April 13, 2021
Value of Holistic Advice | Who to Trust With Your Legacy Blueprint?
Atty. Chris Berry discusses the Value of a Holistic Advisor in this episode of Daily Wisdom.
Estate Attorney and Advisor Chris Berry of Castle Wealth Group answers questions on retirement and estate planning every Wednesday at 1pm. Register via this link or give our office a call at 844-885-4200.
Castle Wealth Group and Christopher Berry help families with estate planning, elder law, retirement planning, and tax planning from their offices in Brighton, Ann Arbor, Livonia, Bloomfield Hills, and Novi.
Castle Wealth Group helps families with their legal, financial, and tax planning for their retirement and legacy.
With the use of legal structures like revocable living trusts, Castle Trusts (asset protection trusts), Chris Berry and Castle Wealth Group can help your family plan, protect, and preserve what is important through their Retirement and Legacy Blueprint Process.
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Episode Transcript
Holistic Advice
Hey, this is Chris Berry. And today we’re going to talk about the Value Of Holistic Advice. If you like this information, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you get notified when we release more videos just like this.
Christopher Berry is a leading estate attorney and advisor in the area of retirement and legacy planning. He has been featured in publications, such as Forbes, Kiplinger’s, Crain’s Detroit, and more. He’s the host of the weekly radio show and podcast, The Chris Berry Show. He’s a national thought leader, as it relates to retirement and legacy planning and has authored the Amazon best-selling book, The Caregiver’s Legal Guide.
So today, we’re going to talk about the value of holistic advice and how you need to be careful where you get your information from. So what I’m going to do is share my screen real quick to further illustrate what I’m talking about here. With regards to advice, think of it kind of like a pyramid. Right? At the bottom of the pyramid, this is where we have our vendors. Right? They don’t really provide you advice. All they’re doing is providing you with a product or a tool, not necessarily making sure the tool is in your best interest. Think of this as if you’re looking for investments, Vanguard, or investing on your own at Fidelity or Schwab, you pick your own investments, or you might visit an insurance salesman or annuity salesman where the only tool, really, is a hammer, and everything looks like a nail to them, or even your basic estate planning attorney or trust mill. Anyone that comes in gets a revocable trust, whether it’s in your best interest or not, whether that’s even the best tool for you.
Retirement and Legacy Blueprint
One level above that would be kind of advisors. And typically, what I’m talking about here are your investment advisors, where they’re just talking to you about your investments and not talking about legal planning or legacy or tax planning or healthcare planning. They’re just giving you advice on how to substructure your investments. Think of these as the brokerage houses. I’m not going to name any specific names, but a lot of them have two names tied to them. They’ll help you with investments, sell you some mutual funds or stocks or bonds, put together a portfolio, but not talking to you about necessarily income planning or tax planning. Good luck trying to talk to them about a tax plan, legacy planning, or estate planning.
And then at the top is holistic planning and this is really what we focus on. And really what we’re doing is we’re focusing on five key areas. First, income planning. Making sure that we have a income plan for you in retirement. Second, investment planning. Making sure that we have an investment plan. Third is going to be, tax planning. Making sure we have a plan for taxes and this is one of the biggest areas of risk and opportunity right now. Fourth, healthcare planning. How are we going to cover long-term care costs? How are we going to choose the best Medicare plan? And then fifth, legacy planning. Okay? Creating that legal structure, that estate plan. And really, at the end of the day, this is what we focus on is this area of Holistic Planning that addresses all five of these key areas. And we call this creating a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint.
Holistic Plan
So this is something different than you’re not going to get this from your vendors, your Vanguards, your estate planning attorney that just creates a trust, whether you need one or not and it’s just a basic revocable trust, from your annuity salesman, your life insurance salesman. Good luck trying to get all this from your investment advisor, the guy that’s selling you investments or telling you about the next hot stock tip. This is really only available when you get into this top of the pyramid and understand there’s a lot more people or services here, and here, than here. And so the question is, when it comes to your retirement and legacy, where do you want to put your faith, your trust? Because sure you can get an investment plan or you can purchase some individual stocks at a Robinhood or a Vanguard. You can call up your local estate planning attorney or local attorney. You can even download legal forms on the Internet. You can go to LegalZoom. Those are all vendors.
Likewise, you can talk to the person that handles your investments, but is it going to be a Holistic Plan that covers your income and investments, tax planning, healthcare planning, legacy planning, et cetera? So, that’s really what we’re talking about, when we’re talking about Holistic Planning. It’s not just about creating an investment plan, it’s about creating a income plan, a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint, to give you confidence, to give you clarity, and to give you comfort for your retirement and what you leave to the next generation. So hopefully this has been helpful. This has been Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group. Make sure to subscribe if you like this information. Thank you.
Castle Wealth Group has clients across the nation and helps families plan, protect, and preserve what is important by creating a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint.