Good To Know – Financial Life Planning Tips from Betty-Anne Howard, Athena Wealth and Legacy Planning

What kind of designations or licenses should you look for when you’re choosing a Financial Advisor?

Certified Financial Planner, Registered Financial Planner, Financial Advisor, and the list goes on! While designations are important, it’s more important to understand what your advisor CAN and CAN’T help you with. For example, if you are working with a broker at a bank, they are licensed only to talk about investments. They aren’t licensed to talk about annuities, which are an insurance product and they’re not licensed to talk about insurance in general. So there’s a whole other part of people’s planning that can get missed.

Especially if you’re working on an Estate Plan (talking about where your assets and money will go when you pass away), it’s extremely important to run that plan past a Financial Planner who can look at it with an Estate Planning lens and include insurance solutions into the mix.

What we’ve found is that insurance is often a much more viable solution, however, unfortunately, many Financial Advisors either aren’t aware of the advantages or aren’t licensed to provide them. Insurance solutions as a part of an overall Estate Plan can be less expensive and more tax efficient, but there is a real gap in knowledge – and therefore advice – depending on who you talk to.

As with most things when it comes to your financial situation, make sure you understand exactly what kind of advice you are being given, and ask LOTS of questions!

Till next time

Betty-Anne Howard / Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions

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Good To Know – Financial Life Planning Tips from Betty-Anne Howard, Athena Wealth and Legacy Planning

Case studies! Sometimes that’s the best way to give real-life examples of how we can make a difference by thinking about and planning for legacy gifts. Here is a scenario that happened recently when we met with a donor to discuss their estate & legacy plans including via options to maximize their estate value and minimize takes. When we looked at what the difference was between their “old” plan, and the “new” one, the results were astounding!

The “old” plan:

Estate Taxes To Be Paid To CRA – $150,000
Estate Assets to 2 Children (each) – $825,000
Estate Assets to Charities – $230,000
Debt – $250,000

The “new” plan:

Estate Taxes To Be Paid To CRA – $0
Estate Assets to 2 Adult Children (each) – $900,000
Estate Assets to Charities – $280,000
Debt – $0

The new plan meant that they went from owing approximately $150,000 in taxes to  CRA to $0, from $250,000 in debts owing to $0, PLUS 10% more to their adult children and 16% more in charitable donations. Wow!

This is the reality of what we can achieve together to most effectively structure your estate/legacy plan in a way that, as you can see above, maximizes the value to the charity and your heirs, and takes care of the tax liability – by reducing or eliminating it and, if you do have any debt, we have strategies to take care of that as well!

If you would like to learn more about how you too can make a difference in your community, your family, and the lives of others – please get in touch!

Till next time

Betty-Anne Howard / Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions

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The theme for this November’s Financial Literacy Month is: Make Change that Counts: Managing Your Money in a Changing World, and to that end I’m inviting you to think about your own personal mission statement. 

Or, as Karen Walrond, author of The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy, puts it, your spark statements.  

She says, “There’s something to be said for spending time figuring out how to declare what you stand for based on your values, and clarifying what you hope your legacy will be…it acts as a spark to ignite your activism journey.” 

By “activism,” she means aligning the gifts of who you are in the world with your purpose. 

This concept goes beautifully with the notion of making changes in our lives and the lives of others through how we manage our money. There are so many opportunities for us to donate time, energy, and money to the causes that matter to us the most.  

Have you thought about how you can contribute to our changing world via the charities and not-for-profits you either currently support or may be interested in learning more about to support?  In Canada, 2/3rds of our donations to charity happen in the last three months of the year…this November, let’s Make Change That Counts, together!

Till next time

Betty-Anne Howard / Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions

Get tips and strategies for your holistic financial life planning from the team of experts at Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions straight to your inbox – sign up here.

Many women, if not most, don’t see themselves as philanthropists. This is a word, like estate planning, that we find difficult to relate to. Lending a helping hand, yes! Helping out others in need, of course, that’s what we do. Fostering relationships with charities so we can volunteer and help out is how we’ve been raised; it’s an integral component of who we are as women. But still, we don’t see ourselves as “philanthropists.” 

 Estate planning and philanthropy may not seem relatable or achievable to many women, and yet it is, and it can also be so much more. Leaving gifts to your favorite charity in your will can make a huge difference to the tax implications of your estate plan, which in turn will make a difference in the lives of others.

 That’s why accessible and practical information is so important to the estate and legacy planning process. And by practical, I mean helping women understand how the different estate planning strategies would and could fit with their lives, and their own personal situations, with illustrations that demonstrate the pros and cons of each of the strategies.

 First steps? Try having conversations examining the words we use, how limiting they can be, and the importance of going deeper to find out what holds meaning for you in your life. 

Till next time,

Betty-Anne Howard / Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions

Get tips and strategies for your holistic financial life planning from the team of experts at Athena Wealth and Legacy Solutions straight to your inbox – sign up here.