The Importance of a Game Plan
If life were a football game, how is it going for you? Are you in the first half or second half? Or, are you closer to the two minute warning? Have you been calling your own plays or are you relying on an experienced coach to help you make the calls? Do you have a game plan or are you calling audibles each play? What’s the score? Are you ahead or behind? What are you going to do differently with the time you have remaining?
If you are a football fan you know the value of a good coach and a good game plan. You also know that the game plans often change during the game. The game plan for the first half is usually not the game plan you will follow for the second half. In the game of life, that is almost always true. You must frequently make mid-course corrections. If you have lost some of your retirement assets during the recent market meltdown, you cannot re-create your portfolio if you are already retired, or start over again once you have sold your business. The second half of your life is about protecting principal, converting assets into income and minimizing risk. Growth at any cost becomes less important than it was in the first half.
The capabilities that enabled you to accumulate wealth are often not the same skills you need for income tax management, wealth transfer, business succession, retirement planning, risk management, and managing your investment strategy. Moreover, without a coordinated team of advisors, how you transfer wealth to the next generation is critical. Studies show that families often lose much of their wealth by the second or third generation.
As wealth accumulates, so often does the number of advisors…attorneys, accountants, investment managers, insurance professionals, trust officers, and private bankers…to the point where you may have assembled a pretty good team of specialists. However, which one is capable of driving the process? They all work for you, but unless you have been down this road before and have the goal in mind, are you the one who can drive the process? If your team lacks a qualified wealth advisor to coordinate the subject matter experts on your behalf, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle trying to manage the egos and maintain focus. Your team needs a coach, an experienced wealth advisor.
Families expect results from their Wealth Advisors, and at CWA we will work as hard as it takes to deliver those results! While CWA can access all of the comprehensive services required by affluent families, how we help them use these services sets us apart. With CWA’s assistance and guidance, you can use your wealth to move from success to significance. Our resources enable you to integrate advanced tools into a comprehensive plan which will allow you to:
- Create and implement a game plan for the second half of your life that incorporates your values and establishes milestones for accomplishing your second half goals
- Work with financial planners who understand the complexities of multi-disciplinary planning
- Benefit from the depth of experience of advisors who specialize in implementing unique strategies for affluent families
- Apply creative and cutting-edge ideas not commonly used by less experienced advisors
- Improve both your portfolio and your estate plan to achieve true wealth management integration
- Maintain financial and estate information in a format that keeps all of your advisors “on the same page”
- Integrate the impact of all proposed strategies on cash flow, income taxes, charitable giving, estate taxes and wealth distribution
- Understand the integrated planning effects through attractive and easy-to-follow graphs, tables, and reports
- Easily re-optimize the plan in response to changing goals, asset values, or tax laws
Who you need on your Team
- Business lawyer guides executives on the legal impact of their business decisions
- Philanthropic Planner redirects tax money to charitable causes
- Insurance Agent manages risk and helps decide how to quantify risk and which risks you need to mitigate and which you are willing to self-insure
- Wealth counselor develops a blueprint or game plan for your second half
- Investment advisor designs tax efficient portfolios
- Accountant prepares tax returns, provides year-end tax planning and provides tax advice on the specific aspects of your game plan
- Estate Planning Attorney implements tax strategies by drafting trust and estate plan documents
- Wealth Management Coach coordinates the various subject matter experts to keep the process moving toward the goal and makes the critical calls to manage the egos of the players and maintain a spirit of teamwork among the players for the benefit of the client
