Our investment advisor has been pressing me for several months not only to do legacy planning, but to hire a professional advisor to help run us through a structured legacy planning process. Yesterday, during our regularly scheduled monthly performance review meeting, he “surprised” me a bit by inviting the legacy planner in to share just a bit about his approach.

Yipes! He wouldn’t say exactly what his fees are, but he gave me an idea. It’s a lot of money. Several thousand dollars to start. And then, I get the idea, more later.

We thought we paid a lot of money back in the late ’90s when we had our current estate plan drafted. That cost us several thousand dollars. And now we may be looking at similar costs “just” to help us clarify our interests and desires? Not “even” to draft a plan?!?

I keep thinking: We should be able to do this on our own. So why haven’t I begun? Because I’m too busy? Because, much as I say I want to do it, I don’t really? Because I don’t really know what I want? . . .

Our investment advisor, who has gone through this kind of process himself with his family, says he thinks I will find the money very well spent when it’s all said and done. . . .

I told Sarita what he (and the legacy planner) are proposing. She is extremely skeptical, but she has said it’s okay with her if I sit down and talk with these guys at greater length next week.

So that’s what I’m planning to do.

We’ll see what happens.

(The one positive value, I see, for hiring someone outside: the very fact that we’re paying him so much money will keep us motivated to get a plan done. So far, with all my positive intentions, I haven’t even begun to draft an outline of a family governance document or plan for how I’d like to see us move forward with a legacy plan.

Cheap is not always better!)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 5:51 pm and is filed under estate planning, legacy planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.