1091 W. Morse Blvd., Suite 200
Winter Park, Florida, 32789

+1-407-937-0707
Mon – Fri: 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

#3 Wealth Transfer and Taking Care of Loved Ones

The third concern is to transfer wealth to loved ones at the right time, using the right methods, while avoiding taxes and probate costs.

Wealth transfer is passing assets to your loved ones effectively and efficiently. Effectively means you transfer your wealth to the loved ones you want in an appropriate method, so as not to ruin their work ethic. It can also include asset protection for your loved ones.

Efficiently means you minimize income taxes, estate taxes, and probate costs, leaving more for your loved ones and the charitable causes that matter to you.

Common mistakes Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors see before clients receive help to optimize wealth transfer include:

Improper beneficiaries, or beneficiaries misaligned with their current estate plan
Failing to fully develop intentions for what they want their wealth to do beyond their passing
Not considering the financial maturity and liability threats of beneficiaries
Failing to consider which assets to leave to charities and which to leave to loved ones
Not updating estate plan due to tax reform sunset, SECURE Act, family changes, wealth changes, etc.
Improper naming of successor trustees
Poor timing of funding of charitable trusts to maximize estate tax savings

When you begin to address the transfer of wealth, the goal is to take care of loved ones in your life. You’re concerned not only with your own wealth, but also the wealth of your children, grandchildren, and so on down the line in future generations.

Advanced planning gives you the peace of mind and confidence in knowing your wealth will take care of your heirs. This involves clear beneficiary alignment within your estate plan.

Proper wealth transfer requires wise executor and successor trustee selection to follow your documented wishes.

Then, we address how much capital is enough for your situation and intentions, and why it is enough. Next, there’s a strategic rebalancing to manage risk and increase your investment returns.

Cash flow planning is crucial to knowing and understanding where asset growth can come from.

Finally, there’s inflation-protected income planning so that you’re prepared for changes in the economy with careful forecasting.

#4 Wealth Protection Prevents Unjust Taking of Assets

The fourth concern is asset protection: protecting assets from being unjustly taken through catastrophic loss or litigation.

The fourth major financial concern reported by successful individuals and families involves protecting the wealth that they’ve worked so hard to grow and establish.

This includes putting barriers in place that prevent your wealth from being unjustly taken from you, and transferring certain risks to others.

You have to determine your liability gaps through a thorough analysis of the sources, degrees and likelihoods of harm. Next, there is a strategic tilting of assets.

How effective and efficient is the insurance structuring protecting your family, your assets, and your business?

Wealth protection is asset protection, financial privacy optimization, and keeping your assets out of harm’s way through custom tactics specific to your needs and threats.

Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors’ asset protection strategies help to protect your hard-earned assets from being unjustly taken from civil litigation and family divorce. It helps insulate your wealth in a legal manner to give you peace of mind you have the most appropriate, and cost-effective, strategies in place.

As with all planning, you have to have your asset protection strategies in place before the litigation attack occurs. In addition, your planning today cannot only protect your assets in the near future, but also the wealth you leave to your loved ones.

Asset protection typically includes a five-pronged approach:

Assessing sources of litigation threats, likelihoods and severity
Proper titling and ownership of accounts and assets to make them harder to “penetrate”
Utilizing accounts that have creditor protection specific in your state
Building liability insurance hedges to transfer some, if not all, of the risk
Irrevocable trusts with proper trustee powers and language.

We can share countless stories of people referred to us for asset protection after it is too late. It is tragic when a “fender bender” leads to a sizable judgement beyond the defendant’s limits of liability unjustly taking critical assets they need to take care of their families. Asset protection avoids this unnecessary tragedy.

#5 Maximize Charitable Giving Through Planning

The fifth concern is to maximize charitable impact for both you the giver and the causes that matter to you.

For many successful people and families, living a life of significance includes charitable giving — contributing to the causes they care about and making a difference in the world. Having those purposes makes charitable giving one of the most fulfilling and important components of one’s wealth plan.

Giving can begin by simply writing checks or giving cash when you are compelled. However, our clients report finding much more satisfaction and fulfillment after reflecting upon and getting clear about what causes matter to them and how they can best use their wealth and resources to make a difference.

Once the objective is known, the charitable strategy can be designed. Many factors go into assessing which strategies are best for helping our clients support their causes. Some include, but are not limited to:

When the charity receives the gift, now, in the future?
How much?
Timing – How does your tax situation this year compare to future years?
What type of assets? Cash, publicly-traded stock, privately held business interest, real estate?
From which account? Retirement account? Which saves the most in tax?
Capabilities of charity to accept? Utilize a donor-advised fund?
Charitable trust to benefit charitable causes and loved ones?
Desire to have future generations have a say in which causes charitable giving goes?

