Episode 1: Getting Your Head Out of the Sand: Looking at Your Full Financial Picture
The hardest step in taking control of your money isn’t mastering investments or choosing the perfect strategy—it’s being willing to look at your numbers without fear or shame. In this inaugural episode of The Wealth Development Studio, Senior Financial Advisor Genevieve George invites listeners to do exactly that: take a brave breath, lift their head out of the sand, and see their financial life clearly for the first time.
Listen in as Genevieve breaks down why so many capable people avoid their finances, how fear of “not knowing enough” keeps them stuck, and why getting curious is far more powerful than being perfect. You’ll learn the five core areas of financial planning and come away with a simple, confidence-building framework you can return to throughout your financial journey.
What You’ll Learn:
Why avoiding your finances creates more anxiety and how awareness instantly reduces stress.
How to get brave with your questions (even the ones you think you “should” already know).
Why shame has no place in your financial life.
What a “full financial picture review” really includes.
The 5 Core Areas of Financial Planning, and why every plan should start here.
The real key to long-term success.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"The sooner you know where you are, the sooner you can make a plan for where you want to go." - Genevieve George
“These are your life savings. You are working really hard to sock this money away for your future goals. You deserve to have all of the information about your finances.” - Genevieve George
“It does require bravery to just go ahead and say, 'You know what? Please, can you just walk me through that in a different way?' Particularly with your professional team, because that is their job: to make sure you know exactly what's going on with your financial picture.” - Genevieve George
Resources:
Connect with Us:
If you're ready to stop avoiding your finances and start building the future you deserve, schedule a free call with me at pelicanfinancialplanning.com and let’s create your personalized financial plan together.
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Read the Transcript:
Welcome to The Wealth Development Studio. I'm your host, Genevieve George, Senior Financial Advisor and Founder of Pelican Financial Planning & Wealth. Our goal for this episode is to provide clarity about today's financial topic, inspire you to be brave with your questions, and gain confidence in your financial future. So take a deep breath, grab your favorite cup of coffee, and step into the studio. Your dose of financial empowerment begins now.
Genevieve George: Welcome to the show. I'm Genevieve George, and I'm here to help you take control of your money one clear, confident step at a time. Today, we're starting at the very beginning, getting your head out of the sand and finally looking at your full financial picture. Now, if that idea feels uncomfortable, you're not alone.
So many smart, capable people avoid their finances because the unknown can feel scary or overwhelming or just a lot. But here's the thing, you cannot change what you're not willing to look at. And the moment you choose curiosity over fear, your entire financial life begins to shift. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the mindset behind that movement and how to get brave with your questions and how to look at your numbers without judgment and start building a financial life that supports the future that you want.
Then later we'll walk through the five core areas of financial planning so you have a clear framework of what you should be paying attention to. But we're not gonna dive really deep into those 'cause we're gonna do that on future episodes, but I just wanna make sure that I'm sharing with you like the five core areas that you wanna be putting attention on. So thank you so much for being here. The first thing I really wanna talk about is there's a stigma around this. I've run into it with clients of mine as well as just individuals that I meet when I'm speaking in public or networking and you need to get brave, and it is hard. It's hard to say to somebody that maybe is your advisor or to your spouse, even, “I do not understand what you're saying when you're explaining that to me. Can you explain it in another way?”
It does require bravery to just go ahead and say, “You know what? Please, can you just walk me through that in a different way, particularly with your professional team?” 'Cause that is their job is to make sure you know exactly what's going on with your financial picture. If they're giving you information that you're not receiving in the way that is helpful to you, you need to just stand up and say, Hey, I actually need additional information.
I really wanna talk about awareness as well. I've said in the opening, we gotta get our heads out of the sand. The sooner you know where you are, the sooner you can make a plan for where you want to go. And so that really takes self-awareness to say, “Okay, I may have some uncomfortable feelings about this, but I really want to take a look at the full financial picture and really see, okay, what am I, what do I have right now? How is it working? How is it set to project going forward? And what changes or opportunities are there for me to improve that financial picture?”
