As I noted, our investment advisor has been urging us seriously to consider hiring a Legacy Planner. (Note the difference between legacy planning and “mere” estate planning I described in my Estate Planning v Legacy Planning post.)

G_____, the gentleman whom our advisor recommended, presented a couple of graphics that I think give further insight into some of the differences.

Here I will present only the “Legacy Planning Pyramid”:

According to G____, “traditional” financial and estate planning comprise the first two layers of the Legacy Planning Pyramid. He defined financial planning as making appropriate decisions concerning investing; life, disability and long-term care insurance; basic retirement and tax planning, etc. And traditional estate planning: the preparation of proper documents: wills, powers of attorney, trusts, foundations, and so forth.

Proper legacy planning, G____ said, adds a legacy strategy (including statements of mission, vision, values and priorities), plus more advanced legal and financial strategies that may be required to provide an appropriate structure to uphold the strategy, and, most importantly, succession planning–practical plans concerning how one intends to pass on one’s mission, vision, values and priorities to one’s heirs, executors, etc.

I think it’s interesting how many people there are who are delighted to help you do traditional financial and estate planning. Talk to almost any “advanced” financial advisor today and he or she will speak of these matters. These people are all about helping you analyze your life insurance portfolio, increase the size of your retirement account, save taxes, make more money available to your heirs.

Almost no one talks about the things that G____ spoke of as essential to legacy planning.

But legacy planning, as I see it, “adds” the entire layer (and I would like to suggest it is the more fundamental layer) of purpose. Why am I interested in passing wealth to the next generation? What is the purpose of that wealth?

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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 3:31 pm and is filed under estate planning, legacy planning, purpose. 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.