Value Add For Financial Advisors Every Year

I’ve got an idea that can add value to your clients lives, and it will continue to add value if you just do it every year.

I just met with a client who has been with us for probably about 10 years. They have about $5 million and I brought up the topic of estate planning and he said you know the estate plan is taken care of. He had just met with the attorney a couple years ago in 2020 and updated everything and he felt everything was working fine for the trust.

A different look at their future

So we looked at the current path of his money and he saw his net worth continue to grow over the years really for the next 20 years and it was quite significant. So first I’m going to share a question that I asked and then I’ll share the value add that you can add each year for your client.

We were looking at this big number in the future and I asked, is there an amount of money that your kids could inherit that could actually do more harm than good? There’s a question of what amount of money does it take to ruin your kids, which is what I had in mind. You know, how if you have more than one child they’ll have different skills and strengths and some are good with money and some are not.

Ask the questions they haven’t been asked before

So I wanted to get into that conversation, and he hadn’t thought about that before. It was really a good discussion that we had, just about the purpose of the money. Estate planning is such a focus on the legal side and the tax side of things which is good and is important, but sometimes it misses the more important part which is just the relationship side, the people side, human side. It’s the difference between estate planning and wealth transfer planning.

It’s kind of cool as advisers that our value can be tied to or increased by just the questions that we ask. Maybe it’s a question that nobody else is asking our clients that trust us.

Show real numbers rather than percentages

There’s another thing we started doing not that long ago that clients really appreciate. Especially if they’re over 55 or 60. Every year we look at the beneficiary audit. Sometimes it’s once a year, sometimes it’s every other year. It’s all of their accounts just listed and then the beneficiaries, and for some of our clients we put the dollar amount. Not just the percentages of the 30% to each of the three kids or whatever. We put the dollar amounts on what the heirs would inherit right now if they passed away.

As you know, there’s a big difference between a percentage number and then an actual dollar amount. As we did this with clients, it opened up their eyes as they were thinking of their estate plan and their kids after they pass away.

If you are an advisor what about you? Do you think that the beneficiary audit would be valuable to your clients over 50? Let me know in the comments if you are doing something like this or if you have ideas or thoughts and let’s make it a discussion.