Because you probably have an idea of what you want to happen in the future, what you have in mind as your goals, but if you don't actually map that out to say, “Okay, here's where I am and here's where I want it to go,” you can't really make that plan for points B through Y to get from A to Z. So the other thing I wanna share with you is we've already covered it a little bit when I'm saying we have to get brave with your questions. But that's assuming you already have someone where you can have those conversations.
But I also think there's a lot of people out there that don't wanna ask for help, and maybe they're carrying around some sort of shame or concerns about previous bad decisions that they've made, and they really don't wanna share that with somebody else. And I think that comes down to finding a professional team that's really gonna meet you where you are and really help break through some of that.
Because again, shame is not a reason to not take steps and continue to move forward. So really wanna focus on that and really try to get as much shame out of it as possible. I've seen it where individuals will say, “I just don't think I'm actually where I'm supposed to be and/or I don't think I have enough money to even ask for help or talk to a financial advisor or a financial planner.”
And I really believe that there is a financial planner or financial advisor out there for everyone, even if you're just getting started and you don't have a lot of money. There are also financial advisors and planners that are also getting started and really want to help and really wanna add value to their clients' lives and get that experience as well.
So there's definitely somebody to help everybody out there. For me in particular, I live in an area—very high income individuals, and I think that there is probably a lot of people walking around that think, “I don't even have enough money to talk to some of these places.” And maybe in some cases that's true.
The minimums are $3 million, $5 million, $10 million, maybe even higher. But there's plenty of other institutions or individual advisors that will work with someone, where they don't carry a minimum or they're willing to work with people on financial planning only. So really making sure that you know what those resources are in your area.
The other thing I would say is, I've talked about getting brave with your questions, but these are your life savings. You are working really hard to sock this money away for your future goals, whether they're short or long-term goals. And you deserve to have all of the information about your finances as possible.
And so ask all the questions. Don't feel embarrassed by those questions. I tell clients all the time—I have clients call me and they'll say, “I'm so sorry to ask you this or to bother you with this, but can you help me with X, Y, and Z?” And my answer is always yes, and I really love it when people call me or they want to ask questions that might not be within the norm of maybe a regular question about their accounts or something like that, because if they're brave enough to ask it, that means other people are out there probably sitting there not asking those questions.
So it helps me to understand, okay. Maybe we should have a deeper conversation about why you rent or own a car, right? Or just other examples along the way. If I'm getting charitable, should I do that with cash or should I do that with stock? Those are questions that, I'm maybe talking with my clients about.
But if somebody is not sharing with me all that information, then I don't know that that's on their mind. And then finally, I just wanna focus on it's about progress, not perfection. And really, you can get bogged down in the details of making sure that you have every duck in a row and having all of it put together in, I think particularly women, we do this to ourselves, like we have to have it all together.
And it's okay if we don't have it all together, and it's okay to get help getting it all together. So really focusing on that progress not making sure that it's perfect, it's a long financial journey, depending upon where you're at and little things are gonna change along the way.
Life is gonna happen. You might change your job, you might move or meet the love of your life in another state. And you have to make shifts in what your plan is. If there's gonna be progress forward, and then there's gonna be certain things that bring us back or make us pause, and then we gotta keep moving forward.
So it's really important to not get yourself bogged down with not being exactly where you think you should be in that moment. What I really like to focus on when I'm working with people is the full financial picture. And I think it's becoming the norm for when you're working with a financial planner because the more information that we have as your planners, the more information that we can give you back as advice.
But I think there are still also advisors out there that are really focused on just their one piece of the puzzle. They have an account that they need to manage. They're talking to you about all the necessary things to talk to you about with risk, but they're not looking at the full picture. So when I'm talking to somebody in the financial planning space, I really wanna understand the full financial picture.
So I wanna look at the accounts statements and understand how are you invested, what are the inflows and outflows of those accounts, and that goes beyond just their accounts that are in regular brokerage accounts or anything like that.
I wanna look at their existing employer plans. I wanna see all of the liquid assets. But then beyond that, I wanna look at, okay, what's happening on the tax picture? Are there any opportunities for tax savings there? Again, we're gonna get into some deeper details about this in future episodes. Is your housing situation, do you own or do you lease?
