J____, our legacy planner, wrote to me just before 2 this afternoon.

I have a few minutes before we take off. Would you like to arrange an initial conference call with C____ [the high-powered attorney J____ knows in Denver who specializes in 501(c)(3) issues] to talk about the nonprofit issues and the application process?

Let me know if you would like to do so and I’ll get that arranged when I get back to the office tomorrow.

By the way, when it comes to nonprofit accounting experts [the firm you contacted] is the best. I have known [the founder] for years. They do our corporate and my personal taxes.

“I’d be delighted to speak with C____,” I replied, “if the strategy really can work. Sarita and I would like to move forward.”

This evening, then, after he got home, he wrote, “Your conversation with C____ will be exceedingly worthwhile on all this.”

Then, not quite an hour later:

In the flight magazine on the plane it tells about a AAA minor league baseball team that operates as a nonprofit organization (in Memphis). The baseball team fulfills part of the nonprofit’s mission.

I think your “business” has an even more legitimate mission and purpose that the baseball team. Getting you to be a nonprofit will take time and experience, but it can certainly be done.

While he has been traveling, however, I have done further research. And based on what I have found, I don’t think I can accept his comments without reply. So I just wrote him: Read the rest of this entry »

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Our legacy planner says that our current giving patterns (dependent on our income!) would suggest we may be able to give away $x million over the next 32 years–what the average person our age may reasonably be expected to live. If we follow his advice, however, we may be able to give $2.67x million! A wonderful “gear ratio,” from our perspective.

But is his plan workable? Read the rest of this entry »

Today was the big day. I’ve been committed to acquiring a legacy plan, now, for almost a year and a half. Of course, I don’t merely want a plan; I want to implement a plan. But simply to get a proposal in hand so Sarita and I can look at it and (hopefully) say, “Yay, verily, this is what we want to do . . . ” –It’s been just shy of a year and a half.

So our legacy planner and his assistant came to our office and we spent about 3 1/2 hours going through their proposed plan. And it includes: Read the rest of this entry »

J_____, our legacy planner, has been stressing, from the very beginning of our relationship, the need for the professionals on our team — our attorney, our CPA, our investment advisor, and J___ himself — to be on the same page when they speak with Sarita and me.

“You want to include all planning team members in the process from the beginning,” he said. “We need to be able to communicate openly one with another without worrying about being embarrassed or having our egos bruised by having you [John, client] hear any of our questions or comments.”

In order to ensure that end, then, he told us that he would meet with all our advisors prior to telling us anything about the details of the plan he is putting together.

Well, the advisors’ final, pre-presentation meeting was scheduled for this morning. And J_____ just wrote me: Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what to think. Our legacy planner, J____, seems pretty excited about whatever-it-is he’s putting together for us. He’s supposed to be one of the nation’s — and, therefore, the world’s — leading legacy planners. So I sure hope he’s not hyping us!

Anyway. He just wrote me:

We have been working feverishly on your Master Stewardship Plan. We have another conference call with L____ and B____ tomorrow morning to review the plan design that we have been developing. I do not expect there will be much in the way of changes from either of them on the draft plan we have been building. We have been keeping them in the loop for the entire process. L____ [our CPA] has be extraordinarily helpful to us. We have not really had S_____ [our investment advisor] involved since most of what we are doing at this point is legal and accounting type planning. I will make sure he has an opportunity to review the proposed Master Stewardship Plan before we present it to you. We can likely send him the draft for his review next week. I cannot imagine he will have any problems with what we are designing. . . .

I will say that I fully expect that you and Sarita are going to be awestruck when you see the plan we are assembling for you. You can hold me to that. I have designed a lot of plans over my career and seen a lot more as well and your plan I think will be one of the most profoundly powerful plans we have ever designed.

Give us just a few more weeks to finish our design work and get the Master Stewardship Plan book and presentation finished and we will be ready to present it to you. I am personally about as excited with your plan as I have been with any plan I have ever designed.

Is that an adequate build up for what is coming?

Stay tuned. We are bearing down on the finish line.

Okay!

I read two books while on vacation the last couple of weeks: Preparing Heirs: Five Steps to a Successful Transition of Family Wealth and Values by Roy Williams and Vic Preisser, and Family Wealth: How Family Members and Their Advisers Preserve Human, Intellectual, and Financial Assets for Generations, by James E. Hughes, Jr.

Preparing Heirs goes into depth about the research behind a number one of our advisors mentioned to us: in a study of 3,250 families with significant financial assets, 70% of them failed to transfer their assets successfully to the next generation. What does that mean? They either lost all their money, or they found that the money destroyed family relationships. It blew the family apart in the inheriting generation.

When I read Preparing Heirs, I thought it provided some good insights, especially into the causes of failure. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve already read Jay Link’s Family Wealth Counseling.

He’s issued a clarion call to pay attention not only to the financial aspects of an estate plan or legacy plan, but, I would say, he calls our attention even more to the social and spiritual/emotional issues related to one’s . . . lifetime legacy.

I chose those last two words carefully.

I think we aren’t normally challenged to think in terms of our lives when it comes to estate planning. We are led to think in terms of death, dying, and what happens after our lives are over.

Link, by contrast, calls us to Read the rest of this entry »

Yipes! it’s been two months since S___ agreed to help us find a replacement legacy planner for G____.

S____ told us today that he has vetted seven planners and decided that none of them matched our needs. When he finally thought he had found one and brought us together with him for a final interview, frankly, all three of us–Sarita, S____, and I–were shocked at how the planner handled the interview. Read the rest of this entry »