As a seasoned financial advisor, you know your work is about so much more than monitoring the stock market. It all starts with that first meeting with the client – you don’t just ask for information in dollars and cents, but details about their work, the intricacies of their family dynamics, and their vision for their legacy. As you get to know them and their unique situation, you realize that in addition to offering your financial knowledge you are also serving as therapist, confidante, and fortune-teller, helping them navigate present and future challenges and holding them accountable for their decisions. This multifaceted relationship is what makes it possible for you to create a holistic estate plan that reflects their priorities and protects them from everything from tax burdens to the dissolutions of partnerships. As time goes on, however, you…

Becoming a Hollywood movie star.  Amassing great wealth.  Most of us have daydreamed about both at one point or another about financial windfall. But while the downside of fame is well-documented in tragic celebrity stories, very few people realize how unexpected wealth can completely upend their lives.  In fact, according to the  National Endowment for Financial Education, seventy percent of people who suddenly come into a large sum of money will declare bankruptcy within a few years. Many also suffer from “Sudden Wealth Syndrome,” which includes a host of symptoms including depression, anxiety, paranoia and substance abuse.   Managing money is like any other skill: you have to acquire not only theoretical knowledge but the practical tools to apply it. It doesn’t matter if it comes from financial windfall like an inheritance, a winning lottery ticket or a business…

Technology has given us greater control in many areas of our lives, from managing our health to planning vacations on the fly. Yet some industries, including that of financial services, have been slow to utilize digital tools or encourage their clients to do so. This has exacerbated the already significant challenges around estate planning, most notably the generation gap among older principals and their millennial and GenX heirs. The younger generations receive and process information differently; they also prefer to communicate in different ways. If you are still relying on reports from your financial advisor, know this: your children and grandchildren will one day be using such tools to manage your estate, especially if it saves them a phone call to said advisor. Meeting them where they stand now can help them avoid pitfalls, and possibly financial ruin, in…