If you own, what does that mortgage look like? If you have one, what are the interest rates on that? Are you aggressively paying that down or not? And that's gonna be something that we're gonna talk about. And really looking at what is everything that is in your financial life right now? So taking a snapshot of what that picture looks like right now.
What are all of your debts? Maybe you have student loan debt, or you have a car loan, or again, we talked about the mortgage. Maybe you're carrying credit cards that you're having a hard time chipping away at. I wanna talk about all of that. And as well as insurance, we wanna talk about if there is any need for insurance.
There is not always a need for insurance, but life insurance, disability insurance, and certainly some long-term care in certain situations. Understanding what your risk profile is and is there an insurance need or is there flexibility for what I'll call an insurance luxury where you don't necessarily need it, but it's a nice benefit to your family if you do have it.
And then finally, do you have estate documents? And again, I'm saying all this, and I, as a financial planner, I'm not preparing your tax return. I'm not writing your estate documents. I'm not selling insurance, but I wanna understand what all of those things are doing. And for lack of a better term, really is trying to serve in that financial quarterback rule.
So if there are things happening in the accounts that impact the tax picture, we wanna make sure that we're coming alongside that CPA or tax professional to just make sure we're all on the same page because they're often getting information after it happens. So let's talk to 'em in advance as far as tax planning goes and see if we're on the same page, and if those tax planning opportunities make sense for their full tax picture as well.
Same thing on the insurance side. We're really trying to help pair clients with insurance professionals that are looking out for their best interests, not just trying to sell them products, or really trying to be a part of those conversations with clients rather than just sending them off to somebody else.
But then what's really important is that you also have estate documents, and nobody really likes to talk about the fact that we're all gonna die, but we are at some point in time, all gonna die. And so it's really important to have a plan in place for what do you want to happen. Most people think you don't have to do that until later in life.
But really, if you think about the typical person in their thirties, they're may be owning a home, they have potentially a spouse or a family, or they're growing what their family unit looks like, and you need to have documents in place for what? What happens if you are in an accident, something happens to you while you're still quite young?
You really wanna have things set up so that they flow appropriately. Because when the moment, the more that you have pre-planned for the less administrative issues that your family or your spouse is gonna feel after the fact. Because in that situation, they're already mourning their loss.
And so I find estate planning and legacy planning to be a gift of clarity to the family so that they don't have to overly worry about some of the administrative things or probate or any of those things that could have potentially been avoided. So when I'm working with somebody, I'm really saying, “Hey, do you have estate documents?” “Okay, you do.”
“Great. When was the last time you looked at those estate documents?” 'Cause it is important to dive in a little deeper. Maybe every three to five years. And just make sure it still aligns with where you're at. But also if you have any life-changing events, like if you move to a new city, you get divorced, you get married, you lose somebody in the family, if your financial picture drastically changes, maybe a job or a business sale or something along those lines, inheritance, you should really be touching base with your attorney and making sure that your estate documents are still in order for what you want to happen. now that your financial picture has changed, and I'll dive in a little bit deeper on that on all of these things, again, in future episodes, but a little bit more today, the first thing that comes up a lot is cash flow and budgeting.
So one of the things that's gonna be really helpful for you to make your longer-term picture is to say, “Okay, what does it really cost to make the world go round right now?” And whether you use a budgeting app or Excel, or you're just keeping all of that information in your head, really understanding, okay, from month to month, how expensive is my life or the life of my entire family, so I know—and that number is gonna drive a lot of different things—I know that if that's what it costs to live right now, those numbers are gonna inflate long term and we need to plan for that with our future investments so that when we were fast forwarding to retirement, we have enough money to cover our regular living expenses.
But also that is gonna impact your risk profile in some of your investments and that is gonna impact some other personal decisions. So it really comes down to knowing your numbers and making sure that you understand. And then of course, you're gonna have shifts in that you may be on a particular budget, but then you decide that the best thing for your oldest kid is to go to a different school at a different tuition rate.
