How do you change the way you think and feel and behave?

I’m not talking about the “oops!” kind of mind alteration–y’know, the revelatory, slap-your-forehead, “Oh! Of course! How could I have been so stupid!?!” mental shift.

I’m talking about knowing what you need to do–or, even, having a sneaking suspicion that you need to change your way of thinking, but not being able to turn on the light bulb in your brain–i.e., a mind-shift that requires real work. How do you make purposeful, premeditated alterations in your habits of mind, how you view the world, how you think, how you behave?

Legacy planning and estate planning, at its very root, I think, requires this kind of mental change. I mean, if you’re going to do a really good job at writing a plan, it takes more than a couple of hours of casual thinking to work out what you desire to achieve with your wealth; if you have young children: where you want them to go, who you want to take care of them, how you want them to be cared for, etc.; how you want to be cared for if, God forbid, you find yourself incapacitated and requiring long-term care or–forget you finding yourself incapacitated– . . . Suppose your relatives find you incapacitated and incapable of speech or communication: How shall they care for you?

These kinds of questions require some deep and serious thought. And even the most patient attorneys or other professionals–even if you could afford their fees–cannot draw your finessed thoughts out of you in a 2- or even 8-hour interview. And, I dare say, even a week-long retreat dedicated to these matters won’t quite do whatever-it-is you require to come to peace about your true thoughts and beliefs in these matters.

Hey. I’ve been working on my legacy plan–not full-time, but dedicating a few hours a week, on average–for close to three years, now. And, I am embarrassed to admit, my wife and I still haven’t gotten down to business on one of the most important pieces of the plan: the documentation (that would be so helpful to our executors) of where all our key papers are, the list of all our professional advisors, where our safe deposit boxes are and how to gain access, where all of our accounts are–and user names and passwords to gain access, etc., etc. Read the rest of this entry »

As I prepare for the inevitable, I am realizing how important it is to consolidate my records. I haven’t done this. I have plans . . . for what is to happen with my estate when I die. I have all the paperwork in order. Or so my advisors tell me.

But I haven’t prepared the kinds of records that will enable my survivors easily to tie up whatever loose ends my death will create. And that’s where Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t something I had thought about before, but I just saw an article titled Tools for Managing Your Online Life After Death.

What happens to your Hotmail or Gmail account when you die? What about your online photo collections on Picasa or Flickr?

Answer: It depends. And some of it depends on you!

To give you an idea:

• Hotmail let’s relatives order a CD of all messages in the deceased users account on submission of a death certificate and proof of power of attorney.
   
• Gmail Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve posted the story of a major bequest that came to the brink of becoming worthless–or worse than worthless–to the recipients.

I imagine it’s a cautionary tale that many of us should pay attention to.

Check it out on the Strategic Inheritance forums . . . and join the conversation!

I described the technical differences between donor-advised funds (DAFs) and private foundations back in June of 2007. Frankly, at the time, I saw no compelling reason seriously to consider creating a DAF.

Following the FoundationWise^SM conference, however, I’m seeing more reasons than I did back then to consider this alternative. Read the rest of this entry »

I will confess: I’ve been dragging my feet. Not sure why. But I had to overcome the hurdle.

I have finally “turned on” the Strategic Inheritance Legacy Lounge forum and invite you to join what I hope will soon be a freewheeling and inspirational discussion of all things related to passing on a heritage from one generation to another.

Join us, won’t you?

Thanks!

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 »

In my last post, I talked about giving your children the vast majority of their inheritance “early”–while they’re still in their 20s and early 30s, say–rather than later.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a friend who has many years’ experience counseling and coaching wealthy individuals . . . as a wealthy person himself and a friend, not as a professional counselor. He made an interesting observation about a reason why you want to predefine for your heirs–and make sure they know–how much you intend to leave them: You want to remove every potential reason they may have (every potential conflict-of-interest) that may lead them to think that, by reducing cost of the care you receive toward the end of your life, they will benefit.

“I have seen it,” he said, “where the children say, ‘Y’know, if we put Mom in the _____ Village, we will be spending [i.e., they will be digging into Mom's nest-egg!] to the tune of an extra $50,000 a year compared to _____ Nursing Home. Why should we waste our money?’ “

Of course, they are not “wasting” money if the quality of service is significantly different (which it was in this particular case). And they weren’t about to “waste” or “spend” their money. It was Mom’s money they were talking about. But they were already anticipating it as their own. And so they withheld from their mother what should have been rightfully hers . . . if only she and her husband had done advanced planning that predefined for the children exactly what they could expect and demonstrated that there was no reason for the kids to modify their care plans in hopes of gaining advantages for themselves.