A Holistic Planner is one who does Legal, Financial, and Tax Planning all under one roof. All for the best interest of the client. Because understand, some firms do Legal planning only, some do Financial planning only. A Holistic planner brings it all together in one unified plan.
Attorney and Financial Advisor Chris explain What a Holistic Planner is 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 Planning
Hey, this is Chris Berry with Castle Wealth, and today we’re going to talk about, what does holistic mean as it relates to planning? And if you like this information, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Christopher Berry is a leading estate attorney and advisor in the area of retirement and legacy planning. He’s 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 we consider ourself holistic planners. What does that mean? Well, it means that we do legal, financial and tax planning all under one roof, all in the best interest of our clients. Now, there’s not that many people that actually offer what we do, especially to the level that we do it. And there’s a lot of people that might do investment planning, they might do tax planning, they might do estate planning, they might do elder law. Not many people do elder law, but they might do elder law. But there’s not a lot of firms that bring it all together in one unified plan that’s in the best interest of our clients. And when we put together an overall plan like this we call it a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint. And that’s really what we’re doing, is we’re creating clarity, confidence, and comfort or peace of mind, as it relates to your retirement and what you leave as a legacy. And what we’ve done through our team and through our knowledge is we’ve linked together these three key areas of legal planning, financial planning, tax planning, all in your best interest.
And so as part of that Retirement and Legacy Blueprint, we think there’s five key areas that need to be brought together under this umbrella of legal, financial and tax planning, or holistic planning. First is having an income plan, making sure your money lasts as long as you do, right? So while we’re working we’re accumulating wealth. And then what our focus is on is helping you preserve that and then figuring out a plan for distribution.
And then second, having an investment plan. Okay? How are we going to invest those assets that are in your best interest that you’re comfortable with to make sure that your money’s going to last as long as you do to beat inflation so that you, if it’s your goal, can leave something to the next generation?
Biggest Risk and Opportunity
Third, and this is the biggest risk and biggest opportunity I think right now, is tax planning. Okay? Everyone does their taxes, whether you do it yourself, or you go to H&R Block, or you have a CPA doing. That part’s actually pretty easy. Now we do that. We have a CPA that’s affiliated with us. But that’s tax preparation, what we’re talking about is tax planning. What is your plan for the next year, the next three years, five years, 10 years in terms of minimizing taxes? So it’s not looking at taxes through the micro lens of minimizing taxes in one specific year, what we’re doing is looking at taxes through the macro lens of minimizing taxes for your retirement and what you leave as a legacy.
And there’s been a whole slew of different changes in this area, whether it’s the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, whether we see the exploding debt bubble that’s over $30 trillion, whether it’s the SECURE Act that was passed in 2020 that changes how we leave things to the next generation, whether it’s the three pandemic-related bills that added 1.9 billion, 900 trillion, added to the federal deficit. Taking all of this into account, what is your tax plan? That’s something that we’re very passionate about helping people with. Making sure we’re putting more money in your pocket and what you leave to the next generation versus what you leave to the Internal Revenue Service.
Fourth, healthcare planning. So not only covering health insurance costs and Medicare, we help you with that, but really dialing in and focusing on long-term care strategies. Not just pure traditional long-term care insurance, but looking at legal strategies like Castle Trust, looking at insurance strategies like asset based long-term care or hybrid long-term care policies that also have a death benefit, or investment tools that can be leveraged so if you need long-term care, instead of paying out, say, a $1000 a month, you can pay out $2,000 a month to help you leverage to answer the longterm care question.
And then fifth, legacy planning. What do we leave to the next generation? Creating that legal entity to that structure to avoid probate, control the distribution upon death, and also build an asset protection, and wrapping this all together in what we call a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint. Now, there’s not a lot of firms out there that do it and this is where I look at the hierarchy of advice. Think of this like a pyramid, at the bottom of the pyramid you have your vendors, and the vendors come in different categories but basically they sell you a product or a tool. They don’t really care if it’s in your best interest or if it’s what you need, you walk in, you take it off the shelf, you go home, you do whatever you want with it. And for the do it yourselfers, they kind of like this, they feel like they’re saving in cost because they’re doing it themselves, they know what tool they want, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
Best Annuity
So what are the vendors out there? These are your annuity salesmen, your insurance salesmen. You go to an insurance person they’ll sell you insurance. And it has to be suitable for you. It might not be in your best interest or what you want, but it’s like walking into a butcher shop. You walk into a butcher shop, they’re going to sell you a piece of meat. It’s not going to be rancid, but maybe our role is more of a dietician. Maybe you shouldn’t walk into that butcher shop, maybe you should go have a salad. So you see the vendors, so this might be your basic estate planning attorney. Everyone that walks in gets a trust, “Here you go.”