Or maybe you're going public to private school. That's gonna shift the budget. And we have to talk about that and plan for that. So really understanding what those numbers are so that you can make those decisions. Are we gonna be able to swing this or not be able to look at that? The other thing is, particularly if you happen to be a small business owner rather than a W2 employee, because W2 employees have withholding done for tax purposes on their paycheck.
So they're not often having to make quarterly tax payments, but if you are a 1099 or you run your own business of any sort, you're likely paying quarterly tax payments, and so it's really beneficial to be looking at what those numbers are. Pre-planning for taxes—one of the biggest things that I hate is tax surprises.
I don't want any surprises for myself. I don't want any surprises for my clients. So really understanding, okay, if this is how we've done this year, we better make an estimated tax payment of X to make sure that we're not paying penalties and we're not getting hit with a big tax bill right at April.
So figuring out what those non-negotiable expenses are within your budget, both personal and on the business side, definitely taxes is one of those, and to the extent that you can make it happen, and again, it's more of a deeper conversation about your overall income and personal budget. But savings should be one of those non-negotiables.
They always say pay yourself first. And that is easier said than done if you're running a busy household with a lot of people to take care of or maybe on a really limited budget. But even if it's just a little bit, trying to get a little bit put away for later or tomorrow dollars, which is gonna be beneficial long-term.
And I like to call it sort of financial self-care, like really understanding what that full picture looks like. So as those changes, if you know your numbers pretty well and you have those shifts in life come up, you can adjust to them more easily rather than in what I would call crisis mode.
The other area is to be looking at your overall investments. So all of this is really what I love about what I do with people because no two financial pictures look exactly the same. Two people can walk in with the same amount of money, and their goals and how they wanna spend it and how they wanna use it are completely different.
And so their investment styles are different. So it's really a matter of understanding for yourself how hard do you need your investment accounts to work for you in order for you to reach your goals? And so that's a part of the conversation with a planner or an advisor to look at that. If you're in a particular portfolio and it is projected to maybe earn 7% per year, is that going to be enough or do you need it to be more aggressive for your longer-term goals?
Having an idea of what that is, but then having that, the next part of that conversation is okay if you've sat down and you actually need it to be more aggressive to help reach your goals. You need to know the risks associated with that as well. And that's volatility. You're gonna see the higher risk profile that you have.
The more aggressively you're invested, the more you are going to see the account balances bounce around. And in theory, we're still trending upward over the long-term average and maybe at a higher rate than you were in a more conservative portfolio. But there's an emotional side to that too. So you need to know exactly what to expect in that and create a plan.
The other thing I like to say is when we're talking about investments, don't panic, particularly if you're in a more aggressive portfolio. If you've set that up with your advisor with the knowledge that there is going to be volatility along the way, if that, if you hit one of those more volatile moments and you panic and decide to liquidate your assets, that could be detrimental to your future growth because now you may miss out on that bounce back from that dip and the volatility.
You wanna make sure that you're having those conversations and really training your brain to understand that there's going to be storms along the way, but you need to be ready to ride those out if you don't have the comfort to be able to do that, then make the change and have a less aggressive portfolio where you won't see as much volatility. So really having a very deep conversation about what you are working towards, what your comfort levels are. If your investments match your goals, really getting pretty deep, and then again, going back to brave questions.
If your advisor is sitting there and spitting out all kinds of stats and numbers at you about the different investments in the account, it is important that your advisor understands exactly what's invested in there, but you maybe don't care about those nitty gritty details. You care, “Am I okay? How is this doing? Why am I invested in these types of positions?”
And so if they're giving you information that sounds smart, but maybe isn't helping you to better understand, you need to just speak up and say, “Okay. But I don't understand what you're saying. Can you explain that in a different way, or can you break this down separately?”
I think it's easy for advisors to sit down and just start spitting out numbers and stats and not necessarily showing you why that is important to you. So just being cognizant and just saying, “Hey, I could use some different information here. This is very helpful, but this is more aligned with what I'm looking for.”
And honestly, in my position, I've seen both. I've had clients where they really wanted the nitty gritty details and that's great. And we're ready to prepare and provide those to any and all clients. But then I've had other clients that really wanna know, okay. The account balance we had some volatility, account balance went down.