Successful people are charitable contributors who want to make a difference in the world. The fifth largest financial concern is the leveraging of wealth to magnify charitable impact for the giver and for the receiver.

There are ways to give appreciated assets for proper deductions that will also help to avoid capital gains taxes.

Charitable trust planning is attractive because it splits benefits between charitable and non-charitable beneficiaries. The charitable beneficiary retains a vested interest in the trust.

Charitable trusts can provide significant income and estate tax benefits not available through other trust vehicles.

When planning your retirement account withdrawal strategy, you can consider making charitable donations through charitable retirement plan distributions.

In anticipated high tax liability years, donor-advised fund strategies can be used to accelerate tax savings and defer charitable gifts to future years. Including your young adult children in gifting decisions can also help in establishing family values and legacy.

#7 Ongoing Financial Education

And then, the last but not least, is our seventh concern which is client education. This is especially important for our clients with high net worth as it provides confidence and continuity with their families to maximize their probability of success.

And the final concern of affluent families, for those who decide to work with Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors, is ongoing financial education. This concern is especially for our clients with high net worth who have family financial continuity as a concern for loved ones.

When clients have a well-thought-out financial plan designed to handle these concerns, there is resolution because every concern is addressed and taken care of. It sets up families and individuals for generations so they may live a good life without fear or distraction.

Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors’ clients report that our continuous client education about changing situations that affect them and new planning opportunities relevant to them gives them peace of mind. It also affirms that they are making wise decisions with their wealth.

If you or a loved one is diagnosed with a serious health condition, you’re eager to ask your doctor many questions about the situation and the course of action to take. Your finances are no different.

Without education, it is hard to know “the whys.” And, without knowing why you are executing a plan, it is easy to get distracted or knocked off course, especially in challenging times of much social, political, and economic change.

David Witter, founder and CEO of Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors in Winter Park, Florida, got his teacher’s heart from his mom, who was a math teacher for 37 years. He and the team lead a number of client education initiatives, including:

Teaching retirement planning courses at Rollins College
Timely webinars addressing recent law changes, or tax policy changes, and what to be doing now – SECURE Act, CARES Act, 2018 Tax Reform, and its sunset, to name a few
Videos posted on our blog address how volatile market moves affect their investments and what to do now
Holding client meetings to build background on course of action options and why we recommend a specific course of action
College preparation, resume, and interview preparation course for clients’ young adult children to help them launch their careers successfully
Client-only education events on investment strategies for success, no matter the circumstances, such as an upcoming Presidential Election
Articles posted and distributed on our website blog on pertinent topics such as health care planning, Qualified Opportunity Zones, Charitable Trusts, family meetings, asset protection, and longevity

College Funding

Many Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors’ clients prioritize helping their children receive the knowledge and education needed to successfully launch their careers. With the rising cost of college tuition outpacing inflation, this goal can at times feel daunting.

Our research shows that families achieve these goals most successfully when they are clear on their purposes, prepare in advance for their intended outcomes, and have honest communication with their children about their education path, degree, credentials, and career prospects.

Part of the preparation and communication involves assessing the unique talents and gifts of their children and determining together how to utilize those to develop a meaningful career path.

Preparation might also look like funding a 529 account when a child is very young. Honest communication also includes your children knowing the extent to which you are willing to help fund their education, your expectations of their contribution, and how to assess the return on specific college educations for future career paths.

Planning for the cost of higher education involves several considerations, not limited to:

Should you invest in a state prepaid tuition plan and/or a 529 plan? Or how about a UTMA or UGMA?
How much capital will you need once your child is 18 to achieve their education goal?
FAFSA application planning and how different assets are treated for financial aid.
How do you build the financial maturity of your children so that they gain wisdom in their financial decision-making?
What talents, skills, and interests of your children are worth investing in during their youth and adolescence in the hopes of them gaining scholarship opportunities?
What practices does your child need to be in to be successful in college? Are they being prepared for these by their schools or is additional training necessary?
How important is it to you that they have jobs as teenagers and into college?
Do you want your child to consider an out-of-state school or a school that is highly ranked for the field they choose to study?
How many years of schooling are required for your child’s desired career?

If you start this planning when your children are young, you have time to adjust as you learn more about their passions and goals. Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors’ Wealth Management Consultative approach will guide you with these important decisions and help you feel confident, preparing your children to be successful.

