Family Wealth Management for Today and Future Generations
As family wealth grows, financial decisions often begin to affect more people. Parents may be preparing for retirement while helping children with education or a home purchase. Grandparents may be considering gifts to younger generations. Business interests, inheritances, charitable goals, and estate plans can add additional layers.
Family wealth management provides a framework for organizing these decisions while considering both current needs and longer-term family priorities.
What Does Family Wealth Management Include?
The planning needs of each family are different, but family wealth management may bring together areas such as:
Investment management
Retirement planning
Estate planning
Tax considerations
Insurance planning
Education funding
Charitable giving
Business interests
Wealth transfer
The value of viewing these areas together is context. A gifting decision, for example, may have implications for cash flow, taxes, investments, and estate planning.
Advisory firms such as VestGen Wealth Partners offer financial planning across several of these areas, providing one example of how families can address related financial decisions within an ongoing planning relationship.
Start With the Family's Priorities
Before deciding how assets should be invested, gifted, or eventually transferred, families can identify what they want their wealth to support.
Priorities might include maintaining retirement resources, helping children or grandchildren, supporting charitable organizations, transferring a family business, or leaving an inheritance.
These goals may also compete for the same financial resources. Establishing priorities can help families evaluate how much may be available for different purposes and when financial commitments should occur.
Preparing the Next Generation for Wealth
Transferring assets is one part of multigenerational planning. Families may also want younger generations to understand the responsibilities that accompany those assets.
The appropriate conversations will depend on family circumstances and the ages of those involved. Topics may include saving, investing, charitable giving, family values, business ownership, or the purpose behind certain estate planning decisions.
Some families gradually involve adult children in selected financial conversations. This can provide context about family plans before a major inheritance or transfer occurs.
Coordinate Wealth Transfers With Estate Planning
Estate planning plays an important role in family wealth management.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, and other legal documents should be prepared and reviewed with a qualified estate planning attorney. Financial advisors can help organize information about investments, retirement accounts, insurance, beneficiaries, and other assets that may be relevant to those discussions.
For example, firms including VestGen Wealth Partners can incorporate estate planning considerations into financial planning and coordinate with a client's other professional advisors when appropriate.
Review the Plan as the Family Changes
Family wealth management is rarely a one-time exercise. Births, marriages, divorces, deaths, retirement, business transitions, inheritances, and significant changes in assets can all affect existing plans.
Periodic reviews can help families identify whether beneficiary designations, investment strategies, insurance needs, or estate planning discussions deserve renewed attention.
Tax and estate laws can also change, making coordination with qualified tax and legal professionals important when specific advice is needed.
Questions Families May Want to Discuss
Useful planning conversations may include:
What do we want our wealth to support?
Which financial needs come first?
How much do we intend to transfer during our lifetime?
Are beneficiaries and estate documents current?
How should charitable goals be incorporated?
When should younger generations become involved?
Who needs to participate in important financial decisions?
There may not be one answer for the entire family. The purpose is to establish a structure for discussing decisions that affect multiple generations.
Conclusion
Family wealth management can help organize financial decisions involving investments, retirement, estate planning, taxes, charitable giving, and future generations.
Every family's priorities and circumstances are different. Firms such as VestGen Wealth Partners provide one example of an advisory relationship where several areas of family financial planning can be considered together, with other professional advisors involved when appropriate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is family wealth management?
Family wealth management coordinates financial planning across areas that may include investments, retirement, estate planning, taxes, insurance, charitable giving, and wealth transfer.
When should children become involved in family wealth planning?
The timing depends on the family's circumstances, the children's ages and responsibilities, and the information parents are comfortable sharing.
Who may be involved in family wealth planning?
Depending on the family's needs, the professional team may include financial advisors, estate planning attorneys, CPAs, insurance professionals, and other specialists.