What does that mean for the longer-term picture? And do we need to make adjustments, and do we need to make changes along the way? And so it's really like focusing back in on the planning and not necessarily the nitty gritty of the investment accounts, but which are all important and it's all interrelated.
The next topic, again, when I said we're gonna go through the five financial planning, like core areas, that's cashflow and budgeting, investments, tax planning, insurance and risk management, and estate and legacy planning. So on the tax planning side, the goals are to maximize your income, minimize your taxes, and adjust for changes.
So we have to get into profit-boosting habits. The more that you can save in your taxes is more money that you can save for yourself for retirement or your other goals. So really understanding, okay, what are those actions that we can take with a personal level or the business level that are going to maximize our income, but reduce our taxes?
And it would take an hour to get into all of the nitty gritty details of what some of those options may be. So we'll do that on another episode, but that is just some quick things that can throw out for you is on the maximizing income.
We wanna look at boosting our profit as much as we can, looking at whether you should be salary or taking a salary or doing distributions from your company if you happen to be a business owner and then being accountable to your own tax picture and making sure that you're saving appropriately for taxes but you're looking at all of those opportunities or looking with your CPA or your financial planner on the opportunities to save some taxes.
So sometimes those come with changing the business structure if you are a business owner or looking at different deductions, implementing a retirement plan or adjusting the retirement plan. Those are big tax saving opportunities.
Then there's other things that you can look at like charitable giving and other opportunities where we'll dive into that in more detail with another CPA on the call in the near future. And then of course, you have to be flexible and adjust for change.
So there's gonna be legislative changes, there's gonna be changes within your business, there's gonna be changes within your personal finances. You may change a job and it changes your overall picture, and you wanna just make sure you're doing okay. That is gonna happen throughout your financial journey.
And just making sure that you have a good relationship with your professional team to know what those changes are so that you can prepare for them, which is what is ultimately the most helpful thing to have, and whether you're doing self-research or you're surrounding yourself with other professionals, making sure that your professional team is really there to help support you as you're doing tax planning, as you're doing tax strategies and making sure that you're doing everything above board. And then of course, looking for all of the opportunities to maximize your income and save on those taxes.
Alright, insurance. This is a different area that's super fun to talk about. So insurance has many different forms, and again, I talked earlier in the episode about an insurance need versus having it more as a luxury. So what I will say is I like to use myself for this is when I got married, we had two incomes, and we had if one income went away, could the other person pay for the mortgage?
The answer to that was no. So oops. Maybe we should figure out okay, should I have life insurance on Jen or Bo so that if one of us was to suddenly pass, the other person could still pay for the house, and then their salary would cover enough to make the world go round, otherwise. So we put life insurance in place on both of us to cover that.
Then we started having kids, okay, if one of us passes away prematurely, we have that insurance to go ahead and look at paying off the mortgage. But do we have enough that sort of gives comfort to the other person. You might need additional childcare if you're running a one-parent household, or maybe you want just a little buffer for college or something like that. So we changed our life insurance.
And in both cases, we felt like we had an insurance need. We didn't have significant savings at that time to cover those expenses without insurance. So we set up what was called term life insurance, and this is very much like you pay in every single year, but only for a select number of years.
So 20, sometimes they're 10 years, sometimes they're 20 years, sometimes they're 30 years. When we're looking at our kids, we're doing 20 years because by the time they're born and get to college, like we've had a plan. There are other insurance products out there. Term life insurance is like the cheapest, easiest way to address some of these insurance needs, and that's usually the first place I look when I'm working with clients and trying to understand what their overall insurance need looks like.
There are other types of insurance such as permanent life insurance or whole life insurance. We'll take a deeper dive into all of those different policies and what those look like in the terms. But particularly in our case, those weren't as cost effective.
So we went with term life insurance under the theory that, when you fast forward 20 years from now, we are probably in a better financial picture as well where we've saved money and we have a little bit of a buffer in savings if any of those things were to happen. Another type of insurance that I address, particularly with my clients who are still in the professional space is disability insurance.
If you're the primary breadwinner in your household and you become disabled, how will you continue to bring that income into the household? And one of the biggest things I wanna point out is particular to disability insurance, is looking at the coverage because some of them are for your own occupation.