Retirement Planning

Confidence begins when your lifestyle intentions are defined and aligned for you once in retirement.

You have worked for decades to earn a living and take care of your family, and now you are thinking about what retirement looks like. Are you prepared? How confident are you in your retirement success?

Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors lead clients to a series of considerations and reflections in many areas:

Marriage – how well aligned are your visions?
Family – help with education, care for aging parents, move to be closer, how to leave assets?
Finance – when can you retire and how will you generate income to maintain your lifestyle?
Health and medical
Housing – where to live, how many homes to maintain, home improvements
Spirituality, charitable giving
Travel and leisure
Leaving a legacy
Volunteering and community involvement

Once you have a handle on your intentions (and they can change over time), Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors begin planning to fulfill those intentions within those lifestyle areas. Money is not everything, but it is required to support living a good life for two to four decades of your retirement.

Our services within retirement planning include:

Lifestyle planning
How much is enough and why
How much do you need to earn, save, and invest in order to produce enough retirement income to maintain your lifestyle
Which types of accounts will add capital to reach goals in the optimal tax impact method, both now and in retirement
Producing at least three types of tax treatment distribution “buckets” to enable retirement income flexibility: tax-deferred, taxable, and tax-free
1. This flexibility helps with tax planning and Medicare B & D premium reduction in retirement
Appropriate investment strategies to get to retirement and then maintain lifestyle while in retirement
Distribution planning, not only to be tax sufficient, but also to minimize the selling of investments at a loss
Retirement income projections are your lifeline to assessing the probability of achieving all that’s important to you

Notice we call this bundle of services retirement planning, an action verb, instead of a retirement plan. That is because of the rapidly and continuously changing nature of your circumstances. Here are a few sources of change that require continuous planning to maximize your success and keep you safe:

New laws and politics
Your financial situation changes – asset prices, income
Government fiscal policy
Health and safety threats and new ways to protect
Social and economic changes
New technologies and planning strategies
Changes in your family – marriage, new grandchild, special needs, inheritance
Your intentions change

The Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors’ Wealth Management Consultative Approach enables effective and timely assessments of your changing situations and new actions needed to keep you safe and amplify your success. We do that through our continuous Professional Network Meetings with experts to collaboratively assess client profiles as case studies to generate new considerations and planning opportunities.

Succession Planning

Succession is the planning of who it is that will lead your business into future decades.

Your business that you built is your “baby,” and it matters to you existentially that it continues to succeed after you have moved on to what is next.

Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors finds prudent succession planning and succession success have many benefits, not limited to:

Seeing your business continue to succeed after you have left is deeply meaningful and fulfilling
Continued success ensures higher earnouts for you and reduces the risks of default on installment sales
Higher sale price from high multiples due to expected continued growth
Maintains the culture you helped produce
Transition your business to the new owners and leaders on thoughtful strategic terms instead of a reaction to a crisis
Increases your autonomy to be free from the business operations
Takes better care of your customers with continuity of service
Takes better care of your employees, knowing the future leaders are well-qualified and prepared

Many wait until late in their career to begin thinking about succession planning. However, those who are most satisfied with their exit and succession start planning a decade or more before their exit. Succession success is intentional, not accidental.

Mergers and acquisitions consulting
Successor preparation and readiness
Key personnel development
Legacy planning
Deal structure design – tax implications and fulfilling intentions
Maximizing and monetizing enterprise value

Accepting 3(38) investment fiduciary delegation.
Avoiding any revenue sharing to fully disclose all fees with an independent open architecture platform and an agnostic benchmarking service.
Providing plans that often reduce costs, while simultaneously increasing plan utilization and participation.
You can have your plan benchmarked for a comparison with others in your industry and peer group through a meeting with Financial Harvest Wealth Advisors.
An example of how we can be of service includes how one business owner decreased total costs by 46%.

What We Do

A Consultative Approach to Wealth Management

The Top 7 Financial Concerns of the Affluent

#1 Preserving Wealth Through Investment Consulting

#2 Wealth Enhancement Through Advanced Planning

#3 Wealth Transfer and Taking Care of Loved Ones

#4 Wealth Protection Prevents Unjust Taking of Assets

#5 Maximize Charitable Giving Through Planning

#6 Retirement Transition

#7 Ongoing Financial Education

More Personal Wealth Management Services

College Funding

Extensive Professional Network

Retirement Planning

Executive Benefits Services

Serving Businesses

Business Sale

High-Value Employee Retirement Plans

Succession Planning

Talent Retention & Acquisition

Financial Education Resources

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