Although well-meaning, my husband and I are perpetually running late. We are late for everything—missing the first two minutes of a movie, showing up 30 seconds too late to see the balloon drop at a New Year’s Eve party, showing up to a physical therapy session five minutes late… Sound familiar?
When it came to finances, my husband and I managed to keep up on bills and our credit scores were decent, but we were always just doing the minimum to keep our heads above water. Saving enough funds for a couple trips, enough to pay the bills, and maybe throw a couple bucks into long term savings.
There is a game changer in this equation: our daughter.
Photo by Aditya Romansa on Unsplash
She has been the single greatest catalyst in our lives and has forced us to address the facts about sound financials and estate planning. We were especially concerned about the potential for an accident involving both me and my husband.
We decided to create an estate plan with Gordon because we needed reassurance that should anything happen to us, she would be cared for with as minimal amount of legal hiccups as possible.
Gordon set us up with a complete estate plan. It wasn’t nearly as complicated (nor as expensive) as we would have thought.
My husband and I took special care selecting her guardians, should something happen to us, as well as setting up a trust for her to gain access to assets after her 18th birthday.
We plan to revisit the estate plan annually, just to make sure that everything is current. In addition to her college fund, it is our way of taking her financial security seriously and planning for the unexpected. Maybe she’ll forgive us for the chronic lateness she inherited with the knowledge that she has also inherited a strong financial support system in place to help her, no matter what.
Note from Gordon: If you’re like this client (who wished to remain anonymous), children and grandchildren can mean you’ll pursue legal and financial actions you never thought of before to ensure piece of mind that they’ll be taken care of if something happens to you. There’s no harm in giving me a call or shooting me an email to at least talk about what you may need in terms of an individualized estate plan. I look forward to working with you!