And some of them are for any occupation. I don't think it's a secret. I'm a financial advisor and a financial planner. If I couldn't do that, but I could still physically work down the street bagging groceries or flipping burgers, that's any occupation. So if I had a policy in place that would only pay for any occupation if I became disabled, but I'm able to do some things, but I'm not able to do this anymore, that would not be as beneficial.
So for me specifically, I looked at own occupation coverage to make sure that if I was able to do this anymore, I could still receive disability benefits and then be able to still bag groceries if I decided to do that or something like that. So that's like the biggest thing to look for when you're looking at your policy.
The other thing I look at is when I'm working with clients. You can buy private disability insurance, but sometimes it's more cost-effective to fund disability insurance, either through your employer if they offer it, or through group benefits. So particularly like dentists and attorneys, they have, through their associations—the Dental Association or the Bar Association—they will sometimes offer group benefits for the profession, so that's a nice place to look. Or you could get maybe lower cost coverage because it's in a group plan, and then you could supplement with private if it wasn't significant enough.
Another area of insurance is long-term care. We could go on for days about insurance, but long-term care insurance is really to help fund some of those needs for your care later in life. People are generally looking at purchasing long-term care, maybe in their fifties. I've seen a few people looking at it maybe in their later forties. Obviously the buying insurance is a easier thing to accomplish when you're younger and healthier and you can pass all the health screenings.
So it's just something to consider. If we, as we're aging, other things are starting to fall apart and that can make insurance more costly. On the long-term care insurance side, there are two types of policies. I'm sure there's many variations of both of these, but they have traditional long-term care insurance, and that's very much like your homeowner's insurance policy. You're paying in every single year or month, or depending upon what your premium setup is.
And if you do not use it, you do not get anything back. And that's very much like you're a homeowner's insurance policy. You're paying in, and if your house doesn't burn down, you're not getting any of those premium dollars back. But if it does, it's there to help cover some of the costs. So that's the same for traditional long-term care policy.
There's these policies that are a little bit newer to the market, maybe the less of five or so years called hybrid long-term care policies. So that is very much you're paying in premiums and there's a variety of ways that you can do that. But if you use it for long-term care, there's a benefit base that you can use for your care.
But if, for some reason, you dropped it and suddenly you don't use your long-term care benefits, there is a death benefit to your beneficiaries. Just picking on the a hundred thousand dollars policy, you may pay in to, it's essentially paying in for a hundred thousand dollars life insurance policy, but your benefit base for long-term care is significantly more than that if you—I am using off the top of my head the client example—their benefit base may be in the $300,000, so they can use that towards their care.
But if they don't use that towards their care, there's a hundred thousand dollars, essentially a return of premium for their beneficiaries that they can collect if that family member was to not use the care. So definitely something to look at. It can be a costly insurance. So that's where I talk about is it a need or is it a luxury? I've written some content about that as well that I'll share in the show notes there, so you can see some more details on the differences there.
One type of insurance that I bring up with clients or prospective clients, or really anybody that I'm talking to that where we start to get onto this topic is umbrella insurance. It is extremely affordable, and it is just an extra layer of coverage and protection for you and your family. So when you're driving around, you have auto insurance, but if something was to happen, like if you get into a car accident and, unfortunately, it is your fault, you may be sued, and the first place that they're gonna go to sue you is to that auto insurance policy.
But there is sometimes potential where somebody can come at you, okay, the insurance policy covers up to a certain amount and they may sue you for more. So having an umbrella insurance policy would be like a second layer of insurance protection, and it's a little bit broader in what it covers.
So you have auto insurance, you carry homeowner's insurance or rent's insurance. But if somebody like trips and falls under your property or somebody's doing work there and they get injured, it's just another layer of protection and, again, it is extremely affordable. It's very easy to get. I think for myself, I pay maybe $50 a month to have additional coverage for umbrella coverage.
So it's just something I always tell people to look at if they don't already have it. And the amount of coverage that you need is really based on your overall wealth, and we can have a conversation about that, or you can talk with your insurance provider or your financial advisor and planner to make sure that you have adequate coverage.
