to policy.” Or, “No. He has violated this parameter. He needs to come back into line.”

Right now, we have no such statement and, as a result, we can’t really be sure whether and to what extent our investment advisor is pursuing a particular plan or simply “going with the flow” of whatever happens to cross his mind at the moment.

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Originally, our legacy planners asked our investment advisor to give them copies of his current investment policies for our various accounts.

And our investment advisor objected to what looked like an attempt on their part to “butt in” on his area of expertise. “Why do they need to know about my investment policies? What does that have to do with legacy planning?” he asked.

Part of his concern arose from the fact that our legacy planners work for a firm that, in addition to legacy planning, offers investment advisory services. He was concerned they were “simply” going to attempt to second-guess him and, with 20-20 hindsight, demonstrate what a bad job he has done in the last year in the midst of our rather unprecedentedly awful market performance.

Our legacy planners were able to put that fear to rest. “We are not looking to steal your business. We charge the high fees we do so that we have absolutely no need to sell other services. Our services are completely separate from the ‘other side’ of the company. . . .”

Still, the question remained: “What does an investment policy have to do with legacy planning?” Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote a couple of days ago about how advisors can skew your perspective.

In the content of my post, I tried to make clear that I don’t believe any of our advisors have deliberately attempted to distort our views. But I do believe they have failed, in different ways, to call our attention to salient facts, issues we really should have addressed, actions we should have taken but didn’t. And those failures have only been revealed as a result of subsequent counselor/advisors calling our attention to the oversights in previous counselors’ advice.

Now that our nation is going through a massive economic dislocation, I am seeing that additional problems with various estate and legacy plans are being brought to light. Read the rest of this entry »