I recently turned 54. It is not a “milestone” birthday in the usual sense. No one throws a party for 54. Still, this one pushed me to sit down with my estate plan, family plan, and tax plan in a more serious way than I had in a while.
I do this work for clients almost every day. At Tea Olive Capital we develop plans, review them, and update them as life changes. Doing the same work on myself is different. I might get to it once a year if I am disciplined. Lately I have felt a clearer need to make sure I am as financially healthy as I can be. Part of that is simply getting older. Part of it is that medical doctor visits have become more routine. The rest is honesty: I talk about actuarial tables, life expectancy, and generational wealth transfer with other people all the time. A few months ago, I realized I was not keeping as current as I tell clients they should.
My plans exist. They are written down and mapped. That intellectual comfort is real. If I am being honest with myself, though, they have not been updated as often as they should have been as my life has changed.
Next spring my son will graduate from Clemson. I love him, and I am probably even more proud of him. He is already thinking carefully about graduate school and the start of his professional life. He is planning, and he is good at it. Watching him do that made me look again at my own stack: legal documents, insurance policies, investment accounts, bank statements, retirement accounts, and the rest. I started wondering how many people are in the same place I was—or further behind.
I wish I had started some of this earlier. I am glad the foundation is already there, even if it needed a refresh.
Where are you in the process?
- Do you have an estate plan that is actually mapped and current?
- Do you know what tax issues could show up in the next five to ten years, and whether anything can be done about them now?
- Are your will and trust in place and aligned with how you want assets to move?
- Have you thought through a family plan if something unexpected happens?
- Have you sat with an attorney and put your legal documents in order?
- Have you consolidated old retirement accounts?
- Are you properly insured for the life you are actually living?
Depending on your situation, there may be a lot to do, very little, or something in between. It can feel like a lot. It does not have to stay that way.
Maybe you already have a plan with another firm. That is fine. We are happy to take a second look. Too often, planning programs look polished in the marketing materials and still feel like a template once you live with them. Clients who have come to us from other firms frequently say the same thing: the old plan did not feel like “their” plan. It felt like software output. At Tea Olive Capital the work is built around you, your family, and your situation. Your life is not cookie-cutter. Your financial plans should not be either.
At Tea Olive Capital we walk through this with people every week. Our job is to take the pressure off your shoulders, organize what is already there, and help you close the gaps before they become problems. If you have been meaning to look at your own plan and have not done it yet, or not looked at it in a while, these are good enough reasons to start the conversation.