Do I Need An Estate Plan?

David Witter is the founder and CEO of Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors, located in Winter Park, Florida.

Do I Need An Estate Plan?

A common question we get is, “David, do I need an estate plan?”

How Often to Update Estate Planning

Or, another way they may ask it is, “How often should I be updating my estate planning documents?”

Plans Change, Should You Change With Them?

And the way I like to answer that is, in times of rapid change, like we’ve been experiencing in a pandemic, what happens is that tends to make people’s plans. It changes not just within estate planning, but in planning in general. It makes things obsolete or out of date, or not necessarily optimized to capture the best opportunities for you.

What Are Possible Changes?

So you might say, “Well, what are possible changes?” Economic changes, right? The general conditions of the market, your financial situation, maybe demographics, like maybe an addition to the family, tax law changes, law changes, inflation, if you have future inflation.

• Economic
• Market Conditions
• Financial Situations
• Family Demographics
• Tax Law Changes
• Inflation

Changing Tax Rates, Change Plans

The anticipation of future tax rates, believe it or not, will affect not only your tax planning, but also estate planning, or the most common one that we see is your intentions change as your loved ones mature, or you become charitably inclined, or a combination of those.

You’re like, “Hey, my purposes for what I want my wealth to do for me both now and at my passing.” Those intentions tend to change and mature over time.

Second Opinion, Second Look at Estate Plan

All of that points lead to getting your estate planning updated, or at least a second opinion on it. And that’s also true for any planning in general.

David Witter is the founder and CEO of Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors.