4 Tips for Organized Wealth Management

I wanted to share 4 Tips for Organized Wealth Management later in life. Many people think about money the wrong way. They have planned on retiring in their fifties and assumed they will die in their seventies. That was a strategy for The Great Generation, and Baby Boomers have carried the vision forward. But it’s long been unrealistic. Millions are outliving their money.

Four tips for organized wealth management are:

• Wealth Management is not financial planning! Financial planning helps you build wealth. It’s a strategy developed to reach and exceed financial goals despite volatility in markets, economic swings, personal and family crises, and other factors. A comprehensive financial plan invests time and advice to keep your actions aligned with your goals.

Wealth management is a team process that revisits your financial planning strategies for handling the wealth you have built over time. Given the reality of longer life spans, inflation, and market volatility, wealth managers focus on continuing financial planning within emerging parameters. They integrate expert advice on estate planning, long-term care, property transactions, risk management, taxes, trusts, and wills. As they say at www.commercetrustcompany.com, “As your net worth increases and your finances become more complex, the resources you need readily available to help manage your wealth also increase.”

• Small business owners have special needs! Contributors to Forbes advise, “Small business owners often fail because they make decisions without finding out the facts from experts.” Business owners must build networks to plan and focus their financial future when they cannot spare the time. 

In business and life, you must understand the value and limits on cash flow and liquidity. For instance, you must prepare for the impact disability can mean to your business and your independent life. And, if you have key person insurance programs for business continuity, you should do the same for your personal life.

• Women need wealth management, too! Because women routinely earn less but live longer than men, they must save more aggressively. Spending, taxes, and estate-planning in later life do not recognize gender differences. 

Women must save aggressively from earlier ages if they hope to meet male goals. For example, even when women maximize your company 401(k) Plan, they should look at additional tax-favored savings plans. Their long-term financial planning must also include life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance designed for women understanding they live longer and are tied to continuing care giving for children, spouses, and partners — even later in life.

• Insist on a personal connection! How your money is managed in later life is too important to leave to disinterested or unqualified advisers. You want confidence in your support team’s education, licensing, certifications, and experience.

But you also want and deserve personal attention. That can be the comfort of fast and easy access. It also means regular meetings and assessment audits to check up and verify your wealth plan performance. But it means taking responsibility for staying informed and asking the right questions.

What’s the real purpose?

Wealth and later life are subjective terms meaning different things to different people. But once you have earned the wealth you set out to save, you’ll need to manage it differently within new facts of life so you can retain the wealth, continue your plans, and optimize its value to your beneficiaries.