With your age growing, you should not underestimate legacy planning as it is something of core importance for you. Planning on the estates means that you are determining that to who your assets will be passed on after your death. You can get help from different eldercare services to understand the process of legacy planning and saving your money to help you. It is an estimate that every three to four of 10 people get involved in legacy planning including a will and an estate plan. Here is everything you need to know about legacy planning and how this is important for you.
What is Legacy Planning?
Legacy Planning is exactly what it sounds like. It means a plan for your assets and money to pass on to your family members or others after you leave this life. It is not just about money but establishing a plan that can represent your will of what you want with your legacy to be after you.
Legacy planning consists of estate plans and wills but along with that, you can put on some other legacies behind you. You can have some specific money donated on annual basis somewhere or you can put your name as a sponsor for scholarships at a local college. Legacy planning is not just about planning your money, but it is about planning the message of those values you want to leave in your name. You can also involve your children in your legacy planning.
Legacy planning is just like estate planning. The term legacy planning has become popular these days. It is more focused on planning wealth and other assets to pass on to the beneficiaries. It also includes talking about the values that you want to pass on.
Difference between Legacy Planning and Estate Planning
Legacy planning and estate planning are two terms that are closely related. Legacy planning focuses on much more things than estate planning. It is more focused on passing on the values along with the assets and money. It focuses much less on how much money you pass on to someone but more about your feelings about that person.
Getting Started with Legacy Planning
For starting with legacy planning, you should gather some important information with you. You need to note down the assets of yours and where they are located. The assets can include titles of your vehicles, your investment accounts, insurance policies, deeds, and other different forms of money. Next thing you should do is to think of those persons who you want to inherit your properties and other assets or decide you want to leave everything of yours to charity.
You also need to think about the medical care types which you can get at the end of your life. A slight and generic idea about these things can help you to smooth the whole legacy planning process.
The next step is the process of talking with an attorney from estate planning. Lawyer can help for drafting the planning documents in a way that is compliant with the laws of your country as well. Lawyer can help you for avoiding any probation and minimizing the taxes as well.
Legacy Planning Process
Legacy planning process is simple and can be done in three steps:
- Determining the Values, you want to Pass On
The most important step in legacy planning is determining the legacy you want to leave behind you. Even before thinking about the heirs for your assets and what every one of them is going to have, you should firmly consider of the things that you values the most and what kind of legacy you want to pass on behind you. This can help for making the decision making process easy and simple as you would have already known the core points of guiding every decision of yours.
In this step of the process, you can ask yourself some questions for example what do you want your children to think of you when your names comes up in front of them? What opportunities they need? What you want them to have access of? What things you think can make the world a better place and can bring a difference? Questions like these can guide you and take you towards a better way to make decisions for your wealth. It will also put some meaning in your assets and attach them with what you are leaving as your legacy.
- Information Gathering
Once you determine your values and legacy written down in your mind, you can start gathering the information. You need to list down every asset of yours and where you have kept them all the time. In this stage, you will start thinking about where your assets will go.
- Take Decision
Final step is to make the decision of where your assets are going. You have your values, and you know them better than anyone else. Now is the time to start planning where everything needs to go. You can make a list of the people or organizations close to you and then rank them according to their importance in your life and after your life. You can do that in tiers like your children as first tier, siblings as second and so on with other people and organizations.
A financial advisor can help you through the whole legacy planning process but at this stage, they can be more helpful than ever. They can help you in arranging the financial planning meetings with your family, discussing taxes, and setting up donations for charity in future.
Final Words
Legacy planning is the process of transferring your legacy, values, and assets to your beneficiaries. You can create a legacy plan for avoiding any probate by building a trust. An attorney can help you in preparation of the documents that can used to make the legacy plan. You can follow some simple instructions and three easy steps to plan the whole thing. You are the owner of every value of yours and you know people. You need to decide how you want people to feel when they say your name.