Hey, guys, just got done with a run, and I thought to myself, "What better time to talk about estate planning?" Because no matter how much we try to take care of our health, we never know when it could collapse for us, a parent, a family member. So I wanted to address that, and how, maybe, there might be some ways to be proactive about that this year.

Hey, everyone, Matthew Grahn, with SC3F Wealth Management. Today, I wanted to spend a minute talking about a couple things that no one wants to talk about, death and taxes. But it's important, especially when it comes to estate planning for your family.

So, whether you're the aging parent who's maybe starting to have health issues, or possibly you're the adult children who are starting to take more and more care of your parents, these are conversations that need to happen, and it's so much better when it happens ahead of time, before the inevitable passing that we all will face.

So I wanted to spend just a minute talking through what does that conversation look like, what are some possible things you could get the ball rolling on today, and hopefully make some improvements on, and then finally, just, what is a neat way you could organize everything, whether you're that parent or adult child, so that in the event of that passing, the children, the beneficiaries, know where to go to find all the information they need, and it's easy.

So, first of all, I know that conversation is awkward. I've been part of it with multiple families. If it hasn't happened before, I know it can be awkward. So what can you do to help that out? And I think one of the best things you can do is just to bring in a trusted partner.

As a financial advisor, we can come in and we can help facilitate questions and that discussion, to hopefully help alleviate some of that awkwardness, and just get the ball rolling on that conversation. Part of what we're going to be doing is seeing if there's opportunities, and a lot of times that means and just seeing if there's maybe an opportunity to create a new trust, that makes more sense for that client, or maybe it's updating an existing trust, or maybe it's putting a trust in place, because there wasn't one before.

Obviously, updating wills and beneficiaries on brokerage accounts and bank accounts are important as well, to avoid probate, because who gets excited over probate? No one does, so let us help facilitate those conversations. And then finally, just organizing everything. I see this a lot where, unfortunately, someone passes, and there's just financial documents spread everywhere, and sometimes the kids can't even find them. So if you don't have one binder or one location where the beneficiaries can go in the event of a passing, to just have everything organized, I highly recommend creating that.

We actually have something that we can put together for clients alongside them called the Financial Strategies Action Plan. And that's the idea of it. It's one place, one binder, that's going to have contact information for financial advisor, estate attorney, CPA, insurance agent, as well as different documents for the financials in there, just to make things easy on the beneficiaries.

So, in closing, if you haven't done a few of those things, or maybe things just need updated, such as beneficiaries, I recommend doing that now. There's no time like the present and if you need a helping hand, reach out to me or another financial advisor.

Thank you.