Cypress Wealth Services
October 2020
It’s been said that the most common arguments for married couples are about sex, parenting, or finances. While we can’t help with the first one, we might be able to help with the other two. As you grow older and settle into the empty-nesting stage, you might find that conversations about parenting and finances are increasingly intertwined.
The good news: you’ve done the hard part. You’ve raised your children and they have (hopefully) flown the nest and started their own productive lives.
But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, despite our hardest work and best intentions, our children just struggle. They may deal with problems such as addiction, bad financial habits, or excessive lifestyles. One parent may want to help the struggling child financially, while the other might be afraid a large inheritance could encourage poor decision-making, possibly harming the child even more.
So if you and your spouse disagree about passing on wealth, what should you do about it?
As a first step, we recommend revisiting the financial values you and your spouse have built into your lives over the years. What do you both believe about money and healthy finances? What do you not believe? Sometimes revisiting these financial values together can help you reach an initial point of common understanding.
This is an opportunity to discuss your financial values from a wider perspective. Where else might your values lead you to do the most good? Sometimes you might be able to reach a compromise with your spouse and plan to leave at least a portion of your wealth to charities you both care about.
From this standpoint, you can also evaluate your children’s financial values and how their values might align with or differ from yours. If you can agree that your children’s financial values don’t align with yours, it may be easier to understand each other’s concerns.
An increasingly popular component of legacy planning involves building in family values to accompany the wealth portion of your legacy plan. Building family values into your legacy plan requires open and honest communication between you and your spouse, as well as the communication of these values to your financial planner.
Your financial planner will need to get to know your other family members to help guide value-based discussions about wealth, wealth management, and how family wealth should be honored by developing future generations and act as a lasting tribute to the family members who have passed.
To start planning a family wealth legacy that you and your spouse can both feel comfortable with, partner with a trusted financial advisor that takes all of your concerns into consideration.
We believe we can give you the best financial advice when we cultivate a relationship that is transparent and honest, so you feel confident that we won’t pass off seemingly “non-financial” challenges as separate from our duty to you.
At Cypress Wealth Services, we uphold a Standard of Care commitment that ensures we will help you work through these challenges and reach a solution you can both agree on. Call our office today at 866.888.6563 to schedule a complimentary phone call.
Cypress Wealth Services is an independent RIA firm providing financial planning and investment management to high net worth individuals, families, business owners, and institutions. Cypress Wealth Services comprises professionals with diverse backgrounds and extensive experience and qualifications. Cypress Wealth Services is uniquely qualified to serve a broad range of client needs, and their experience and expertise act as a foundation for their client service process. The firm uses The Second Growth, which focuses on efficiently protecting, growing, and transferring to their loved ones the wealth and legacy a person has already built. With offices in Palm Desert, CA, Tustin, CA, and Anchorage, AK, the firm serves clients across the country in Wealth Management Services, Fiduciary Services, 401(k) Design and Management, Investment Reporting Services, Financial and Retirement Planning, and more. For more information, visit www.CypressWS.com or call 760.834.7250.