And I’ll tell you a lot of those trusts that these estate planning attorneys put together, you might not even need. It’s all about what are your goals? But I know there’s a lot of people that you walk into that office, you’re walking out with a trust. So you see this with attorneys. In terms of investments, the Vanguards of the world, the Fidelities, not to say they’re doing anything wrong, you can log in and open up an account and take whatever mutual fund you want, but does it fit into any type of plan? No. You’re just buying, taking that product off the shelf and cobbling together your own plan. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but just understand what it is.
Or those people that do annuity sales, where, “Okay, I’m going to get you the best annuity,” but is an annuity right for you? Maybe, maybe not. It’s a tool. But if you go to one of these people who hold themselves as financial planners but all they do is sell annuities, then you’re walking out of there with your annuity, whether you like it or not. Likewise with life insurance, okay? These are vendors. They’re going to sell you something. Okay? And hopefully it’s the right tool. It might not be.
Now the second level of that pyramid is what we call investment advisors. Now, these people actually have to give you advice that typically is in your best interest but a lot of times they’re limited to this one little area, right? And so this would be places… I don’t want to single any of these places out, but a lot of times they’ll just talk to you about your investments, right? They’ll put together a set of mutual fund stocks, bonds that the match your investment profile. But are they talking to you about long-term care? Are they talking about tax programs? Talk to one of these kind of second level people, ask them, “What is the tax planning strategy?” At most, they might say, “Well, you should do Roth conversions or something.” Right? But they’ll say, “Oh, I can’t give you any tax advice or anything like that.”
Retirement and Legacy Blueprint
Talk to them about long-term care planning strategies. Are they going to talk to you about asset protection trusts? Are they going to talk about the best investments if you’re concerned about longterm care? Are they going to talk about tax-free investment tools other than Roths? Probably not. Okay? Will they get you a good rate of return? Maybe, but that’s not the only thing at the end of the day that matters is your rate of return, what matters is having an overall plan and having this investment piece that fits into an overall plan.
And then at the top of the pyramid, and I’m not saying we’re the only firm out there, is holistic planning, where we’re looking at putting together a legal, financial, and tax plan. A Retirement and Legacy Blueprint that is in your best interest, that’s individualized for you, that matches your goals. Because, guess what? That second level of investment advisors, it’s plug and play. It’s paint by numbers. They’re putting you into some type of templated plan, right? “Okay, here’s your 60/40 portfolio.” A lot of times these places are even using their own mutual funds so they’re almost double-dipping. A lot of times the expenses on these are pretty high, but they’re not giving you that holistic advice that you’re getting at the top of the pyramid. And as an attorney investment advisor, and we have a CPA that’s affiliated with us, we’re putting together an income plan, an investment plan, tax plan, healthcare plan, and a legacy plan, wrapping it all together as part of a Retirement and Legacy Blueprint.
So yeah, there’s a lot of different places that you can get these investment tools, you can get these legal tools. You can go to the lowest level and just go to the vendors. Yeah, you’ll probably save a couple bucks on the front end, but it could cost your family. And I’ve seen this before, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Likewise, you could go to that second level, where yeah, okay, you’ll walk in there and they’ll manage your investments for you, but what legal structure do they have there? Is it the best legal structure? It may not be. And so, great, they got you maybe a 1% better rate of return than if you manage it yourself, but if you lose all of that to the devastating cost of long-term care, because it wasn’t in the right legal structure, what was the point of it? Or if now, because they’re not talking about tax planning, you’re having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes during your lifetime and what you leave to the next generation, was it really worth that extra 1% rate of return that maybe you would have gotten by just doing it yourself?
And then at the top, again, of the pyramid is that holistic planning, where we’re tying together legal, financial, and tax planning all under one roof, that family, office environment that’s in your best interest.
So hopefully this has been helpful to help you understand what truly a holistic planning is. What it is, is really sitting down with you, partnering with you, figuring out what your goals are, and utilizing every tool available to put together a plan that’s in your best interest, from a legal perspective, from a tax perspective, from a financial perspective. So if you like this, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thank you so much.
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.