Creating a wealth plan

Creating a thoughtful wealth plan can help you reach your financial needs and priorities. Here are some things to consider, including income and tax planning.

Even people who are well off sometimes stress over financial matters. That’s because wealth and liquidity aren’t the same thing. You might be wealthy on paper — but those assets could be tied up in long-term investments or held in trust(s).

It’s a key reason why defining clear goals (short, intermediate and long-term), along with a thoughtful wealth plan designed to achieve them, is so important. Your wealth plan is your roadmap to success.

Build, preserve and transfer

Over time, as your wealth grows and your life evolves, your financial needs and priorities will also shift. Your wealth plan, therefore, will need to adapt:

This is a bell curve chart illustrating how wealth builds over one’s lifetime from age 25 to 85.

Y axis shows the stages of wealth during one’s lifetime

Bell curve begins with establish earning capacity (between ages 25 – 25) and continues upward with Maximize wealth accumulation (ages 35-50) The high point of the curve is Generate income assets (ages 55 - 65) and then curves downwards as Transfer wealth (ages 75-85) happens.

X-axis describes one’s age and normal wealth building activities.

Early on, your planning needs typically will be simpler. But as your wealth and family grow, so too does the complexity of your financial challenges — as income planning, tax planning and wealth transfer planning all grow in importance.

Curious about evolving planning needs and strategies?

Check out our Wealth Planning Solutions page for a deeper discussion of tax, cash flow, wealth transfer and philanthropy solutions.

Three cornerstones of planning

Every successful wealth journey begins with a thoughtful plan and a knowledgeable guide to help you:

Accumulate

Together we’ll create a budget, investment strategy and asset allocation that address all your important goals like buying a home, saving for a child’s education and, of course, retirement.

Protect

From building a short-term emergency fund to identifying appropriate insurance coverages to protect your income and assets, we’ll help secure your wealth against the unexpected.

Transfer

It may seem a long way off, but it takes great foresight and careful planning to tax-efficiently transfer assets to future generations.

Why plan?

Among its many benefits, crafting a comprehensive wealth plan helps:

Quantify and prioritize your various goals
Effectively balance the funding needs of competing goals
Align specific investments to specific goals based on how far away and how much risk is needed/acceptable
Calm emotions and instill confidence to endure short-term stock market volatility
Develop better spending, saving and investing habits

Mitigate taxes

As soon as you begin accumulating wealth, start thinking about ways to minimize estate taxes. Currently, for 2024, you can transfer up to $13.61 million to anyone upon your death without triggering a federal estate tax. This is considered your lifetime exemption. However, you can also give up to $18,000 per year to as many people as you wish without it counting toward that lifetime exemption.

Get Started

Just starting your financial journey? Fill out our Financial Education Goal Setting Worksheet to document your goals. Then, together
we’ll narrow down a vast array of possible actions to the few critical steps that will most positively impact your financial life.