And then for my business owners out there, if you're running a business and you happen to be in the leadership position, you may need to look at keyman insurance and buy-sell agreements amongst your team and other leaders. So again, a deeper conversation, but it's definitely worth looking at because if you're the CEO and something happens to you, then what happens to the business and making sure that there's a plan there, and an insurance policy may provide some additional dollars towards the business to help cover until there's a replacement put in place.
And then finally back to estate and legacy planning. I cannot stress this enough. Just having a plan creates so much clarity. I've seen it go both ways, and it is night and day difference. I've had clients along the way, or I've talked with friends and family members along the way who have lost somebody, and there was not a clear plan.
And that is complicated. And, again, you're in a place where you're mourning this loved one, which now you're also being asked to meet with attorneys and bankers and all these other people to make sure that things aren't frozen and everything can go in the right direction.
Potentially you have to go through probate, so it can make the experience significantly longer. So really just looking at what you have and how do you want it to flow? If something was to happen to you tomorrow, what do you want to happen with your assets? If you have minor children, this is really important 'cause you'll wanna make sure that you set things up appropriately for minor children.
You need to put guardians in place and all of that. Honestly, I've been through the process. I have a great attorney who is wonderful through this, but it still is not fun to talk about, right? You don't wanna talk about what happens to your children if you and your spouse die. But it is important that you do have a plan for that.
The biggest thing that I see people using estate planning for is to also avoid probate, because if you don't have things appropriately titled and flowing appropriately in your estate plan, things can get tied up in the probate system where they're going through and they're trying to analyze, okay, what are the assets?
What were the intentions? And you're gonna be subject to whatever the state laws are and how should that flow and the assets may not end up where you personally really wanted them to. It's just a matter of having a plan in place, giving your family that clarity, trying to avoid probate as much as possible, and then again, going back to plan and updating it for those life changes.
Definitely just taking a look at it every three to five years is important, but then of course, as you have life events. If you're having kids, you're getting married. Maybe you got divorced. If you're starting a business and there might be a liquidity you have an existing business and there's a liquidity event coming from a sale of a business, you really wanna look at how that changes the overall financial picture and just providing as much clarity as possible because when there isn't, it can be really difficult for the family who is remaining.
And when it is a gift that you provided that clarity and were able to help them administer your estate in the way that you really wanted it flow. And that comes down to all kinds of things, not just the assets, but also your wishes for what you want to happen with your body and all kinds of things, and being able to put personal notes in there to go with the antique ring that you wanted to give your granddaughter, or whatever the case may be just having things in place so that there isn't fighting on the other end by family members that remain. And just trying to provide that clarity as best as possible.
So we've covered a lot. This is a much deeper conversation on each one of these areas and there's so many different avenues, but I just want you to be prepared with, okay, say, get your head outta the sand. Look at the whole financial picture to understand where you are now and what changes or opportunities there are to impact your longer term financial journey.
Really looking at your cash flow and your budgeting, understanding your investments, doing tax planning where necessary, looking at your overall insurance and risk management, and looking at those estate docs and making sure you have all your ducks in a row. That's not a quick exercise. None of this is, but it's really just something that if you have the right professional team, you can work through that and have so much clarity.
And again, I truly believe that there is an advisor out there for everyone. And so if you're not feeling that you're getting the support and attention that you need, look for that team that is gonna meet you where you are and support you in where you wanna go, and really not make you feel bad or carry shame about what your financial picture looks like because there's always opportunities to make shifts and changes to get you need to be where you wanna be. I firmly believe that.
All right. That's it for today's episode. I hope this conversation helped you feel a little more empowered to look at your numbers, ask the hard questions, and get honest about where you are because that awareness is the foundation of every strong financial decision.
Remember, you don't need perfect habits or perfect answers. You just need willingness to look. That's the bravest step. You've already taken it by being here. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this helpful, share it with someone who might need a little financial courage today.
That's it for today's episode of The Wealth Development Studio. Remember, financial clarity is powerful. Do you need help with your financial plan? Go to pelicanfinancialplanning.com to schedule a call with me. Until next time.
